THE Isle of Wight Festival Dragon Boat Race roars back into town next month in aid of Stand Up to Cancer.

The annual event sees Isle of Wight and national organisations — and the odd celebrity - go head to head on the River Medina.

Dragon boat racers have previously included Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Caroline Corr and Nicholas Pinnock

This year's racing will take place on Thursday, April 27 and Caroline Giddings, Isle of Wight Festival commercial director, said: "We’re delighted to host the third annual Dragon Boat Race in partnership with Stand Up to Cancer. Last year’s race raised an incredible £64,000! The Dragon Boat Race is the perfect way mark the countdown to the festival."

Graham White, director of Stand Up To Cancer, said: "We’re really excited for the return of the Dragon Boat Race. Last year’s race was so much fun and the final fundraising total was just phenomenal. We’ve made amazing progress against cancer in the past few decades but one in two of us in the UK will develop cancer at some point in our lives so we absolutely can’t afford to stand still. This year we hope to raise even more money to fund Stand Up To Cancer’s work to bring kinder and better treatments to patients faster so that we can save more lives, more quickly."