‘4-hour heart op nearly killed me’: James Major’s ex

SIR John Major’s former daughter-inlaw, Emma Noble, who underwent heart surgery at the age of 46, reveals she nearly died during the operation three months ago.

After collapsing in January, the statuesque blonde, who was once married to the ex-PM’s son James, was rushed to Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire for a twohour op that turned into a four-hour ordeal.

‘Astonishingly they found I had congenital heart disease and that it had always been there,’ she tells me. ‘It was quite a shock. I had absolutely no idea.’ Emma made her first public outing since the surgery to the Asian Awards in Park Lane this weekend. ‘This is a big thing for me, I haven’t been out for months. I nearly died; it’s been very frightening.’ By bizarre coincidence, James Major also suffers from a heart condition. He had a pacemaker fitted to correct an irregular heartbeat when he was just 24 in 1999. Emma was best known for her role as a hostess on the TV game show The Price Is Right when she met James. They got engaged three months later and married in the Palace of Westminster in 1999 in a lavish ceremony that earned them £400,000 from Hello! magazine. The couple had a son, Harry. However, the union ended in an acrimonious divorce in 2003.

In 2007, Emma spoke about the pressures of bringing up her autistic son as a single parent.

The following year, she claimed Sir John and Lady Major took little interest in their grandchild, failing even to send him a birthday card. The allegations were rejected as ‘wholly false and hurtful’ by James.

Now married to businessman Conrad Baker, with whom she has another son, the couple are trying to put their ordeal behind them.

‘I’ve always liked being very social but this sort of thing focuses you on what’s important in life,’ says Emma.

‘Conrad has been the best husband ever and looked after me through thick and thin. No man has ever done that before.’