Pop star Olly Murs has told how doctors warned him they had a ‘couple of hours’ to save his leg after a metal plate in his limb became infected.

Murs had had surgery on his knee three months earlier and medics feared the infection could be sepsis, a reaction to infection which causes blood poisoning.

"[Surgeons said] You need to come into London now. We need to operate within the next couple of hours. Go and get a bag," he told The Sun.

“They had to open me up again in case the infection spread. So it got nasty.”

Murs had the initial surgery in June 2019.

And despite the seriousness of his condition, he didn’t tell long-term girlfriend Amelia as she was on a hen weekend in Ibiza.

He added she visited him as soon as she got off the plane but was suffering with a hangover.

"All I could smell was the alcohol. She couldn’t even speak — she’d lost her voice.

“I think if anything she needed the bed more than I did. Bless her, she just looked like when you come home from a really heavy weekend.”