Skin cancer man thanks 'stranger'

Matt Smith (left) said he recognised the cancer instantly

A Nottinghamshire man has been reunited with a surgeon he met in a fish and chip shop queue who saved his sight.

John Burns, 66, from West Bridgford in Nottingham, ignored a lump near his eye for months until a stranger in a queue advised him to get it checked out.

He went to hospital and had a golf ball-sized tumour removed. Doctors said it could have damaged his sight.

Mr Burns thanked Matt Smith, a plastic surgeon who runs a Nottingham clinic, after the surgeon contacted the BBC.

He followed him to his car, tapped on the window and told him he was a doctor.

'Eternally grateful'

Up until that chance meeting Mr Burns had ignored his family's pleas for him to get the lump checked out.

Matt Smith said: "I've been doing plastic surgery for over 10 years so I instantly recognised it as a skin cancer..."

"I went home that evening and I told my wife and she said, 'You've probably ruined his fish and chip dinner, you've probably ruined his evening.' I said, 'Well I probably have done, but I think in the long term he'll probably thank me for it'.

"And I'm just glad that he sought treatment straight away, much to his credit, and had a successful outcome."

Mr Burns said: "If it hadn't been for Matt, God knows where I'd have ended up, and they confirmed that it could have been even more serious than just losing an eye.

"So I'm eternally grateful to him and it was fate that he was just behind me in the chip shop queue."