Then it all began falling apart. A disastrous attempt to enhance her looks, when she reacted badly to collagen injections, left her with the notorious “trout pout”. Then she broke a rib and punctured a lung, supposedly during a bout of “vigorous sex”. She landed in hospital, where she contracted MSSA, a variant of the devastating hospital superbug MRSA.
Two years on she is still struggling. “I walk with difficulty,” she says flatly. “I am still in a lot of pain despite the painkillers. My legs are the problem: I don’t have full feeling and probably won’t get that back. It attacks my balance. If I close my eyes I fall over. I don’t know if my toes are pointing up or down.”
She believes that medical staff who treated her injuries may have been responsible for her contracting the superbug and is suing the Chelsea and Westminster hospital. But she is every bit as angry at Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary. Ash is incensed that the government has not done more to improve hygiene in hospitals and is launching a range of cleansing products to reduce the spread of disease.
Recent diary stories have trilled the same tune: Ash, 46, has made a miraculous recovery and once more looks “stunning”. Alas she doesn’t, not compared to how she once looked. But there is, she insists, hope: “There has been progress. I’ve been in a wheelchair, on crutches, sticks, now nothing, so I’m pleased.”
At the time of the initial incident there were ugly rumours that her husband might be responsible for her injuries, something she had always denied. When Ash’s sister accused the former Arsenal striker of being a wife beater, Ash broke off contact — with sis.
Advertisement
And she is full of wifely eulogies: “My husband has been a saint,” she insists. “I hate the word ‘rock’, because it smacks of Paul Burrell, but he has been one. He says he doesn’t mind at all, but it must be a shock for him. I have worked since I was 15 but my income has gone right down. My role is down to trying to be a good mother.”
How hard is it, knowing so many people think it is your husband’s fault? “Not difficult, because I know it is not true.”
She must, I suggest, spend every moment remembering the day before her life imploded in April 2004. “I can’t really remember what I was like before,” she says casting down. “And I don’t know where I’m going. I am trying to find something useful to do with my life.”
She is campaigning for cleaner hospitals and — not to let a marketing opportunity go by — has formed a company, Matron, to distribute new anti-bacterial products. “I feel angry,” she says sharply. “People will get infected today and die; others will get infected tomorrow. Any government estimates for deaths from superbugs you can double: elderly people are said to have died from pneumonia, but hospitals don’t record that the lung infection was picked up in hospital.
“Doctors shrug and say, ‘Oh well, the old dear had a good life’.” And, as Ash points out, such illnesses are “no respecters of money: I was in a private hospital”.
Advertisement
As the most high-profile person to be hit by a superbug she has attracted attention from both the paparazzi and the public — and learnt more about hospital standards than she would have dreamt possible. “It’s all about money: anything the government can get away with it will. Cutting corners on people’s health should be unacceptable. When you are sick your immune system is low, but people pick up fatal infections because someone hasn’t bothered to wash their hands.”
It sounds shocking. “And the consultants are the worst,” smiles Ash ruefully. However, the greatest problem is the lack of matrons, despite Labour suggesting it would bring them back: “No one is in charge of wards,” says Ash.
Ash claims she saw how filthy her hospital was: “I bent down to pick something up and saw cotton wool stuck to the table with congealed blood. Every day in intensive care I watched a cleaner wander in with a dirty mop; each time he left this pool of dried blood.” My learned friends would point out Ash’s legal action against the Chelsea and Westminster hospital is continuing, so it might dispute such allegations.
She lays the blame with the health secretary, however: “Hewitt wonders why she was booed (at the Royal College of Nursing conference) but she just doesn’t listen. I have been in touch with the shadow Conservative health secretary. I want to take on the government directly.”
She is writing a book about her experiences, further laying into hospital mismanagement: “I have been through so many different emotions: hope, anger, despair. My life has completely changed: it is absolutely devastating and very painful. If I thought too hard about it, I would go mad.”
Advertisement
The inspiration for Matron came while lying in hospital noticing nurses were reluctant to use the alcohol cleaning gel provided as it dried out their hands; Ash’s potions, she insists, have no such drawbacks. But despite her worthy works, it does not need saying that Ash feels left behind. Since her illness she has only received radio work: “People can’t see you,” she says matter-of-factly.
Notwithstanding a steeliness that is more forgivable than appealing, her traumas have brought out a dark humour. I ask what she will be doing in 20 years and she replies: “Apart from appearing on UKTV Gold I have no idea. I would love to say I will return to work, but I just don’t know.”
So much has happened to Ash, it is hardly surprising she has turned rather hard. Yet to her credit she can see good in people, even the media. Talking about those cruel trout-pout jibes, she says: “I suppose the one positive is now something worse has happened to me people are kinder about that.”