BRITAIN’S Got Talent comic Francine Lewis has opened up about the breast implant nightmare that left her needing emergency surgery.
The impressionist reveals how she put off having her 18-year-old implants replaced and ended up with inflammation so severe, it looked like she had grown a third breast.
The star now bitterly regrets having the op in the first place and is speaking out to warn other women against it too.
She says: “I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster I wish I’d never got on, and now can’t get off.
“Getting breast implants is not a one-off operation. This is something you have to keep doing to maintain them and now I’m stuck in such a horrible situation.”
Francine, 47 — who has been married to husband Joel Ryan, 43, for 17 years — got her implants in 2003 after feeding breast milk to her first child Brooke, now 20, left her 28C boobs droopy and deflated.
“Before pregnancy I had nice full breasts, but afterwards they were just empty bean bags. Trying to get a cleavage was impossible and it really affected my confidence.
“I’d never regret giving Brooke my breastmilk because it was the healthiest thing for her, but along with losing a lot of baby weight very quickly, it left me with these horrible saggy boobs.
“So I went to a surgeon recommended to me by Katie Price and I loved my new double Ds. He did an amazing job and they really suited me.”
For years Francine was happy with her bosoms. However, from around 2018 she became increasingly aware that she needed an uplift — but delayed surgery out of fear of going under the knife again.
It wasn’t until November 2020 that she noticed some swelling in her left breast.
She says: “I was s****ing myself about having surgery again, so I left it for years.
“I was about to start filming the Christmas special for BGT when I got this excruciating pain in my left breast. Then all of a sudden it swelled to the point where I looked deformed, like I had a third breast.
“It was really, really scary.
“I was sending myself crazy worrying that my boob was about to erupt, so I dashed to the walk-in centre near where I live and they sent me straight to hospital.”
It was a Friday as Francine arrived at A&E where they diagnosed her with an abscess and told her she needed to remain in hospital to receive intravenous antibiotics.
But with Covid cases rocketing, she was concerned about the risks, so asked if she could instead take the medication in tablet form, and then went home.
She says: “I called my surgeon, Dr Prakash, the next day and told him what had happened. He said I needed to see him first thing on Monday.”
What Dr Prakash told her then was worse than she could have imagined. Francine adds: “He said this was mastitis and the implants had to come out as a matter of urgency.
“He actually started shouting at me: ‘I’ve been telling you for years that these needed to come out, but you wouldn’t listen!’
“He said I needed them out by the end of the week.
“I was terrified about the operation and having to go under anaesthetic. I felt so selfish and kept thinking, ‘Why did I do this?’ It was for my own vanity and now look at where I’d ended up.”
The op to replace the implants took three hours, twice as long as it was supposed to, as the complications were more serious than first thought.
“My right breast was really encapsulated (when the scar tissue forms a tight bond around the implant) but the left one was horrific.
“He took a picture to show me, and I couldn’t believe it.
“It was like a big raw steak had grown over the implant. That was what was giving me the really bad disfigurement.
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“I was in a huge amount of pain after the surgery.”
Even though Francine hated implants after the suffering they had caused, she felt forced to have the replacements put in.
“Without new ones, I’d have been left with hanging skin and I couldn’t do that,” she says.
“After nearly 20 years of having bigger breasts, there was no way I could be left with empty sacks again, so the only option was to put them back in and deal with the consequences down the line.”
Francine says this time she will heed any warning signs as soon as they become apparent.
But if she could turn the clock back to 2003, she wouldn’t have had them put in at all.
“If I’d not had them done in the first place, I would have been fine.
“I might even have regained a bit of shape to them after my second pregnancy and got used to them,” she says.
Francine — who also has a son, Jake, 16 — found fame in the late Nineties on Jonathan Ross’s The Big, Big Talent Show.
She reached the final of BGT in 2013, winning new fans with her hilarious impersonations of Stacey Solomon, Dot Cotton and Katie Price, and has recently written a children’s book.
She says female comics get a harder time than their male counterparts, which makes it a tough industry to survive in.
“We can’t get away with what men can,” she says.
“As an impressionist, I get accused on TikTok and Instagram of bullying. Whereas someone like Keith Lemon does something similar to Mark Wright, for instance, and everyone thinks it’s hilarious.
Without the new ones in, I would have been left with hanging skin and I couldn’t do that.
“The other issue is that to be funny with impressions you have to be a little bit controversial, but I can’t go to town as much as I used to. These days it could end up getting you cancelled if the woke people come out to play.”
Francine can mimic most celebs, but there’s one who she’s been unable to nail so far.
“Amanda Holden,” she says. “She’s impossible! She’s just got one of those voices which is really difficult. And her cackle.”
It’s also Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda, 51, who Francine looks up to as an example of a woman who maintains her body through hard work rather than surgical fixes.
She says: “She eats healthily and she trains hard and she looks phenomenal.
“She’s got a lovely little pert pair of boobs and they’re completely natural.”
Having been through her own ordeal, what would she say to those considering cosmetic surgery, including the many who go to countries like Turkey, where op prices are lower.
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“Don’t do it. Especially if you’ve not even had children yet. Surgery is too accessible now.
“By talking about going to Turkey and getting whatever done, you are normalising it and I think that sends out a really bad message.”
AWARD-winning plastic surgeon, Marc Pacifico, is president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.
He says: “Breast implants are not a lifetime device. A patient’s journey is almost inevitably going to involve future surgery.
“Implants, on average, last ten to 15 years. For some people they last a lot longer, and for others they won’t last as long. So it really is a case-by-case basis.
“Patients should have life-long open access to their surgeon, because without a crystal ball we don’t know the lifespan of the implants in that particular person.
“Signs implants need looking at are discomfort, pain, hardening of the breast, a change of shape or swelling. If someone has spontaneous swelling of a breast implant, they need to get it checked straight away.
“While it’s very rare, there is an unusual type of cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma, which has been associated with some breast implants.”
