Votes fury as Linford niece wins glam title

The Miss England contest was plunged into a voting row last night after it emerged the winner – Linford Christie’s niece Rachel – won just NINE public votes.

The 20-year-old heptathlete won the title after a panel of six judges deemed her the best of 15 shortlisted beauty queens.

Yet their decision seemed at odds with the public, who each shelled out £1 to vote for their favourite in a poll. In that vote, compiled by a premium rate phone line on Miss England’s official website, Rachel finished only 49th out of the 54 original contestants after securing just her handful of the 10,000 registered votes.

The public’s most popular choice was Miss Oxfordshire Zoiey Smale, who secured 2,013 votes. Yet she failed to even make the top three when the panel made their final selection at a central London hotel on Monday night. Lance Cpl Katrina Hodge – the judges’ runner-up – came 18th in the public poll with 128.

Last night competition spokesman Dee Carpenter said: “The judges know best as they met and talked to the finalists. The public hadn’t met the girls.”

But one contestant, who asked not to be named, questioned the “odd” judges’ decision. She said: “It seems very odd that the overall winner, chosen by the judges, won so few public votes. “The competition is far more than just a beauty contest, but it looks like the judges were totally out of touch with the public.

“I feel sorry for the members of the public who bothered to vote. Their opinions have been ignored.” Ms Smale said: “I felt quite let down as did all the girls that I spoke to because the ranking three didn’t win any of the awards that were available for our hard work in the run-up to the finals.

“There were so many things we had to do. Yet none of it matters at the end of the day. The public vote was supposed to be acting as one of the judges’ decisions. It was a big deal to me, but on the night it felt like it meant nothing.”

Miss England is chosen over a period of weeks leading up to the two-day final.

The judges, who included ex-model Caprice, select from a shortlist of 15 girls. To reach the final, girls must win award categories which include Best Smile, the Fresh Modelesque Award, and England’s Got Talent.

The public poll is held over four weeks and the girl with the most votes enters the final as winner of Miss Public Vote. Seven other finalists are selected by contest judges.

Rachel, also on course to appear at the 2012 Olympics, won the Helen E Cosmetics award to reach the final. She told the judges: “I want to be successful in whatever I choose to do in life.”

Rachel’s dad Russell – the brother of British sprinting legend Linford – was stabbed to death when the beauty was only eight.

Sexy squaddie Katrina, 21, beat thousands of entrants to reach the competition’s final stages. The brunette, in the Royal Anglian Regiment, said: “Everybody calls me Combat Barbie. I’m proof you don’t have to be butch to join the forces.”

‘Go back to your disease-ridden country!’ What the French said to British schoolchildren with swine flu

 by Dennis Rice and Peter Allen.

British schoolchildren with swine flu were treated like ‘dangerous criminals’ before being kicked out of France. The 14-year-olds and their teachers were forced to wear surgical masks and shoes while being treated by medics in anti-contamination suits. They were sworn at by local people and told to ‘go home to your disease-ridden country’.

‘We were treated appallingly,’ said a member of the party from Lea Manor High School, in Luton. ‘It was as if we were dangerous criminals. The French wanted us back across the Channel as quickly as possible. It was horrendous.’

News of the teenagers’ ordeal came as:

Experts said serious problems in production of a new swine flu vaccine mean many vulnerable people – especially pensioners – may not receive it for months;

Another person died from the virus, bringing the death toll in Britain to 31;

GlaxoSmithKline, which makes flu drugs, was accused of profiteering after announcing profits of £2.1billion – up 10 per cent since the outbreak began;

A survey showed that doctors and nurses have little confidence in the NHS to manage the crisis;

A national swine flu service aiming to speed up access to drugs for thousands of infected people goes live.

Chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson is expected today to announce a substantial rise in swine flu cases.

The Lea Manor school party had arrived at a chateau near Bayeux, Normandy, on Saturday. Some of the 30 pupils – paying £150 each for the trip – and their teachers began showing flu symptoms and six were diagnosed positive by local doctors.

On Sunday doctors and other medical staff cordoned off the chateau before putting on white contamination suits to treat the party.

One girl said: ‘I went to borrow a hairdryer from my friend when, all of sudden, people with masks and suits were telling her roommate to go with them. It looked like a scene out of ET.

‘They were wearing white suits with funny blue shoes and masks and carrying suitcases. Someone said they looked like forensic people.

‘The roommate was screaming for her friend, getting very upset. She was crying. I was really scared. It was happening really quickly.’

