Emotional moment DJ Sara Cox finds out she's raised millions for Children in Need as fans make major demand

Sara Cox was overjoyed when she heard how her Children in Need fundraiser was going and the millions she was raising for charity.

Children in Need 2025 took in about £45.5 million in total and the Radio 2 DJ was a major part of those fundraising efforts as she completed the Great Northern Marathon Challenge where she ran 135 miles in five days.

She ran across Northumberland, Durham, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire over all sorts of terrain and through some fairly horrific weather while people cheered her on.

Cox, 50, completed her challenge while wearing a Pudsey backpack so she always carried the Children in Need mascot with her, and once she had made it to the end she said: "It's just been the maddest, most painful, wonderful thing I've ever, ever done."

"I've never had shapely calves in my life, but I have now because they are so swollen, it looks like I've been hit with a bat."

Describing the emotions she felt on the five-day-run 'like a rollercoaster', she said her 'mood was changing every three, four, seconds' but in the end it had been 'the most amazing, painful and wonderful few days of my life'.

Speaking on the show to Scott Mills, she said: "Whatever you've given it all makes a massive, massive difference. Thank you so much, so generous."

However, she didn't know how much she'd raised as she explained she'd been 'inside my own head a lot' for much of the time.

Mills told her it was 'a phenomenal amount of cash' and she said the people donating money had been 'amazing', but she hadn't heard about the amount she was making since it had passed the £6 million threshold.

Mills then told her that her own total raised had climbed to £7,651,855 and Cox was absolutely flabbergasted, with her pumping her fist in the air as a celebration.

Of course that wasn't the final fundraising total that the radio DJ had achieved as the actual final total raised for Children In Need from her Great Northern Marathon Challenge was a stunning £9,523,028.

Her final finish line was, fittingly, the Yorkshire town of Pudsey, and now she's gone and done it plenty of people are making a major demand about her.

There are plenty who reckon the DJ ought to become 'Dame Sara Cox' for her fundraising efforts, since bringing in over nine million quid to help children is one hell of an achievement.

It would certainly be an honour for an achievement worthy of recognition.