A North-East mother-of-two was the toast of her ten brothers and sisters at the 40th birthday party she feared she would never see.

Four years ago, doctors gave June Moses a ten per cent chance of surviving a haemorrhage at the base of her brain.

It struck without warning the day after she was given the all-clear after painful treatment for skin cancer on her right hand.

Mrs Moses was taken to Middlesbrough General Hospital where doctors told her she would die without immediate surgery.

But they warned her she might die on the operating table or be left with brain damage.

Now fully recovered, Mrs Moses, of Burn Place, Willington, County Durham, is determined to prove that life really does begin at 40.

Her large and loving family gathered at a nearby pub for the first time for years on Saturday night as she celebrated just being alive.

Mrs Moses said: "Doctors told me it was a miracle I got better. Somebody was looking down on me.

"It hit me out of the blue. It was like an explosion in my head. Having cancer had been enough of a fright, but this was much worse."

Mrs Moses recovered with the support of her husband Chris, a 39-year-old lorry driver, and their two sons Darren, 16, and David, twelve.

The youngest of her five sisters, 34-year-old Sharlene Gillanders, never doubted she would make it.

She said: "I knew we wouldn't lose her. She is the centre of our family. She keeps us all together."

Until their deaths, Mrs Moses cared for her parents, Annabell and Alan, who brought up 13 children on the Hall Lane Estate, in Willington.

Her brother Dennis, who would have been 48 this year, died from cancer in 1984, and another, Eric, was killed in a car crash in 1987 when he was 39. Her other brothers and sisters are Alan, 53, Norma Askew, 50, Raymond, 46, David, 44, Tony, 43, Philip, 41, Ann Carr, 38, Marjorie Towland, 37, and Malcolm, 36. All live in Willington except Malcolm, who lives in Kelloe.