Early on Monday the French authorities ordered the whole party on to a coach back to Calais – an eight-hour journey in sweltering heat, with all the curtains closed. They were then put on a London-bound Eurostar train.

The pupil said: ‘We were given five minutes to pack and leave. We didn’t even have time to go to the loo. Some girls were still wearing swimming costumes under their clothes on the trip back. ‘We were told to close the curtains on the bus because we were wearing masks and the French would have been shocked. We were even chased by French people at a service station. They were shouting at our teachers because they’d seen our masks.’

Four pupils and two teachers were confirmed as having swine flu. One teacher was too sick to travel and remains in Normandy.

Last night a parent at the 1,100-pupil school said: ‘I gather there was complete chaos. No one stood up to the French even though they reduced the children to tears. ‘We had a confirmed case of swine flu at the school earlier this month, which begs the question of why they were sent abroad.’

Headmistress Christine Lenihan posted a brief statement on the school website, saying: ‘In the last few days a small number of our students became unwell during a school trip to Normandy which unfortunately necessitated an earlier return than had been planned.’

France has so far had no swine flu deaths while Britain is the worst-hit country in Europe and has the fourth-worst epidemic in the world. Latest figures show there have been fewer than 800 cases in France, compared with around 10,000 in Britain.

France has bought 94 million doses of flu vaccine but officials say the threat is limited and Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot has said the severity of the virus remains ‘moderate’.

Despite this, French authorities have been issuing increasingly dramatic warnings about the situation in the UK.

There is rising concern about allowing some 120,000 schoolchildren, French and British, to make the traditional annual cross-Channel journeys for exchange trips or to study at summer language schools.

A number of other British pupils with swine flu have been placed in quarantine near Paris, amid complaints that officials were behaving ‘as if it is the plague’.

Some 47 youngsters, most of them Spanish but including some from England, were being kept at La Salle Saint-Nicolas Catholic school in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Headmaster Henri Welschinger said: ‘They’re French language students aged 15 to 18. None are in a worrying condition. People are behaving as if it is the plague, but it’s only the flu.’

As in Normandy, the local council in Issy has handed out surgical masks to some 150 visiting teenagers, including Russians and Americans.

Blair bank targeted in £8.5bn FSA probe

 The bank where Tony Blair is an adviser is the target of an unprecedented probe involving billions of pounds of customers’ funds, the Daily Mail can disclose.

 JP Morgan Chase, whose chief executive Jamie Dimon last year recruited the former prime minister as an adviser, is being investigated by the City’s watchdog, the Financial Services Authority for allegedly failing to keep track of £8.5billion of clients’ money.

 The FSA has called in a top firm of accountants to examine the bank’s London activities after evidence emerged that JP Morgan had mixed customers’ funds with its own.

 Banks are meant to maintain a strict segregation of their own money from that which is held on behalf of clients. But JP Morgan managers in London discovered last month that client and bank money used for trading futures and options – a way of speculating on movements in currencies, share prices and commodities – had apparently been put into a single pool.

They raised the alarm and notified the FSA. The scale of case is unprecedented, say City insiders. The FSA has penalised small firms in the past for mixing funds owned by clients and the banks themselves. But this is thought to be the first case involving such a large household name.

 JP Morgan Chase faces the threat of an unlimited fine if the watchdog decides enforcement action is necessary.

 News of the FSA investigation will come as a huge embarrassment for the bank, which is valued on Wall Street at £100billion.

It is thought that the JP Morgan Chase problem dates back to late 2002. This followed the takeover of JP Morgan by Chase Manhattan two years earlier.

 Assets were not segregated to protect clients as FSA rules demand, insiders believe. When the issue first came to light last month and the FSA was told, the authority called in specialists from leading accountancy firm KPMG to investigate.

 The cost of the probe – known as a section 166 review – will be met by the bank. Sources say that KPMG’s team of investigators has been working at JP Morgan Chase’s offices on London Wall in the City, combing through records and e-mails and interviewing staff.

 Bank employees who were involved in handling client funds in 2002 as well as those still responsible have been questioned.

 The KPMG team has been asked to find out what checks, if any, were made to ensure that clients’ money has been kept safe and segregated.

 The accountants have also been asked to calculate if clients lost out because they were not paid any interest they might have been due. Senior figures at the bank could be reprimanded or even barred from working in the City if the FSA concludes that they were slack in setting up systems for separating customers’ funds.

 The accountants have been asked to deliver their preliminary findings to the FSA by the end of this month. A final report is due by the end of September. These reports will not be made public – unless the FSA subsequently decides that the bank should be punished.

