IN a bright roomy kitchen at the top of Salisbury's Milford Hill, the conversation turns to rugby.

I ask 12-year-old Freddie Vardigans if he has been watching the World Cup and he nods enthusiastically.

His mother, Lola, beams. Freddie loves playing rugby and football, she tells me.

"Used to," he corrects her in that pedantic way children have when they are being normal children.

But Freddie is not normal at the moment and his mum, as happens to mums when their beloved children are targeted by cancer, is extraordinary.

Freddie has Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that develops in about 30 children a year in the UK. He has had chemotherapy to reduce the tumour in his leg and an operation to remove the residue and insert a prosthesis to replace the infected bone.

Months of chemo will follow but he has, hopefully, come through the worst.

Lola has helped Freddie cope with the devastating diagnosis and the months of treatment, faced her own fears and fought back by channelling her energy into organising a huge fundraising event for a children's cancer charity here in Salisbury at Christmas.

Freddie's Festive Fundraiser takes place on December 20 in a heated marquee in the grounds of the Cathedral School.

A champagne reception will be followed by a gala dinner for 350 people, Guardian sketch writer Simon Hoggart will be master of ceremonies, Salisbury Cathedral choir will sing and a grand auction features items donated by household names. Half a dozen Christmas trees loaded with donated gifts will offer further temptation.

Freddie and his band will play a few numbers and dad Peter will guest on guitar with rock band Route 66.

Lola hopes to raise £50,000 for Sargent Cancer Care for Children and she is well on the way with many of the £100 tickets gone.

The idea took root just weeks into Freddie's treatment when Lola's friend, Simone Smart, suggested it.

"The marquee was going to be there anyway and I'm a great believer that you are sent pointers in life," says Lola. "Someone's telling me to do something and we took it from there.

"Cancer is so random - every parent knows it could be their child. We were all pretty shell-shocked when we got the diagnosis.

"Freddie had been getting quite a lot of pain in the knee and we thought it was a ligament strain. But at half term, Peter noticed a lump on Freddie's knee and the following week Freddie fell off a stool and was in excruciating agony."

David Cox, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Salisbury District Hospital, knew immediately it was an osteosarcoma.

Early on, Lola heard from Cherie Blair, a personal friend who also happens to be patron of Sargent Cancer Care for Children.

"Everyone knows the big cancer charities, but I had never heard of it and I don't think many people have. It deals with the fundamentals of cancer care, the mundane stuff."

When Lola was at her lowest ebb, the charity helped.

"We had a particularly bad day when we were worried that Freddie had secondary cancer," she says. "I couldn't stop crying and Linda Corner, the Sargent social worker at the Middlesex Hospital, stayed with me for the whole day. She just cancelled everything and stayed and I'm so grateful to her."

Freddie's Festive Fundraiser will be, she says, the Christmas party of all Christmas parties, but there are no prizes for guessing what the Vardigans want most for a happy new year.

To donate a Christmas tree present, book a ticket or make a donation to Sargent Cancer Care for Children, contact Jane Ranabaldo, c/o Salisbury Cathedral School, The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EQ or e-mail jranaboldo@btopenworld.com. More information on www.sargent.org/freddies