9am briefing: Heart attack ad save life | journalist murder trial | Borders railway

JOINER Derek Burt saved his partner’s life by remembering a TV ad which featured Vinnie Jones and the Bee Gees’ pop classic Stayin’ Alive.

When he woke to find her having a heart attack, he was able to give her vital first aid by recalling the advice to resuscitate someone with cardiac arrest by pumping their chest to the beat of the 1977 hit – about 100 to 120 times a minute.

Mr Burt, 49, from Dalkeith, kept up the chest compressions until paramedics arrived to take care of 43-year-old Angela.

Now the couple – who got married after she was discharged from hospital – are to feature in a new British Heart Foundation advert with Vinnie Jones and others who were helped by the Stayin’ Alive ad campaign.

Mrs Burt, 43, had no history of heart problems before becoming unwell in February.

Mr Burt said he had no idea anything was wrong until he woke and heard her making a strange coughing sound.

Livingston man accused of murdering Australian journalist with knife

A DAD has told a murder trial that an Australian journalist he invited home from the pub tried to strangle his son on the living room floor in a row over a woman.

Robert Montgomery threw the man out of his home, but said his son, Kyle, followed the visitor armed with a bread knife.

He returned a short time later with the blade stained with blood, the High Court at Livingston was told yesterday.

Kyle Montgomery, 24, denies murdering Australian journalist Thomas Allwood, 55, on June 21. Montgomery, from Winchburgh, West Lothian, denies assaulting the deceased, repeatedly punching him on the head and body, pursuing him with a knife and striking him on the body with a knife.

Dad Robert, 65, a self-confessed alcoholic, told how he befriended the murder victim and his girlfriend, Maggie, in a pub near his home in Broxburn and invited them to his house for a drink.

Briefing sessions on Borders rail line

Communities along the length of the proposed rail line from Edinburgh to the Borders are being offered information briefings about the scheme.

A string of drop-in sessions in Midlothian and the Scottish Borders gets under way in Stow.

The event will be followed by nine further events staged by Network Rail to answer residents’ questions about the project.

Its planned that construction work on the project should get under way early next year with a target completion date in summer 2015. Responsibility for delivering a rail route from the Borders to Edinburgh officially passed to Network Rail earlier this month.