 JP Morgan Chase has been regarded as one of the more robust of the banks to emerge from last year’s meltdown in the global financial system. Among the six largest U.S. banks, it is the only one to have stayed consistently in the black since the recession began in 2007. But it still took £15billion last year under the U.S. government’s programme to prop up the financial system.

 The money has since been repaid.

 Last month, the bank reported quarterly earnings of £1.64billion, which was a major factor in spurring the recovery in its shares and in Wall Street prices as a whole. A report last week showed that last year, the firm paid bonuses of £600,000 ($1m) or more to 1,626 employees. Of those, more than 200 received at least £1.8m. The top four earners received a total of nearly £45million between them.

 JP Morgan Chase said: ‘We have no comment.’ The FSA said: ‘We wouldn’t comment on whether we are doing an investigation.’ KPMG also declined to comment.

A real bolt from the blue: The moment 300,000 volt lightning tore open night

 by Dennis Rice.

This spectacular image shows the awesome moment when a 300,000 volt bolt of lightning tore open the night sky.

Briton Vince Narduzzo was enjoying a glass of red wine in the garden of his second home in France when blasts of thunder shattered the evening calm.

The 49-year-old from Hertfordshire dashed inside to grab a camera, in time to capture the progress of one of the streaks of lightning over the hamlet in Charente Maratime, near La Rochelle.

‘I was shaking from sheer awe at it – then it occurred to me that the lighting bolt was so close to me that it might have been my last ever picture,’ he said.

In his photograph the branches on the lightning bolt appear thinner. In fact, they are simply less bright. The digital camera was unable to cope with the brightness of the main streak and turned it into a thick blurry line.

Lightning is the discharge of electricity from clouds. A bolt can travel at speeds of 130,000mph and – for a few millionths of a second – it produces one million, million watts of power. It can heat up the surrounding air to 55,000f – five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. It is triggered when electrical charges build up in storm clouds.

Scientists are unsure what causes this build-up but believe it may be caused by the movement of ice crystals. Once the charge is powerful enough, an invisible flow of electrons flows from the cloud to the ground in a zig-zag pattern.

As it approaches the ground, positively charged particles are attracted upwards. It is this current, called the return stroke, that appears as a bright flash.

Heat from lightning causes the air around it to expand rapidly – creating a dramatic crash of thunder.

The rape of Africa – ‘These academies will bleed our continent dry of talent’

 by Matt Lawton and Dennis Rice.

For the kids who are plucked from the South African townships and provided with accommodation, an education, first-class coaching and a mentor in the form of an English Premier League star, the Africa Soccer Developments academy is the stuff of dreams.

A chance to escape abject poverty; a chance to rescue their families, too. A chance, even, to follow in the footsteps of Benni McCarthy and lift the European Cup.

But for Ian Wright and the Premier League players who have chosen to invest in a project that was set up in Cape Town in April, it’s not a bad deal either. It’s a chance, it would seem, to make a few quid. A modest risk for a Premier League footballer, with the chance of a big return.

Mike Steptoe, a Leicester businessman and the academy’s founder, refused to reveal the figures involved on Monday, but the potential profits are enormous. It might cost somewhere in the region of £80,000 to develop a youngster they take on at 14, but he could then command a transfer fee running into millions when he is sold to a European club at 18.

For the investor, the deal is a simple one. Cover the cost of the player’s time at the academy and get 40 per cent of the first transfer in return, followed by 10 per cent of any sell-on transfer.

When Brad Friedel set up an academy in his native Ohio, Aston Villa’s goalkeeper simply wanted to give something back. Like the Cape Town academy it is free for the students to attend — at a cost of around $35,000 a year — but Friedel made a point of making it a nonprofit organisation.

 ‘The game of youth soccer has gotten to a point where there are people in this business to make money,’ said Craig Umland, the academy’s chief operating officer. ‘This is about Brad giving back to a game that gave him so much.’

In Cape Town, however, while the cash that is injected into the project by Wright, Julio Arca, Stephen Warnock, Alex Song, Danny Collins, Mamady Sidibe and Mart Poom could, indeed change lives. It could enrich their lives, too. Players making money out of younger players.

Jerome Anderson, the London-based football agent who represents Wright, Warnock and Poom, also has an involvement in the project. But that has not stopped the chief executive of the South African FA branding the project as immoral. Raymond Hack told Sportsmail that the academy is a clear breach of regulations introduced earlier this year that demand all academies in South Africa be endorsed by SAFA.

