FOOTBALL legend Denis Law CBE has thrown his weight behind the bid to build a new hospice for Glasgow.

The ex-Scotland and Manchester United icon is supporting the Evening Times-backed Brick By Brick appeal, which aims to fundraise £15million to help build a new Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice in the city.

The 72-year-old is guest of honour today at a sporting lunch at city hotel Hilton Glasgow.

He said: "I have heard about the Brick By Brick campaign to build a new hospice for Glasgow and I'm glad to be involved and speak at the lunch to help with fundraising.

"The people of Glasgow need a 21st century hospice facility, and I would encourage everyone in the city to get involved with fundraising for this excellent cause."

Today's lunch is being hosted by football pundit Peter Martin.

A prolific goalscorer in his heyday, Law is the only Scottish player to have won the prestigious European Player of the Year award, doing so in 1964.

Guests at the £580-per- table event will quiz the retired striker, who scored 237 goals in 404 appearances for Manchester United and was capped 55 times for Scotland.

The Evening Times is encouraging readers to get involved in Brick by Brick, a major campaign to build a much-needed hospice on a proposed site at Bellahouston Park.

The purpose-built facility would, for the first time, provide dedicated care for young people aged between 15 and 25 with life-limiting conditions.

Aimed for completion by 2016, it will be four times larger than the existing hospice.

The design by Glasgow-based architects NORD will also offer patients a room with access to a social area as well as landscaped gardens.

Hospice chief executive Rhona Baillie has described the proposed eight-acre site – currently used as a muni-ci- pal maintenance depot – as "beyond our wildest dreams".

Lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone OBE visited the hospice recently. It currently occupies a Georgian townhouse overlooking the River Clyde at Carlton Place in the city centre. Michelle helped launch the hospice's festive fundraising campaign, Light Up A Life.

Rangers chief executive Charles Green vowed to help raise £100,000 for the appeal after the Rangers Charity Foundation chose the hos- pice as its charity partner.

In addition to the appeal, the hospice must raise £2.8m annually from fundraising and voluntary donations to provide its care for patients and their families.

The hospice was founded by the late Dr Anne Gilmore and started as a charitable trust called the New Glasgow Hospice in 1981. It was gifted to Charles and Diana as a wed- ding present, the idea of then Lord Provost Michael Kelly.

A £1.4m day care unit was officially opened by Prince Charles in 2000.