Paul Young left in intensive care with huge blood loss after horror holiday fall
Eighties singer Paul Young tells of horror holiday accident ahead of new tour
Eighties pop icon Paul Young has told of a horror holiday fall, which left him with multiple leg fractures and in intensive care needing three emergency blood transfusions. Less than 24 hours into a dream holiday on the Greek island of Santorini the singer of hits including Wherever I Lay My Hat, slipped and plunged down a flight of outdoor hotel steps while walking to breakfast.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mirror, Paul, 69, recalls: “It had been spitting with rain. The going under foot, as they say, was quite good as I was walking on the flat, but when I got to the top of the steps, as soon as I put my foot on the first step, my leg slipped out from underneath me. I fell and my leg cracked as soon as I hit the step.
“Once I'd gone down, I couldn't stop. There was no handrail, so nothing to hold on to. I just thought, ‘I've lost control’. I fell down to three or four more steps, fracturing my leg again and again. It was a multi-fracture. When I came to a stop, I looked down and my leg was in a slightly weird position, underneath my bottom. I thought ‘I don’t like that. My leg shouldn't be like that’, so I tried to straighten it up and that’s when the pain started’’.
Once Paul’s wife Lorna, 53, raised the alarm at the five-star De Sol Hotel and Spa reception, Paul was rushed to Santorini General Hospital in Karterados after the accident in September where x-rays revealed a series of fractures to his left thigh bone.
He explains: “All the multi-fractures were right at the top in the femur, the leg’s biggest bone, by the ball joint so it was very worrying. The fractures were so close to each other, there was a danger of the leg snapping. The only medication they had was paracetamol. I was screaming out all the time and most of the time I had my eyes shut because the pain was terrible.”
With no surgeons at Santorini hospital, Paul lay on a gurney in the hospital corridor for nine hours trying to arrange a private flight to the Greek capital of Athens where he could get the urgent care he needed. Then the following morning, after making it to Mediterranea hospital, Paul underwent surgery to have a metal rod inserted into the centre of the femur, secured by surgical screws at the top and bottom. Shockingly, Paul recalls coming-to whilst on the operating table.
“I remember coming out of the anaesthetic because I remember thinking ‘I can feel this and it's painful’. I could hear lots of banging and drilling going on but I couldn't get the words to say anything. I think when they went into the leg, the procedure was not as easy as they thought it was going to be. They only had so much time and I think there's a point where they can't give you any more anaesthetic, so maybe [as the anaesthetic wore off] they had to rush to finish the job off.”
Paul, who describes being left with a “messy” wound, spent the next two days in intensive care after badly haemorrhaging and needing three blood transfusions to replace the lost blood. He said: “For the first few days, there was so much blood loss, they were changing the sheets every day. A lot of people were coming in to look at the wound and they were all speaking Greek so I didn’t know what they were saying. I was semi-delirious a lot of the time because of the blood loss. It was a frightening time.”
After a fortnight in hospital, Paul - still suffering with low haemoglobin, otherwise known as anaemia - returned to the UK on a private plane, flying below the 30,000+ feet altitude reached by commercial airlines to lower the risk of him suffering a life-threatening blood clot, which can develop at high altitude exposure.
He then spent two days at London’s private Cleveland Clinic where he was monitored and given help to use crutches and climb stairs before returning home to Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where he slowly built up strength and learned to walk again. At the end of November, Paul faced a devastating setback when a bolt at the bottom of his leg rod snapped, causing the metal fixture to push downwards.
“The pain was tremendous,” recalls Paul. “I’d just started to feel like I was getting better. I was using just one crutch around the kitchen and had started to drive my car again. Then I woke up one morning in agony. I thought, ‘Why aren't the painkillers working?’.” Paul, who went through another 10 hour operation to repair the broken fixture, adds: “I’ve never had something like this happen to me before. It’s the worst injury I've ever had.”
Today, five months since his terrifying fall, following regular physiotherapy, hydrotherapy rehabilitation sessions plus daily resistance band exercises, Paul is now “off the crutches”. And despite suffering loss of feeling in his left knee and being “annoyed” that he can’t “dance on stage” yet, he feels “quite positive on most things” and can reflect on his ordeal with good humour.
