‘My son’s heart was the size of a walnut when he had major surgery’

A mother has recalled the fear she felt when her son was rushed into surgery at just 10 days old – with a tiny heart the size of a walnut.

Eddison Watts, from Norwich, was diagnosed with a heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot during his mother’s pregnancy, where blood would not flow around his body properly.

It is one of the most common heart defects affecting approximately one in every 3,600 births in the UK, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF). It causes babies to be born with a hole in the heart and a narrowed pulmonary valve, with the main artery of the body growing in the wrong place.

In most cases, children will have surgery to treat Tetralogy of Fallot when they are at least six months old. But Eddison needed lifesaving open-heart surgery when he was under two weeks old, as he had a large hole in his heart.

Eddison’s mother, Jo Watts, told The Independent: “It was an unknown and scary time. When they operated on his heart, it was the size of a walnut.”

The 43-year-old mother of three explained that she was told her baby had a heart problem during a scan, but they could not identify the nature of the issue. It wasn’t until a later specialist foetal cardiology scan at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London that they were given the diagnosis.

“We’ve got two older daughters who are heart-healthy and were normal pregnancies, so being told at the 20-week scan that something is wrong with your baby’s heart was very overwhelming and very hard,” she added.

“We were always given the impression that he would need surgery when he was about six months and was a better weight, but unfortunately, it didn’t go that way.”

She explained it was a normal birth, and after five days in hospital they were sent home. But eight days later, a neonatal nurse visited and found his oxygen saturations were drastically low – a common side effect of Tetralogy of Fallot, which means less oxygen is carried around the body.

Ms Watts and Eddison were taken by the children’s acute ambulance service from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital to Evelina Children’s Hospital in London for emergency surgery, where surgeons “patched up the big hole in his heart”, Ms Watts explained.

Now aged seven, Eddison has an annual check-up at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and he will need valve replacement surgery in his teens.

“His heart does pump harder than the average child because it’s working harder to keep up,” Ms Watts added.

“He loves his football and he joined a local team, but he’s at the point where, after strenuous, long activity like half an hour of training, he knows when he has to stop. So there are limitations, but he’s starting to become more aware of that now as he’s getting a bit older.”

Eddison, who is a pupil at Cawston Primary School near Norwich, has been named a Young Heart Hero by the BHF in recognition of his fundraising efforts and courage in the face of a serious heart condition.

He inspired his school and local bowls club, of which his father Graham is a part, to raise more than £650 for the charity. Eddison was one of a small number of children from across the UK to be honoured at the BHF’s Young Heart Hero Awards, held at the Paradox Museum in Knightsbridge, London, in September.

Eddison said: “I wanted to help other children like me. It was really exciting to win a Young Heart Hero Award and I had a brilliant day at the museum.”

The award’s ceremony meant Eddison met other young children with heart problems just like him – something Ms Watts would have appreciated when her son was diagnosed, to help reassure him.

“I did say at the hospital after he was born that if there was ever another family to go through what we did, I would be more than happy to talk because I feel there’s a lack of support there for families with that diagnosis,” she added.

Before the BHF existed, the majority of babies diagnosed with a severe heart defect in the UK did not survive to their first birthday. Today, thanks to research, more than eight out of 10 diagnosed children survive to adulthood.

Snow expected in UK over weekend with ‘coldest days of season so far’

As the clocks go back this weekend, cold Arctic air will cause temperatures to plummet across the UK, with the wintry conditions expected to bring the first snow of the season.

Showers of snow are set to fall across the Scottish mountains on Saturday, the Met Office said, as a “patchy frost” will cover England and northern Scotland on Sunday morning.

This weekend will also see the “coldest pair of days so far this season” with temperatures diving to single digits. The forecaster added that strong winds on Saturday will make the day feel like December, with a “brisk, blustery feel” making conditions feel several degrees lower.

“The combination of strong breezes and incoming, colder air means it will feel raw in exposed spots through daylight hours,” the Met Office said.

Frequent showers are also expected across Northern Ireland, northern Scotland, Wales and the South West.

