After my accident I just felt like giving up, until straight-talking nurse got me back on track

PARALYMPIAN Stef Reid says brutal honesty from a nurse shook her out of her self-pity when she lost her leg as a teenager - and propelled her to athletic stardom.

- BY SUE CRAWFORD

Stef, who had her right leg amputated below the knee after a motorboat accident at 15, recalls: "I wasn't eating, I wasn't seeing visitors, I just didn't care.

"She brought breakfast and I said, I'm not going to eat today, take it away! "She stared directly at me and said, 'Stephanie, it's time to move on. Others have and you will too.

"I'd just had a life-changing injury and people accepted my outbursts. But she did not. That quite shocked me." Now an accomplished paralympian, Stef is currently commentating for the BBC alongside retired track and field star Steve Backley at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, which run until Sunday.

She says of her childhood nurse, who she names only as Claudette: "She was the first person who expected something better from me and the first person who challenged me.

"I remember thinking, "Who does she think she is? I'm sad, my life has been transformed... how dare she?"

"But maybe I'd just been waiting for somebody to give me a challenge, an element of hope." Since that defining moment, Stef has risen to those challenges.

She had to learn to walk again, and to deal with phantom leg pain - where the brain still registers feelings in the missing limb.

But she says: "I was lucky. I always had just enough hope that tomorrow would be better." Giving up her dream of professional rugby, Stef threw herself into athletics instead, becoming a champion long jumper.

And with her focus now on TV work she is already a veteran of Dancing on Ice and Celebrity MasterChef - she says she would jump at the chance to take part in Strictly or I'm A Celebrity.