Pete Burns revealed he nearly DIED just weeks before he passed away
The late singer revealed all last month on Channel 5’s Celebrity Botched Up Bodies
EIGHTIES pop legend Pete Burns revealed he never died after having surgery on his face... just weeks before he passed away.
The Dead or Alive singer died after a cardiac arrest on Sunday, but just last month the 57-year-old said a reconstructive operation nearly killed him.
The star, who was was due to appear on Loose Women today, revealed on Channel 5’s Celebrity Botched Up Bodies in September that “lost count” of the number of times he has gone under the knife.
The Celebrity World has already taken to Twitter to pay tribute.
But only in September he revealed all about his addiction to surgery, he told the show: “The number of surgeries I’ve has is probably 300,” he said. “I hope when I’m 80 and I get to heaven God doesn’t recognise me.”
He said his obsession with changing his looks began over 20 years ago when his hit You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) was storming up the charts.
“I realised I was going to be a visual entity and that I had to look good.
“I had a broken nose. In the punk days somebody head butted me in Liverpool and it went over to one side.
“When you’re young, self-conscious and standing in front of a camera and the photographers are whispering, ‘Can we turn his head to the left?’ you think, ‘I’ll do something about it’.”
Pete forked out £750 to get his nose fixed but when he woke up from surgery he knew something was terribly wrong.
“I woke up covered in blood. There was so much blood it was unbelievable,” he said.
“There were tubes up my nose. He’d removed most of my nose and there was just two nostrils and a little bit of bone in the middle. I nearly fainted.”
Pete was due to appear on Top Of The Pops with his band and decided to put an eye patch on to hide the side of his nose that was bad.
He later booked in for reconstructive surgery – the first of many, many corrective treatments.
“The amount of surgeries I’ve had are absolutely minimal compared to the reconstructive surgeries I’ve had. Probably 300,” he revealed.
When Dead Or Alive failed to produce another single, Pete found solace on the operating table.
He underwent four nose jobs, two sets of cheekbone implants and lip augmentations, which turned out to be the “nightmare” of his life.
Desperate for a bigger pout he booked in for lip fillers with the “lip king of London”, however during a gig with the Scissor Sisters he felt a “burning sensation” in his lower lip.
Pete’s flaming lips were filling with fluid and he had to return to the surgeon to get them drained.
“He held me down on the operating table and punched two syringes in,” he revealed.
“At least a pint and a half of yellow steaming fluid was vomited out of the lip.”
Pete’s lips continued to inflate and he was forced to drain them.
Worst still, the permanent filler that was injected into his lips began migrating all over his face.
“I started to develop holes in my skin and if I so much as touched my face there would be an audible hissing and out onto the mirror would vomit this yellow fluid,” he said.
The infection was spreading all over his body and Pete’s lips were at risk of amputation.
He sued the surgeon and received £450k after settling out of court.
He has used the money to have the filler removed.
“I’ve had a major operation a week for two years to remove it from my cheeks where it had migrated, my Adam’s apple, the back of my eyes…” he said.
“They couldn’t do anything about the liver and the kidneys. I had to excrete that out.”
After 200 reconstructive surgeries on his lips to remove all the frightening filler, the surgeon could finally begin reviving Pete’s lifeless lips.
“I had a piece taken out of my stomach to make a lower lip and then a piece taken out of my stomach to make an upper lip shape,” he said.
“I was clinically depressed. Two years is a long time out of your life.”
Pete’s lips were fixed but the huge amounts of medication were taking their toll on his body.
“I developed blood clots and pulmonary embolisms in my legs, heart and lungs,” he said.
“I got these black marks on my skin and I thought they were bruises. The next thing my driver came in and I was unconscious, not breathing.”
With his life in the balance, Pete was rushed to hospital.
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“The family were all gathered round thinking I was going to die. They got the priest in to do the last rites. I had a less than two per cent chance of survival,” he revealed.
Moments away from death, Pete was put on blood thinners so the blood could pass the clots around his vital organs.
After an agonising 10 days, the doctors had saved him.
“With the blood thinners if I so much as scratched the surface of my skin I couldn’t stop bleeding,” he said.
“They also cause osteoporosis, tooth loss, spinal damage and stuff like that.”
Pete’s teeth started to decay following his time in hospital and he has had veneers to try and mask the problem.
“What I’m trying to achieve with my surgery is my own personal satisfaction. It’s narcissism at its extreme,” he said.
On the programme he visited dental surgeon Adam Slade to sort out his rotting mouth.
Pete is told he has gum disease, which he needs to sort out before he loses all of his teeth.
“Initially I thought I wanted implants because I like all things artificial but it was too high risk to have the implants because if they fail you lose your gums as well and you’re toothless in the long term,” he said.
Clearly not deterred by past traumas, Pete is also seen visiting his surgeon of 10 years, who saved his face, Dr Giovanni Ferrando to see if he can fix his “heavy” and lopsided lips.
Dr Ferrando says he will perform an upper lip lift to solve the problem but the operation is pushed back after Pete books in for permanent filler with a beauty therapist.
“I wanted my tear ducts and cheeks augmented. I didn’t ask her what the filler was. My mistake. I want this c**p out of me,” he said.
“I did a very stupid thing not enquiring about the product and I feel embarrassed about it.”
Dr Ferrando spends four hours removing the fillers.
“It sounds like Giovanni is opening my face up and sucking everything out. Am I nervous? Yes,” Pete said.
After the procedure, Pete is elated.
“I’ve got staples, nuts, bolts, stitches, the whole lot. I’m Frankenstein. I’m feeling wonderful. I’ve got complete flexibility, not tightness at all,” he said.
“People might think I’m the ugliest son of a b**** alive but I want to maintain this appearance.”
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