Bill Crane, chairman of Duval Holdings, is making a good recovery after a recent spine operation at the Nutfield Hospital at Chandlers Ford in Hampshire.

Titanium plates, bolted to the vertebrae at the base of the spine have relieved the pain and allowed him to stand upright for the first time in two years.

“It will be a little time yet before he can run up the stairs five-at-a-time” says his son Peter. “But he is already looking like his old self again and is two inches taller.”