Red Symons is best known as television’s Mr Nasty on long-running institution Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
But few viewers knew that while he was making thousands laugh as the caustic judge on Red Faces, the TV legend and his wife, Elly, were fighting every parent’s worst nightmare as their young son Samuel battled an aggressive brain tumour.
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Watching survivor Sam walk across the stage as a Year 12 graduate from Melbourne Grammar School recently was a “dream come true” for Red, who dared to hope his son – who is still battling a second brain tumour and has thyroid cancer – would live to finish high school.
Six weeks after Samuel was born, proud new parents Red and Elly moved to a house in the suburbs to raise their family. “Our life was so normal,” Elly tells Australian Story about those years. “We had these two little bouncing healthy baby boys [once second son Raphael came along. They later had Joel]. We could never have imagined in a million years what our life was going to become.”
Their dream home had space for father and son to rough-house in the loungeroom. The family’s home videos show Red in old socks and daggy pyjama pants bouncing around in front of the bassinet and making his infant son cackle.
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But in baby Samuel’s room the family could hear the hum of the neighbouring power hub and, ominously, Samuel’s cot was against the common wall between the house and the substation.
By age four, Samuel had developed obvious problems, and the family will never know if the electromagnetic waves caused his string of severe illnesses.
WATCH: Flashback to Red on Hey Hey It’s Saturday! Post continues after the video…
One afternoon his preschool teacher called Elly – Samuel had become listless and was unable to open his eyes.
The family rushed him to hospital in an ambulance, and a biopsy revealed tiny Sam had suffered a massive brain haemorrhage.