An Atlantic low from the North West will give Saturday night a chilly feel, but Sunday morning will have “plenty of sunshine to begin with” across most central and eastern areas.

The Met Office said: “Eastern Scotland and the east of England may hold on to brighter skies into the afternoon.

“Elsewhere, cloud will increase, with a few early showers followed by a band of more persistent rain arriving around lunchtime for Northern Ireland, Scotland and western fringes of England and Wales.”

The cold weekend comes after Storm Benjamin battered the UK this week with heavy downpours and winds over 70mph.

Four yellow weather warnings were issued by the Met Office for Thursday, while over 40 flood alerts were in place in the morning.

Tonight:

Showery rain will move southwards across much of the country through this evening and overnight, reaching south-east England by dawn. A mix of clear spells and scattered showers following from the northwest. Remaining windy and turning chilly where skies clear.

Saturday:

Remaining rather cloudy in the North East with some further rain at times. Scattered showers also moving into western areas, but mostly dry with sunny spells elsewhere. Another cold-feeling day.

Outlook for Sunday to Tuesday:

A mainly dry start on Sunday, but rain spreading in from the North West throughout the day. Remaining changeable early next week, especially in the North West, but temperatures gradually recovering.

Lily Allen’s West End Girl is a perfect exercise in unsparing honesty

Lily Allen has made a career out of telling the truth, no matter how messy it sounds. She was 21 when she shot to fame as the pop star behind hit singles such as “Smile” and “LDN”, both of which narrated her exploits around buzzing London town with candid, wry humour. The songs were catchy, the lyrics delivered in an insouciant stream-of-consciousness style that made you feel like you were gossiping with her at the pub. Her debut album, 2006’s Alright ,Still, was packed full of that same candour: “Knock ‘Em Out” was an eye-rolling riposte to drunken louts trying it on with exasperated women at the bar, “Not Big” a withering kiss-off to a bad lover, “Alfie” a sisterly scolding to her younger brother.

The 2008 follow-up, It’s Not Me, It’s You, might have been glossier, more pop, but it was still quintessentially Lily. Many of the same problems plagued her: bad sex (“Not Fair”), parental woes (“He Wasn’t There”), sibling rivalry (“Back to the Start”). But now Allen was a fully-fledged star contending with paparazzi, issues with substance abuse and body image, and tabloid heckling over what was deemed to be inappropriate behaviour from a young lady. Cue tracks like “Everyone’s At It”, about the hypocrisy of politicians and the media over anti-drugs messaging, and “The Fear”, a succinct assessment of fame and the vapidness of celebrity culture.

Two decades since she first made a name for herself, Allen is now back with arguably her most honest album, West End Girl – her first in seven years – which listeners are no doubt already unpacking for sordid details about the unravelling of her marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour. In interviews and press material, though, Allen has described it as part fact, part fiction: “It is inspired by what went on in the relationship,” she told Vogue. In short, we have no way of knowing what’s real and what’s invented. Reviews of the album so far have been fairly positive but mixed, which is to be expected: Allen is, critically speaking, a frequently undervalued artist. But West End Girl is a sharp, unsparing reminder of why she remains one of British pop’s most distinctive storytellers.

As ever, Allen pairs heartbreaking content with breezy instrumentation; that juxtaposition brings her words into greater focus here. Take the album’s opener and title track, “West End Girl”, which plays out over a summer bossa nova rhythm. Our story begins in fairytale fashion, with Allen whisked off to New York to move into a lavish brownstone. Then comes the call: “Hey, you got the lead in a play, you’ve gotta be back in London for rehearsals in May.” Her partner is frosty, one might say gaslighting, which she finds strange. But now she’s in London, in a hotel room alone, “a West End girl”. That’s the dream, right? Only, the bossa nova beat comes to an abrupt halt as her phone rings, before returning in a more muffled, sinister fashion, as she fights back tears during what sounds like one in a long line of painful conversations.

