We tend to think of breast cancer sufferers as women over the age of 60 – yet this is a disease which can affect both women and men at any age.

This month marks five years since Jon Baker, a 37-year old police officer from Runcorn, Cheshire, died of breast cancer. He had been diagnosed two years earlier, but not before he had visited his GP twice, complaining of a breast lump, and twice been sent away with antibiotics for an ingrowing hair.

Even after breathlessness had taken him to hospital, he was sent back to the GP and it was only after five months – following Jon’s insistence on further investigation – that breast cancer was diagnosed. Contrary to popular belief, men can develop breast cancer too, whether they are young or old.

Although Jon endured a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and painful electro-chemotherapy, the cancer "sent him to heaven" as his oncologist at St George’s Hospital, London, had predicted would happen.

Although only 350 men are diagnosed each year, compared with 55,000 women, 80 of them will die from the disease. Awareness of the condition is growing among men: 82% of men questioned by a YouGov poll for the breast cancer charity, Walk the Walk, knew that men can develop the disease, but 54 per cent said they never checked themselves.