The Guardian: Can The NHS Top The Charts?
Can a team of pop stars, doctors and nurses help the NHS top the charts?
Toyah Willcox says she was lucky. Back in the day, they used to lop off dodgy legs like hers. But her mother – and the NHS – came to the rescue. The musician and actor was born with a twisted spine, no hip sockets, clawed feet, a clubbed right foot and one leg two inches shorter than the other. “It was a time when the way you dealt with a problem was to remove it, so my mother fought for my leg. My mother saved my leg.”
Twice a day, she was given intensive physio by her mother, and every six months she had corrective surgery. Willcox flexes her impressive biceps. “See, I hold myself through my own muscle strength. That is why I’m built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m really muscular because my mother had to teach me how to straighten my own spine. It wasn’t good for my relationship with her because she was dictatorial about it, but in the end I was able to disguise what I had. I always wore boots and my raise was hidden in them.” At 51, she had an operation to make her legs the same length.
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