That’s just the first song. “Sleepwalking”, possibly the most heartrending of all, finds her in limbo as her partner simultaneously fails to acknowledge her misery and refuses to let her go. Again, the instrumentation here is what should be a romantic waltz, if only it didn’t serve as the backdrop to a marriage crumbling before our eyes. “I don’t know if you do it intentionally/ But somehow you make it my fault/ You don’t stop talking, and I’m just sleepwalking,” she sings sadly. The song darkens with furious, waspish synths: “And now you’ve made me your Madonna/ I wanna be your whore/ Baby it would be my honour/ Please sir, can I have some more?”

In a pop landscape where female desire is shock-spectacle and designed to scandalise, even the biggest artists can struggle to articulate it in direct terms (think about the teeth-gritting line “his love was the key that opened my thighs” on Taylor Swift’s much-mocked “Wood”). Allen, by contrast, has never flinched. She dives into it, not to titillate but to truth-tell. Her country-fried 2008 bop “It’s Not Fair” attracted a wave of new female fans, many of whom will have been able to relate to her unsparing account of a great guy who, sadly, just can’t satisfy her needs.

And when sex becomes weaponised, she’s ready and waiting, knives out. She sings about discovering her ex’s “Pussy Palace”, having felt rebuffed sexually herself only to now find a bag full of paraphernalia: “Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so f***ing broken/ How’d I get caught up in your double life?” It’s guts-ripped, blood-spilled stuff, a Hammer Horror of a song. Similarly, on “Beg For Me”, she reels off the kinds of demands we (women) are never supposed to vocalise: “I wanna feel held/ I wanna be told I’m special and I’m unusual/ I want your desire, I wanna be spoiled/ I wanna be told I’m beautiful.”

Much of her power lies in her delivery as well as her lyrics. From her very first album, Allen was distinctive for that pretty, lilting falsetto, not the strongest among her peers, but just as effective. There’s something childlike about it, an innocence and hope that remains in spite of everything she’s endured, while also creating a blistering contrast with her subject of choice. Enveloped by the swooning strings of “Just Enough”, she asks with fragile sweetness: “Did you get someone pregnant? Someone who isn’t me?/ Did you take her to the clinic, did you hold her hand? Is she having your baby?”

Accusations that Allen is “too outspoken” – and that this is a trait symptomatic of narcissistic or attention-seeking behaviour – started up again when she launched her hit BBC podcast, Miss Me?, with friend Miquita Oliver (Allen has since taken a break to focus on other projects). There was also her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, containing chapters with frank titles like “Rock Bottom”, “Isolation”, “Assault”, “Going Mad” and “Breakdown”. Her accounts of getting “lost” in fame, her troubled relationship with her dad (the actor Keith Allen), being assaulted by music industry executives, suffering a miscarriage, being stalked relentlessly by a mentally unwell man are all written with the same matter-of-factness we hear in her music.

For her part, Allen noted her ADHD diagnosis when she told The Times last year: “I’m not trying to be shocking or outspoken. I always get called outspoken… I think it’s the intersection of addiction and neurodivergency.” She added: “I think my moral compass is pretty good, so when I’m sharing intimate details about my life, I’m looking for people to connect or to resonate, or to validate the things that are going on in my head.”

It will be interesting to see how the public responds to this album over the coming days. The world might still judge Allen for her candour, but when it comes to pop music, our biggest stars know who the OG is. Olivia Rodrigo brought her out at Glastonbury in 2022, giving fans an opportunity to see the lineage between Allen’s early work and the US singer’s own confessional pop-rock (think “jealousy, jealousy”, “brutal” and “enough for you”). Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing” mirrored the way Allen often stays with a specific refrain (“I hate it here,” she croons on “Dallas Major”, about being back on dating apps post-split), then narrates her dilemma with sparse but specific detail. Charli, in particular, has mastered what Allen owned first: a kind of ironic detachment that makes any suggestion of their being “hysterical” much harder.

