Champagne, a three-course dinner by The Dorchester kitchens and live performance on Wednesday 25 November 2026, raising money for the Andy Cole Fund.
Andy Cole is the fifth-highest goalscorer in Premier League history with 187 goals, played for Newcastle, Manchester United, Blackburn, Arsenal and Manchester City across twenty years, and won five league titles and the 1999 Treble at Old Trafford. Manchester United paid a British record transfer fee to sign him. He set up the Andy Cole Fund with Kidney Research UK after his own kidney transplant, to pay for research into transplantation and into the mental health of people living with kidney disease.
The second half of that is the part almost nobody funds. Dialysis and transplantation are medical problems with medical budgets; the depression, the anxiety and the loss of identity that come with a chronic condition are not, and a fund started by somebody who has been through it is unusually well placed to insist on the difference.
The 2026 gala is at The Dorchester on Wednesday 25 November, opening with a champagne reception and running to dinner from the hotel’s own kitchens, live performance, and silent and live auctions of experiences not otherwise for sale. Seats are £300 or £350 and tables of ten £3,000 or £3,500. The last one sold out and raised £108,000. Kidney Research UK is the largest charity funder of kidney research in Britain, and the fund sits inside it rather than beside it.