A terminally-ill man who survived being shot in the face in a murder plot arranged by his cheating wife has said: “I still love her.”

Raymond Weatherall, 53, copped a bullet in the jaw when he was shot with a rifle by the daughter of his best friend Glenn Pollard, who was having an affair with his wife Hayley Weatherall.

Weatherall, Pollard and Heather Pollard were each jailed for 15 years or more on Tuesday for conspiracy to murder Mr Weatherall, who has several brain tumours.

But, despite it all, Mr Weatherall still loves his wife.

“I love Hayley. I always have and always will,” he told The Sun.

He also said he was a “tough old bugger” who has not lost his sense of humour.

“I’ve managed to survive a lot. I feel like a cat with nine lives … I can still laugh,” he said.

Weatherall, a 32-year-old mother of three, cried in the dock as she was handed a minimum sentence of 15 years at Maidstone Crown Court on Tuesday.

She was sentenced alongside her lover Pollard, 49, who will serve a minimum of 17 years in prison, and Miss Pollard, who was jailed for at least 15 years.

Judge Adele Williams said: “This was cruelty of a high degree. Cold, calculated and chilling cruelty.

“You conspired to murder a man because you believed he stood in your way.”

All three denied conspiracy to murder and were found guilty by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court on November 15.

The motive was the pursuit of an affair between Weatherall, of Ash in Kent, and Pollard, of West Stourmouth in Kent, who sent each other sexually-explicit text messages and photos.

There were “three settled, determined and sophisticated” attempts to murder Mr Weatherall, in which Pollard was the “prime mover”, the judge said.

The first attempt, she said, was when Weatherall, 20, went to shoot him in Rainham in November 2017 under instruction from her father, but was unable to do so.

The judge said Miss Pollard, who was 19 at the time, was “desperate” for approval from her father and joined the conspiracy with “enthusiasm”.

Hayley Weatherall court case
(left to right) Hayley Weatherall, her lover Glenn Pollard and his daughter Heather Pollard (Kent Police/PA)

The second attempt was nine days later when Miss Pollard took her father’s rifle and waited for five hours until she could take a shot at Mr Weatherall, who was at Sandwich Marina, from across the River Stour.

The victim was shot in the face, narrowly missing his carotid artery and jugular vein, and bled profusely from the mouth, nose and ear.

The judge said Weatherall knew of the plot to shoot her husband, sending a text to Pollard from the hospital which said: “They didn’t do a very good job, he’s still here.”

Mr Weatherall still has most of the bullet lodged in his left jaw, as it is too difficult to move it.

The third attempt was in December 2017, when Miss Pollard researched insulin overdose on the internet, as the victim is a diabetic who injects insulin daily.

Weatherall told police that Pollard had given her four sleeping tablets to crush into her husband’s food.

She said he had also given her £500 and told her to inject Mr Weatherall with a full pen of insulin when he was asleep, but she could not go through with it.

The judge said: “By the way in which each of you participated in this conspiracy, I believe that each of you will remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated at the present time.

“I also conclude that such will be the revulsion and horror felt by right-thinking members of the public at this crime that only a sentence of imprisonment for life is justified.”