Lovingly cradled by Diana as he clung to life... the baby boy who survived to tell the tale of an unbreakable bond that still leaves him feeling blessed
THERE aren’t many 24-year-olds who enjoy looking at their baby pictures, fewer still who show them off to friends. But James Whetton has good reason to boast about one photograph – as it shows him being cradled in the arms of Princess Diana.
Even though he was only six days old and desperately ill when the world’s most famous woman took him in her arms during a visit to the hospital he was in, James describes it as ‘one of the proudest moments of my life’.
Now a strapping 6ft-tall plasterer, he today speaks for the first time about his battle for survival, his recovery and that famous photograph.
James was delivered by caesarean section on January 2, 1996, at Southend Hospital in Essex.
Within moments of him taking his first breath, medical staff realised there was a serious problem and transferred him to intensive care.
Doctors discovered he had a dangerously fast heartbeat – reaching 275 beats per minute at one stage – as well as fluid on the lungs and a chest infection. With his condition worsening, James was immediately taken by ambulance to the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, the UK’s largest specialist medical centre for heart and lung conditions.
At the time, Diana made private visits to the hospital where her then lover, surgeon Hasnat Khan, worked to comfort the sick and dying.
James recalled: ‘I was born with an enlarged heart. In the ambulance it stopped and I “died”. It was very touch-and-go. At one point, I had to be put into an induced coma.’
HIS mother Anne Pearce, then a 21-year-old TV researcher, and her parents, Brian and Rosemary, were sitting by his cot on the children’s ward when Diana arrived, alone and unannounced. After pausing at each bedside, she lingered longer when she reached James. ‘There must have been something about me,’ he said. ‘I was the youngest on the ward and born with jet-black hair.
‘She said to my mum that I had lovely hair and asked what my name was. She then said, “Can I pick him up?” ’
It was at that moment that Diana gently lifted the 6lb 1oz child from his cot – carefully, so as not to disturb the wires monitoring his condition – and gazed down at him.
‘From what my mum said, she truly cared,’ said James. ‘She was there all day. It wasn’t just for a picture. The photograph was taken by my grandfather, Brian.
‘He said she was lovely and acted like a normal person. She was just there to help others.
‘She wanted to send a little bit of hope to people who were at their lowest.
‘It gave a lot of families comfort when she turned up – a belief that everything was going to be OK. She lifted everyone’s spirits.
‘I was the only baby she picked up – the golden arms of Diana held me. She was so heartwarming, so maybe that’s what helped me to keep on fighting. She may have passed on a little bit of her love and got me through it, who knows?’
James’s condition improved sufficiently for doctors to allow him to go home to the new family house in Hockley, Essex, which Anne and her salesman partner Stuart Whetton, just 23, had bought in anticipation of James’s arrival. James battled further health problems as a toddler but made a full recovery by the age of three.
‘ My hear t pr o bl e ms a r e behind me,’ he said. ‘It sorted itself out. Miraculously. I haven’t had any health issues since.’
He was t ol d about his Royal encounter when he was ten, but it wasn’t until secondary school that he realised its significance. ‘I knew for some reason this wonderful lady held me and it made it into the newspaper,’ he explained. ‘I knew she was a princess but it was only when I was 14 that I started reading about her and what she had done. ‘Teachers would mention her and it was a fun fact I could bring up – but really it was more than that. I did feel special.’ Such is the bond that he keeps the picture on his phone so he can have it close by, adding: ‘Of course I’ve got to carry it around with me. I show people on the odd occasion as it’s quite something. It’s something no one else has. It captures a special moment in time that people don’t usually get.
‘I would have liked to have met her as a grown-up. I wish we could have had a conversation and I could have asked her why she came to Maybe she passed on a bit of love and got me through, who knows? see us [sick children] that day and why she picked me up.
‘It’s a nice feeling to know that not only did a princess hold you, but a princess who was the best of them all. It’s surreal. I was just a little baby from Essex. I do feel like I have a bond with her as she was holding me at the same point my mum was – practically as soon as I was born. She was one of the first people to see me as not many were allowed into the hospital.’
He admits, however, that the image carries bittersweet connotations for his family.
‘It was a traumatic time for my parents. It’s still quite emotional looking at that picture for my mum as I did nearly die.
‘Plus, there’s two people in that photo and only one of us is alive.’
James survived a second brush with death as a teenager when he was involved in a road crash.
‘ I often think I’m lucky to be alive,’ he said.
‘I was on a motorbike when I was 16 and a car crashed into the bike. I broke my femur when the bike slammed on top of me.
‘The car hit me side-on. If it had hit my body rather than the bike, I would have died.
‘I was lying in the hospital think
ing that this is the second time now I’ve been close to dying.’
His parents later split and, after his father remarried, James’s halfbrother was born with similar medical complications five years ago. ‘That’s when I really experienced what my parents must have gone through,’ he said. ‘It was terrifying.’
Just 20 months after holding little James in her arms, Diana was killed in the Paris crash that also claimed the lives of her new lover Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul.
She had previously said she made the trips to the Brompton at least three times a week and spent up to four hours with patients, holding their hands and talking to them.
‘Some will live and some won’t, but they all need to be loved while they are here,’ she explained. ‘I try to be there for them. I really love helping. I seem to draw strength from them.’
Diana met Dr Khan when she watched two heart operations at the hospital and the pair went on to have a discreet, two-year relationship that ended just weeks before she died. She referred to him as ‘Mr Wonderful’ and friends described him as the love of her life.
Diana reportedly considered converting to Islam so that they could marry and their relationship was certainly serious enough for his family to meet her during her 1996 visit to Pakistan, when she wore the traditional shalwar kameez – loosefitting trousers paired with a flowing dress – out of respect to their faith. Dr Khan previously told The Mail on Sunday that it was the ‘nonprogression’ of their relationship that prompted Diana to end it early in the summer of 1997.
James explained that he thinks it was Dr Khan who treated him ‘as he was overseeing all of the heart treatment at the time. He was the specialist on the ward’.
Now the little boy in the picture, who still lives in Essex and spends his spare time watching Liverpool FC and going out with friends, dreams of a family of his own with his live-in girlfriend Molly Pinnington, a 23-year-old worker at Royal Bank of Scotland.
And he admits to excitement at the prospect of one day showing the famous photograph to his own children. ‘I’d love to tell them all about Diana, I want to be part of keeping her memory alive.’