Son’s kidney saves Adrian Mole author

LONDON - Best-selling British author Sue Townsend has undergone a life-saving kidney transplant with the organ donated by her son.

The 63-year-old creator of a series of fictional diaries of Adrian Mole received the donated organ from her eldest child Sean, 44, during an eight-hour operation, the Independent reported Monday.

Townsend has had Type 1 diabetes for 30 years, requiring three daily insulin injections, and has been registered blind for five years.

She said that her kidneys “had been going downhill for five years”, adding: “I had got down to about five percent function. Behind my back, the family got together and decided that one would donate one of their own.”

The transplant was carried out in September - only disclosed now - but her body initially rejected the donor kidney and an infection developed, forcing her to return to hospital 17 times.

Townsend spoke out to highlight the shortage of organ donations in Britain: 10,000 people currently need a kidney transplant, three of whom die each day. Of the 1,500 who had kidney transplants last year, a third received the organ from a relative.

Townsend became a household name in 1982 with “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 “, which was to become the first in a series about Mole - then a teenage nerd. The ninth book, “Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years,” was published this year.

She is also the author of “The Queen and I”, a best-selling account of the royal family being forced to live like ordinary Britons after a Republican party forms government.