A six-year-old girl who had a brain tumour removed when she was a baby is hoping for a Christmas number one after releasing a charity single.
Lyra Cole, who underwent emergency surgery when she was five months old, has teamed up with her aunt to record a version of When A Child Is Born to raise money for Brain Tumour Research.
“I’m really hoping that the song makes it into the Christmas charts,” she said. “That would be a dream come true.”
Lyra, from Highbridge in Somerset, underwent an 11-hour operation to have a brain tumour the size of an orange removed from the back of her head when she was an infant after initially being misdiagnosed as having a virus.
She then needed a further operation to restore her sight when doctors found a cyst growing on her optic nerve.
According to Brain Tumour Research, brain tumours kill more children and adults under 40 then any other cancer – but just 1% of cancer research funding in the UK goes towards studying them.
When A Child Is Born was a number one hit for Johnny Mathis in the UK in 1976 and has also been covered by artists including Cliff Richard, Boney M and Susan Boyle.