“I'm accident prone. I’ve done so many stupid things over the years. Once in Australia, I slid off the side of the stage and dislodged two ribs. On an American tour, I was on a quad bike in Antigua, hit some sand dunes, fell forward then my own quad bike ran over my back, fracturing two ribs. I just can’t believe that when I finally do get the biggest break of my life, I was simply going down to breakfast in Santorini!”
Feeling “fighting fit and ready” for his upcoming nationwide tour, which combines “conversation and acoustic version songs”, Paul remembers being blighted in his youth by a stutter, which battered his confidence.
He says: “In the early days, especially when I was tired, it really started to show itself, so I was a little bit reluctant to speak, which made me quite shy. Back then, I could never have believed I’d be able to do a solo talking show like this and the funniest thing? I've discovered that I'm actually pretty good at it!”
Paul - who was a member of Streetband and Q-Tips in the 1970s before finding fame as a solo artist and becoming best known for tracks including Love of the Common People, Every Time You Go Away and Everything Must Change - will take to the stage next month with guitarist and close pal Jamie Moses for "a bit of a double act”. In a Q&A session at the end of each show, audience members will be invited to ask Paul “outrageous” questions.
When asked how he would respond if urged for his views on Gino D’Acampo, who in 1998 went to prison for two years after breaking into Paul’s London home and recently came under fire for bullying and sexually inappropriate comments - allegations the Italian TV presenter strongly denies - Paul replies: “I've only commented on it once, and that was on the Jeremy Vine show shortly after it happened. You know, I wish him well. I hope he comes out of this okay. We all make mistakes in our life and I got most of what was stolen, I got most of it back.”
Confirming that over the years he has run into D’Acampo, who stole multiple guitars worth £4,000 and a platinum record, Paul goes on: “Sometimes I’d go to ITV to be on Good Morning Britain or something like that and someone said, ‘Gino D’Acampo’s here’ but then I think they move people around so that we conveniently don't bump into each. But I have done a couple of times. I’d go, ‘oh, hi. How are you?’ Everything’s alright. I absolutely agree [with forgiveness].”
He married Irish-born Lorna who runs his business, in a London registry office last July, three years after proposing. The couple moved in together in December 2021, just under five years after Paul’s first wife Stacey passed away from brain cancer.
Finding love with Lorna, who was also widowed after tragically losing her husband of 27 years, says Paul, a “blessing”. I think I’m lucky and especially at my age because it doesn’t get any easier!
“We're very happy. We both lost partners at around about the same time. She lost her partner within a month of me losing Stacey, then it was about a year for both of us when we met. It was very slow. We just saw each other a few times, then it kind of slowly carried on from there”.
Asked if having a slightly younger wife keeps him youthful, Paul laughs: “Yeah, it could be. Let’s see! “Lorna tries to cajole me into skin treatments but they take too long. I think having a steady amount of fun is good.”
Although he believes “it’s bad luck” to talk too much about their relationship, Paul - who has three children Levi, 38, Layla, 30, and son Grady, 29 adds: “Lorna brings such positivity to my life. We always try to stay positive.” Once one of the UK’s biggest pop stars, Paul now lives a quiet life five miles from Luton - the town he was born. It’s a place he loves because he can “see the sky” and for someone who “hates attention”, lives under the radar - most of the time.
“I can still always get a table in a restaurant, which is the best thing,” says Paul. “If I can't get in, I say, ‘If you could just squeeze me in?’, then they ask my name and I say, Paul Young, then I find a table becomes available. That's about all I want [out of being famous]!”
A contestant on Celebrity Masterchef in 2006 and Hell’s Kitchen a year later Paul declares he still loves being in the kitchen. “Cooking is my hobby,” he says. “I find food fascinating. I'm a bit of a food groupie.”
But he draws the line at growing the actual produce. “I had a go at some herbs a little while ago, but I come and go too much, so I can't tend them. I get so far, then I go away and come back and they’ve either grown like wildfire or died. It's too hard.”
After his UK show finishes in early June, Paul will head to America to tour with Australian-American singer Rick Springfield, which he’s gearing himself for by hiring a personal trainer. He says: “I’ve got a fitness girl coming in to make sure I'm able to get around. When I've got days off, and whenever I get back, I'll be training. I’m just trying to do as much as I can.”
* Paul Young’s UK tour From No Parlez To Secret Of Association begins on April 1, For tickets go to paul-young.com
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