Hampshire student Toby Cooke battled a rare form of cancer with the help of best friend Ollie Silvester

A few months earlier, whilst on a family holiday to Alton Towers, Toby had discovered a lump in his left hand. After first showing his mum, Toby had gone to his GP to see what it was and have it removed.

He thought no more about it until his doctor called and told him he had alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer that tends to occur in older children and adolescents.

"Finding out I had cancer was a shock," says Toby, now 21, who has five brothers and a sister. "I was never really ill and was looking forward to going to Winchester School of Art to study illustration."

Although shocked, Toby was determined that having cancer would not stop him from starting his course, along with his best friend Ollie Silvester.

"I felt awful when Toby told me he had cancer," explains Ollie, 21. "I mean, what do you say to someone when they tell you that?"

Toby had to undergo gruelling chemotherapy treatments every three weeks for six months, and despite all the lectures and lessons that he had to miss because of hospital stays, he believes the course helped him to keep his focus.

"The worst part for me was taking tablets," he says recoiling with the memory.

"I've never been good at taking them and had only ever taken paracetamol once before, which tasted horrible and made me feel sick. And showering without getting the line in my chest, that they used to give me chemo and take blood, wet was pretty difficult.

"But I needed something positive to focus on, and the course gave me that - I didn't want to just give up and feel sorry for myself, as I always thought I was no worse off than anyone else. Although sometimes the treatment did take it out of me.

"I didn't really know what the outcome was going to be, I didn't want to know. I just wanted to keep on being me."

And with the support of his family, his girlfriend Libby and, of course, his best friend Ollie, that's exactly what Toby did - all while keeping the spirits up of those around him.

"I never wanted to lose my sense of humour," he continues.

"And I don't think I did, I tried to keep smiling through it all, although losing my hair was pretty weird. It used to come out in clumps and I didn't really know what to do with it, so I documented it into an art project, wore a hat and eventually just shaved it off."

Ollie adds: "It was really hard to get my head around what Toby was going through, especially when he was out of it with all the treatments. I found it really tough and yet he was being so strong about everything. He missed quite a bit of work too, so I tried to make sure I took notes for him and did what I could so he didn't fall too far behind."

Toby now sees his specialist every three months for regular checks and the boys, who met a year before Toby's diagnosis when they were on a foundation art course together, have just completed the second year of their degree.

To acknowledge what Toby had been through Ollie came up with the idea to hold a My Best Friend event as their end of year project and raise money for Cancer Research UK at the same time.

"We watched a documentary where a guy got people to write what they were feeling anonymously," explains Ollie.

"They wrote things they had never told anyone before, it was such a great idea and we thought that would be a good way to get our own feelings out. We wanted to do something to raise some money for Cancer Research, so thought why not combine the two ideas and from that it just grew. Although we couldn't have done it without the help of everyone who supported us.

"We were quite reclusive during his illness and became really close because of that. I still don't know how Toby kept it together. If it had been me, I would have just crawled into a hole and waited to see what happened. Toby is incredible and inspirational....and my best friend."

• The boys' event has so far raised more than £2,000. To donate to their cause, please visit www.justgiving.com/mybestfriendevent.