As someone who grew up with Lily – first on MySpace and then as I navigated my own way around Noughties London as a teenager to the tune of her perky, bratty pop – it’s thrilling to hear the throwbacks to her earliest work, as though she’s re-discovering herself through the music. Her west London upbringing comes to the fore on “Nonmonogamummy” thanks to dub beats and a guest appearance from MC Specialist Moss. “Beg For Me” samples Lumidee’s 2003 R&B classic “Never Leave You”. On closer “Fruitloops” she namechecks her second album, the one that broke her as an international star, singing, “It’s not me, it’s you.” Weaving in those nods to her roots suggests she’s getting her feet back on solid ground. It’s the most “her” she’s sounded in a long time. Welcome back, Lily. We missed you.

Fake weight-loss jabs worth £250,000 seized in first-of-its-kind raid

Around £250,000 worth of fake weight-loss jabs have been seized in what is thought to be the biggest crackdown on the illicit medicines worldwide.

Officers uncovered tens of thousands of empty weight-loss pens ready to be filled, raw chemical ingredients, and more than 2,000 unlicensed retatrutide and tirzepatide pens in a raid on a warehouse in Northampton.

The medicines regulator said the raid is the first illicit production facility for weight-loss medicine discovered in the UK, and is believed to be the largest single seizure of trafficked weight-loss medicines ever recorded by a law enforcement agency.

The finished products of the materials taken by officers have a street value of around £250,000, according to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Officers also recovered large amounts of sophisticated packaging and manufacturing equipment, and £20,000 in cash suspected to be linked to medicines trafficking.

The Independent previously reported on illicit retatrutide, a weight-loss jab still in development, being sold via social media. The drug is pitched as a “Triple G” weight-loss drug because of its unique ability to mimic the actions of three different hormones – GLP-1, glucagon and GIP – which are released after eating and work to reduce appetite, help regulate blood sugar levels and support fat loss.

But health bosses warned that such compounds are illegal and could expose users to “dangerous ingredients that can have serious health consequences”.

MHRA head of criminal enforcement Andy Morling said taking out the facility was a “landmark result”, but warned people to be “extremely cautious” when buying medicines online.

He added: “Prescription medicines should only be obtained from a registered pharmacy against a prescription issued by a healthcare professional. Taking prescription medicines sourced in any other way carries serious risks to your health – there are no guarantees about what they contain, and some may even be contaminated with toxic substances.

“Taking out the first illicit weight-loss medicine manufacturing facility found in the UK is a landmark result for the MHRA and a major blow to the illegal trade. These products are untested, unauthorised, and potentially deadly. By taking this organised criminal network out of operation and stopping tens of thousands of potentially fatal products from entering circulation, we’ve prevented a serious risk to public health.

“This is an illicit global market that endangers patients, puts big money in the pockets of organised criminals, and undermines legitimate healthcare. This operation demonstrates, once again, that my officers will stop at nothing to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the organised criminal networks who put profit before safety.”

Health secretary Wes Streeting said the seizure was a “victory” in the fight against criminals “peddling dangerous and illegal weight-loss jabs to make a quick buck”.

“These unregulated products, made with no regard for safety or quality, posed a major risk to unwitting customers,” he added.

“My message is clear: don’t buy weight-loss medications from unregulated sources. Talk to your GP, seek NHS advice, and don’t line the pockets of criminals who don’t care about your health. Safe, appropriate, licensed obesity drugs can greatly benefit those in need if taken under medical supervision, and I urge people to only purchase and use them with the approval and oversight of medics and pharmacists.”

‘I’m living with a tumour the size of a golf ball in my head’

I’d been suffering from migraines that made me feel nauseous for about five years. When they hit, I knew I’d have to curl up in a dark room until they passed – sometimes for a whole day. After a particularly bad episode in 2017, I finally went to the GP. It hadn’t crossed my mind that anything serious was going on.

At the time, I was married and living in Kilburn, north London, with an eight-year-old son and a 17-year-old stepdaughter. I was working in the building industry and as a musician, but when the blinding headaches hit about twice a week, life just stopped.

