Illness nearly killed me but I thought: I can't die.. I need to finish new song

Last man standing from the original line-up determined to keep band alive

- RICK FULTON

GRAEME Clark is the last man standing of the original Wet Wet Wet line-up. But this year he nearly fell off his perch when he caught pneumonia and Covid and was told he could die.

His brush with death – triggered, he thinks, by a motorway crash – has re-energised his drive for ensuring the Wets’ legacy continues with tours and new music.

Graeme, 58, the bass player and main songwriter of the band, was hospitalised in March with pneumonia and put on oxygen.

He said: “Five days in, and struggling to breathe, the doctors said I wasn’t responding to the antibiotics and if the next batch of medication didn’t work they would be putting me into a coma and on to a breathing machine in intensive care.

“I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t want to go on that’. But I was told if I didn’t, and deteriorated, and was then put on the machine, I would die.”

Luckily, the meds started working and despite catching Covid in hospital he was home 10 days later.

However, it has taken him four months to recuperate. Graeme said: “I feel great now but it was scary.

“I was halfway through a new song, It’s Obvious, and thinking, ‘I can’t die yet, I need to finish that song’.

“I was in a ward with guys in their late 70s. I was the youngest there but I couldn’t move.

“They were asking how I was. I said, ‘I’m f****** terrible – I can’t even get out of bed to go to the toilet’.”

Graeme lives near Croydon, south London, with wife Beverley.

He thinks a motorway crash six days before he felt unwell could have triggered his ill health.

He said: “Someone crashed into the back of me on the motorway and I was flung forward.