But for Hack it is more than that. It is, in his opinion, exploitation of an untapped market in an underdeveloped country that is hoping to use the World Cup as a springboard to modernise its football structure.

‘You can’t go into a country, rape the country and then run away,’ said Hack, speaking from a Cairo conference looking at ways of tackling the problem of European clubs poaching young African talent.

‘You are not even putting anything back into that country. ‘I have never heard of this academy and they have certainly not been endorsed by SAFA. They can’t come in without having the sanction or an endorsement from the national association and the sports department or the education department. It’s against new regulations which were introduced last year.’

The new regulations came last year after a string of soccer schools were suddenly opened across South Africa by individuals apparently looking to cash in on the country hosting the 2010 World Cup.

Hack continued: ‘We will take steps to investigate very, very strongly. You cannot have people coming into your country, investing in your talent, even if the intentions are 100 per cent good. There is a procedure and a protocol which needs to be followed. ‘Because you’ve got money does not mean that you can come in and invest in the country and decide what you’re going to take and what you’re not going to take.’

Much of this is being refuted by Steptoe and his business partners, who along with the academy formed Cape United FC, to which all the players are registered.

Shaun Ascough, the academy’s commercial manager, said that the school had already recruited 20 boys and that four more were joining next week from Cameroon after being recruited by Song. In the next few weeks, Steptoe said there would be a trial for another 1,000 boys.

The academy was opened in April by Wright and George Eastham OBE, a non-playing member of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning squad. Eastham will operate as the academy’s chief scout.

Ascough, a wealthy estate agent who emigrated to Cape Town from the UK five years ago, said: ‘There is obviously a business angle to this, but that is not the number one reason why I’m involved and it’s not the number one reason why Ian Wright is involved, either.’

Steptoe, a director with the Leicester Riders basketball team, owns a 50 per cent shareholding in the Jersey-registered company. He also insists the academy was set up for ‘altruistic reasons’. ‘This is not about making money,’ he said. ‘This is about giving something back and what Mr Hack is saying is so unfair.’

On Monday, Sportsmail spoke to one organisation that was approached by Steptoe two years ago. He wanted them to invest and presented the academy purely as a commercial venture.

In an email to Sportsmail, Steptoe did explain how it all works for the likes of Wright and Warnock. ‘Each client chooses the boys that they wish to mentor and they have a 40 per cent interest in the first transfer,’ he said. ‘Some clients have an interest in one student per year and others have an interest in three students per year over the next four years. The minimum interest is four students over a four-year period.’

Despite all the talk of ‘giving something back’, a website set up to attract further funding for the academy leaves little doubt as to the commercial nature of the enterprise. Not least in a special section entitled ‘The Transfer Market’. It writes of ‘an excellent package of services to capitalise on this opportunity’.

Next to a photograph of club ambassador Wright, it further states: ‘Clients can engage our services to source, develop and place the next generation of professional footballers. Alternatively, we can develop talent identified and introduced by you.’

On Monday, Anderson denied any knowledge of the fact that his players would receive 40 per cent of a transfer fee, insisting there was ‘no money-making involved’. He also said the project had received the blessing of SAFA’ s Phil Masinga, but Hack countered that Masinga is an ambassador for the 2010 World Cup but not a SAFA representative.

‘I invested some money,’ said Anderson. ‘I believe in the project and at some stage in the future, when the lad is 18, maybe we’ll be allowed to sell that player on for the club.’

Steptoe made the same point about former Leeds striker Masinga, although he did then also reveal that SAFA executive committee member Vernon Seymour attended the opening on April 3.

On Monday Colin Gie, the academy’s CEO and Quinton Fortune’s former agent, contacted Hack for the first time. ‘I’ve just had a call from him,’ Hack told Sportsmail. ‘He tried to tell me it’s not an academy but a football school. That still sounds like an academy to me and they have not made an application to SAFA.’

None of the Premier League players involved were available for comment last night. Despite speaking extensively with his agent, Sportsmail was unable to contact Wright.

By Dennis Rice
Last updated at 10:57 PM on 18th September 2009

Top chef Heston Blumenthal is facing legal action from victims of the food poisoning epidemic at his world-renowned Fat Duck restaurant earlier this year.

More than 500 diners were taken ill with Norovirus after eating contaminated oysters at the Berkshire restaurant, which has three Michelin stars.

Many are furious that Mr Blumenthal – known to millions for his TV shows and outlandish recipes such as snail porridge – has refused to pay a penny in compensation, even though a report pointed to poor food preparation and criticised the restaurant for taking too long to notify the Health Protection Agency.