I’d tried all sorts of holistic remedies: CBD oil, a healer, various supplements. I considered whether it might be stress, but it also happened once while I was relaxing on a beach holiday. I tried to eat less sugar and dairy, thinking it might be diet-related. Nothing worked. I just took the approach that once an episode was over, I’d just get on with things again.

I told the GP everything, and she sent me for a scan. It took about a month to get the appointment, but I still wasn’t worried. The GP asked me to come in for the results. I went in on my own, and she told me I had a meningioma, which is a brain tumour. I felt numb; I had a delayed reaction. I’ve always been the kind of person who is present, but my feelings travel in a bag three days behind me. The GP said it looked benign, but I needed to see a consultant.

I went home and told my wife, who was beside herself with worry. I felt like I had to calm her down, and yet it was me who had the brain tumour. Over the next few days, I mulled it over. There were moments when I faced my own mortality, thinking, “Oh my God, am I going to die?”

I looked up how to do a will. I didn’t know how to process the situation. I didn’t want to talk to my wife about it too much, as it really stressed her out. I didn’t tell my children, obviously. I told a couple of friends and my sister. My dad had dementia at the time. I felt like I was dealing with it alone. I reassured myself: “Somebody will fix it. There will be a solution.” I work as a builder, and if there is a leak, or a door is off its hinge, it gets fixed. I took the same philosophy into the medical world.

Nearly a month later, as I sat in a London hospital room with my wife, a consultant casually told me that, although the tumour was the size of a golf ball, I didn’t need to do anything about it. The doctor seemed more interested in talking about the football results, and was strangely detached. He said the migraines had nothing to do with the brain tumour. My gut instinct was that the migraines were connected to it, and I needed to get a second opinion.

I got referred to another consultant. It felt like the whole situation was upsetting for other people, and so this time it was easier to go alone. The consultant said, “If it were my brother, I’d take it out. But you have a choice. We can take it out, but it’s a dangerous operation because it’s the size of a golf ball and it’s right next to a big vein. Or we can leave it because it’s not affecting you right now – and we’ll keep an eye on it through regular scans to make sure it’s not growing.” She also said it looked benign.

I said, “What is the risk if you take it out?” She replied: “Stroke, seizure or death.” And I said, “What is the risk of leaving it?” and she said: “Stroke, seizure or death.” I couldn’t win either way. It felt like a Monty Python sketch, because it was so absurd; both options were the same.

There was a point in 2019, when I was having regular scans every six months, when they thought the tumour was growing. I felt sick with worry. I had another scan, and then they decided that someone had measured it wrong, and it actually hadn’t grown. I was so relieved, and I just thought, “Well, that can happen in my profession, too. How many times does someone measure a kitchen wrong, and then the cabinet doesn’t fit?”

I now have a scan every two years. I’m still living with the side effects of a brain tumour. Sometimes I get muddled and confused, and I can have trouble with planning and changing my mind. I have memory lapses, and I still get migraines. In 2024, I released a modern blues album, called Still Got a Sense of Tumour, that was inspired by my diagnosis and was put out under the alias Six Strings and a Pulse. It raised money for the charity Brain Tumour Research. I felt compelled to write songs while living with my tumour, including “When I Meet My Death”, as well as during my marital breakup in 2021. Around 16,000 people each year in the UK are diagnosed with brain tumours, and I’ve had a few good friends die of aggressive brain tumours, too.

Right now, I’m one of the lucky ones who are living with a brain tumour. I find it helps me to take one day at a time, and I meditate, do Qigong, and try to look after myself. I just get on with it. I sometimes wish I didn’t know I had a brain tumour, because it’s not growing. Ignorance is bliss. Other times, when I have a really rotten migraine, I question myself: “Should I have it taken out?” There is no way to deal with it unless I have an operation, because the tumour is too big for radiotherapy. I don’t know what caused it, but I am 6ft 2in and have banged my head a lot in the past.

Knowing I have this golf ball in my head, squishing down on the left side, is stressful. But at the same time, I feel more creative than ever, and the little ducks of trivialities that peck at my ankles every day are much smaller now – every day is a blessing.

