Calne councillor Howard Marshall is back on his feet after suffering a serious heart attack – and he saluted the emergency services staff who kept him alive.

Coun Marshall, 67, took ill at his home in Quemerford in February.

He said: “I was at home alone, when I had this terrific pain on the back of my neck. I got up to move and the pain spread to my shoulders, so I went to sit in the chair downstairs.

“About 10 minutes later, my wife Alison came in and said she was phoning 999 straight away.”

First responders were on the scene within three minutes and an ambulance arrived five minutes later. Coun Marshall was taken to Great Western Hospital, Swindon.

“My heart was racing,” he said, “and it was jumping all over the place, it wasn’t stable.”

He spent the next three weeks in Swindon before being moved to the Bristol Heart Institute, where he had a triple heart bypass.

The operation was a success and Coun Marshall was back on his feet within days.

He said: “The care and attention I received all the way through was incredible, it was much better than I expected. The NHS takes a lot of criticism at times and I have to say from this experience that is wrong.

“The first responders were on the scene so quickly and, along with the ambulance staff, made me feel very secure and calmed me down.

“The service I received while in hospital was amazing. I was always informed of everything that was going on all the way through.

“I was out of hospital five days after the operation and that is testament to the systems, the staff and the expertise of the NHS.”

Though doctors said nothing in his lifestyle was to blame for the heart attack, Coun Marshall has lost a stone-and-a-half of weight and is cutting back on the many projects he is involved with around the town.

He said: “I will be going back to Wiltshire Council and the town council in a much reduced way. I am looking at all of my commitments I am involved in. I am reassessing everything.

“It is a wake-up call and it makes you question what you have been doing and how you have been doing it. It makes you appreciate thing much, much more.”

Last week he attended the Queen’s garden party at Buckingham Palace, as part of the Lib Dem contingent.

He said: “It was a lovely occasion and I got to meet the Duke of Kent and Princess Michael of Kent.

“If it wasn’t for the care and advice I was given by those in the NHS, I would not have been able to make it so I would like to thank them.”