Solicitors Hill Dickinson confirmed yesterday that they are acting for boxing promoter Frank Warren and ‘a number of other high-profile figures’.

Television presenter Jim Rosenthal has instructed a different legal firm to seek damages against the 43-year-old chef over what he called his ‘pathetic response’.

The HPA investigation into the outbreak of the ‘winter vomiting bug’, which led to the restaurant being closed for two weeks, found oysters contaminated with human sewage and that razor clams had been inappropriately handled or prepared.

Victims were further angered last week to receive an email from Mr Blumenthal about the HPA report, which they say seemed to be trying to shift the blame from the restaurant in Bray.

Part of it said: ‘We are glad that the winter flu bug Norovirus has indeed been identified as the cause’.

Mr Rosenthal, who became ill with his wife Chrissie and two friends after dining at the Fat Duck in February said: ‘He has basically attempted to re-write the HPA report and its conclusions in his favour. 

‘It is pathetic and a complete PR disaster. There isn’t even a hint of apology.’

Mr Warren said: ‘At first I was extremely sympathetic to Heston Blumenthal, but the way this has been mishandled beggars belief.

‘I could not believe what I was reading in this email – it was like we had been sent different reports.

‘I am taking them to court and a lot of other people are too. A simple apology might have ended all this a long time ago.’

Debra Darke, a deputy headteacher from Ilfracombe, Devon, spent £700 on a birthday dinner before she and her husband fell violently ill.

She has not even been refunded the cost of their meal.

She said last night: ‘The message in the email is that it was just one of those viruses and not the responsibility of the restaurant.’

Greg Plunkett of Hill Dickinson said more diners were joining their lawsuit all the time.

He said: ‘We are in discussions with the Fat Duck’s insurance company but we cannot rule court action.’

The HPA said: ‘The report clearly states that there were failures in food preparation.

‘To dismiss the cause of the outbreak as being the virus itself is quite inaccurate.’

Mr Blumenthal’s spokesman said: ‘We are reviewing the report, which we only received on September 10, and won’t comment until we have completed that review.’

ABOVE: Kirsty Jane Fussell, who set up the Facebook site

A FACEBOOK page has been set up by airport staff, poking fun at fliers’ saucy secrets – like sex toys in their luggage.

The search-and-tell group numbers more than 600 workers at Britain’s biggest airport operator BAA.

And they also poke fun at male passengers’ who carry women’s underwear in their bags – and customers who are so smelly that “you wanna faint”.

Set up by Stansted security worker Kirsty Jane Fussell – who refers to herself as a “bomb spotter extraordinaire” – the group is “open to anyone (un)fortunate enough to work at a BAA airport”.

BAA owns Heathrow, Gatwick, Stan-sted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Southampton and Aberdeen airports and Kirsty says: “Aren’t we all so lucky – meeting all these lovely passengers every day.”

She then says the site is for all those who have had to deal with:

- Idiots who do not think metal (i.e. gold or silver) will set off our AMD (airport metal detector).

- Searching a man’s bag and finding women’s underwear – or sex toys.

- Parents with crazy kids and you think if it was me I would have gotten a slap.

- Passengers who have no sense of personal hygiene.

- Passengers who have lost their passports then tell you they have found them one minute later.

- Finding sex toys, porno, handcuffs and lubricants.

- “Crazy ass” passengers who come through the archway “just to flash us”.

Other gripes listed are people who think they are exempt from taking their trainers off just because they are not shoes; passengers who give you a death look when you ask for their shoes – and “those with enough liquid to swim in”.

Last night a BAA spokesman said: “The views expressed by this group are not those of BAA. We have very clear guidelines around appropriate use of online forums and sites.

“We will look carefully at these groups and will remind all BAA employees of the code of conduct.”

Last year staff at Virgin Atlantic set up a Facebook site that described passengers as “Chavs” – leading to 13 workers being sacked.

A MASSIVE increase in the number of binge-drinking women has left Britain sitting on a booze timebomb.

The sozzled “She-Devils” are being admitted to hospital in their thousands with alcohol-related illnesses, some with cancers.

And they are fast catching up the fellas when it comes to causing mayhem and violence.

But their booze-fuelled antics are not just confined to the streets. The number of violent assaults by drunken girls on staff at casualty wards has risen by an astonishing 300% in the last seven years.

And one NHS consultant has revealed the true extent of Britain’s descent into drink-sodden despair.

