WEP comment: Braiden Prescott

Like the thousands of people who have already paid tribute to the Ince seven-year-old, who lost a long battle with cancer yesterday, we send our deepest sympathies to his loving family.

It has been a terrible ordeal: the youngster was in and out of hospital for more than two thirds of his short life. But we will always remember that brave smile of his and the famous thumbs-up.

His courage, his family’s perseverance in trying to save him and raise money so as to make every one of his moments as pleasurable as possible have been exemplary.

So too has the generosity of all the people who helped towards his care and the charitable works he inspired.

It must be all the more heartbreaking for the Prescotts that at one point it looked like that all the gruelling treatment might help him pull through, but tragically it was not to be.

It is hard to find appropriate words at such a dark hour, but we hope Braiden’s family find comfort in the avalanche of tributes and the knowledge that he is no longer suffering.