Enriching escapes: find your perfect luxury break

My town Caerphilly turned on Labour after 100 years – this is why

The old saying in Caerphilly was that if you put a donkey up for election with a red rosette on it, people would vote for it. But people are sick to the back teeth with Labour. And so we are going somewhere new.

The industrial revolution started in Wales, the coal, the steel, all of those industries started here, and the massive revenues it created ran straight out. That’s probably why the M4 goes left to right, not up and down. The wealth has flown out of Wales towards London forever.

People my age, people on the golf course, where I work, they do bring up immigration and a lot of them think Nigel Farage is fantastic.

They think they’ll get Labour out – and they think that will solve the problem. Farage has been on mainstream TV for so long that he’s popular everywhere. They make a massive thing about immigration. But legal immigration is a great thing. We need doctors, workers etc. It’s the illegal immigration that needs addressing; that’s what everyone talks about and social media fuels it.

The last few years have been tough on people, starting, I think with Covid, the misinformation, politicians partying, while we were locked down, it did nothing for trust. Welsh voters are concerned with the lack of well-paid jobs, the prospect of digital IDs, the potholes in every road, the businesses and shops that have left the town. As a working-class man I always voted for the person, not the party – the person that would do their best for Caerphilly and for the Wales they represented.

We’ve got untouched countryside behind my house, ancient woodland that has never been farmed. The former assembly member (AM) for Caerphilly, Labour councillor Hefin David, sadly passed away, but he helped fight off the building developers, with members of other parties, including Lindsay Whittle, our new AM, so I’m not getting at Labour people. They’re not all bad. But they, Labour, have been unchecked for decades. They say they want a green Caerphilly and then let the bulldozers roll in. That particular area has rare door mice, horseshoe bats and rare fauna and flora. These things sound small, but they are the things that people care about.

One of the election leaflets came from Lord Neil Kinnock, wrongly suggesting that Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle had been office for 50 years and hadn’t done anything. Well, even when not elected, Lindsay has worked tirelessly for Caerphilly. Labour has been in power for all that time, running the councils and the assembly… so, what has Labour done? Somehow, the main parties get all the airtime.

The man we voted for is now 72, lucky on the 14th attempt to serve his community. He has been in public service for Caerphilly ever since I can remember, for decades and he never quite got there. He’s not one to be bullied by a party. He is Mr Caerphilly. We joke that if you did cut Lindsay open, Caerphilly would be written right through his body. He was the best MP Caerphilly never had. Well, now we’ve got him.

I think a lot of people in Wales feel they have a bad deal and they feel they are talked down to. It’s the same story all throughout Wales. Potholes in the road. Developments that no locals can afford. The rents and rates the council charge to small businesses astronomical. These business’ need support and encouragement. How is anyone supposed to make a living? And who is standing up for that?

When I was a kid, Caerphilly was a bustling little place. We used to have vegetable shops, the butchers, the bakers. Then in the late 1970s Carrefour, the first hypermarket in the UK arrived. People drifted and the councils never made any contingency plans. The majority of shops have gone. Caerphilly’s gone the way of every other Welsh town, fewer and fewer shoppers. It’s outdated. It looks tired. We’ve got half a dozen barbers, kebab shops and American-style sweet shops, betting offices and charity shops. But the pubs are still pretty busy at night and I wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.

I never noticed hard times growing up. I was born in the miner’s hospital, grew up, had a couple of grocery shops, and in 1986 at age 23, I was actually mayor of Caerphilly, so, like many people here, I am still very proud of our town. It’s a typical valley town: there’s one main street, and then smack bang in the middle you’ve got a 30-acre castle and moat, one of the biggest in Europe. Dover and Windsor have slightly more land. It’s got a leaning tower, leans more than the tower of Pisa and the false, but more exciting rumour is that it was left that way by Oliver Cromwell’s cannon. Even so, we tend to drive by and take it for granted, like so much here. But, not anymore. I think Caerphilly just woke up. Let’s hope so. Llongyfarchiadau (Congratulations) Lindsay Whittle and Plaid Cymru.