Malaysian-born cancer specialist Jaan Panesar said: “ It is now socially acceptable for young women to drink to excess.

“There is only a thin line separating sensible drinking from reckless inebriation and young people are not being taught the difference well enough to observe it.

“Beer and wine is consumed like tea and coffee. No one seems to be aware of what drinking in moderation means.

“The entire population needs a basic ABC lesson to help debunk some myths associated with alcohol.”

Mrs Panesar, who is based at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital in Bedfordshire, also said patients were suffering from a rising number of cancers due to drinking. In just one week she had to inform a 47-year-old mum-of-two she had tongue cancer in addition to cirrhosis of the liver.

Then she treated a whisky-drinking 52-year-old woman with a sore throat that turned out to be cancer of the left tonsil.

Last year there were 35,800 alcohol- related hospital admissions which turned out to be cancerous – a 20% rise on the 29,400 in 2002.

And Mrs Panesar, a head and neck cancer specialist, said: “Cancer of the larynx, which used to be the most common cancer in my speciality, has been overtaken by oral cancer, mainly due to increased alcohol consumption.”

Harm

And the binge-drinking “disease” is now extending to young children.

Shocking figures last week revealed a child under 12 needs hospital treatment for binge-drinking every 48 hours.

Since 2002, 1,426 children under 12 have been admitted because of alcohol abuse.

And 4,441 youngsters aged 12-16 were also treated in A&E for binge-drinking – an increase of 12% in seven years.

Don Shenker, head of Alcohol Concern, said: “There’s a direct link between the amount of alcohol consumed and the harm caused. High consumption among young people is a particular worry, as it can mean the country is storing up health problems for the future.

“It is time for the Government to listen to the concerns of health workers and to apply a minimum price on alcohol. This would reduce the burden on the NHS without costing sensible drinkers much more.”

By James Tozer and Dennis Rice
Last updated at 11:10 AM on 08th July 2009

A baby girl is being monitored for long-term liver and kidney damage after a bungling Tesco pharmacist gave her a massive overdose of penicillin.

Kirsty Hensby picked up a prescription from the supermarket after her three-month-old daughter Summer developed a rash.

But the locum pharmacist labelled the medicine with the wrong dosage, meaning that for four days Miss Hensby unwittingly gave Summer an amount more suitable for a six-year-old child.

Happily, Summer is showing no ill-effects from the overdose, but her angry mother has been given an apology and offered compensation by the supermarket.

Earlier this year a grandmother died after a pharmacist at another branch of Tesco gave her the wrong pills while working ten-hour shifts without a break.

Miss Hensby, who had a daughter stillborn last year, took Summer to her surgery in Cullompton, Devon, in May after a rash came up on the side of her face.

The 22-year-old veterinary nurse, whose fiance Simon is a lorry driver, was given a prescription for 3ml of penicillin three times a day.

However the worker at the in-store pharmacy at her local Tesco labelled the bottle with a dose of 5ml.

After Miss Hensby began administering the drug, Summer was repeatedly sick. The worried mother called NHS Direct, where a doctor told her that she should continue giving her daughter the antibiotics.

When she went back to her GP four days later, Miss Hensby realised she had been giving Summer the wrong dose.

‘The doctor had written three spoons of 3ml penicillin three times a day yet I had been giving Summer 5ml, 66 per cent more than a baby is supposed to have.

‘The doctor said that a child had to be at least six years old to be given a 5ml dose and that giving that to a baby was a terrible risk.’

Miss Hensby immediately rang the pharmacy. ‘The assistant said “Oh my God” and admitted straight away that they had made the mistake.’

Miss Hensby was later contacted by an area manager.

‘He told me that the pharmacist was a locum and that they were going to monitor his performance. After a week they came back and said they would not be using him any more.’

Doctors say there is no sign of damage to Summer, but she must be regularly monitored in case of liver and kidney damage.

Tesco has offered her mother £600 compensation, but she says that is nowhere near enough for the trauma she has suffered.

‘It was as though I was complaining about a can of baked beans being past their sell-by date, rather than the health of my daughter.

‘I have lost one child already and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing another one.

‘You don’t expect a company that size to employ people who don’t know what they’re doing.’

The pharmacist, who as a locum was not directly employed by Tesco, now faces an investigation into his competence by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain or even criminal charges.

A Tesco spokesman said: ‘We have very high standards in our pharmacies and rigorous procedures for dispensing medicines.

‘We have investigated this incident fully and have been in touch with the customer to apologise.’