‘UK’s most dangerous spider’ leaves man swollen ‘like a balloon’ after bite

'Britain’s most dangerous spider' has left a rapper with a leg swollen “like a balloon” after a 'revenge' studio attack.

Shane Parmenter, 36, suffered a “horrific” bite from a noble false widow which has rendered him unable to work both physically and mentally. The rapper from Chelmsford, Essex, explained he was 'attacked' by the vicious bug in a music studio after he failed in an attempt to squash it.

Having fallen asleep in the studio, Shane whose stage name is MC Napz, woke up to a stinging sensation and the sight of a spider bolting from his body. Shane said: “My mate was laughing his head off. He said ‘it's gonna come back and do ya’ and I was like ‘yeah alright’.

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“We ended up both falling asleep in the studio, and I felt something in the night bite me. It felt like a bee sting. When I woke up in the morning, I felt another big sting, and then a false widow ran out of my trouser leg. Pretty much straight away it all went red, it was a bit uncomfortable.

“It got a whole lot worse. My leg swelled up like a balloon. I felt sick, I felt nauseous, I was dizzy, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat.”

Following advice from the NHS 111 helpline, Shane drew around the bite with a pen so he would see if it was swelling – but his injury quickly outgrew the markings.

He said: “It went from a little mark on my leg, to massive – it just kept getting bigger and bigger, more swollen and swollen. You could see that it was getting infected.”

At Sittingbourne Memorial Hospital, medics cleaned and dressed the wound, and gave him a course of antibiotics. But the musician would have to re-dress the wound time and time again as it continued to ooze through the bandages.

He said: “I had about four or five of them put on, and literally within 24 hours of it going on, it was filling up – I'd take them off and it'd burst. The worst it got was: one night, I was sat on the toilet and I felt it just go ‘pop’ and I felt it seeping through the pad – it was dripping down my leg.

“I took the pad off and it was just literally horrific: blood and big lumps of pus oozing out of my leg. It was so painful.”

The bite has also unleashed a wave of mental health anguish for Shane, and impacted on his work with his record label, D&B Politics.

“It was really hard to cope with,” he said. “Not being able to go to work and not being able to do my side-job, or even sit at my laptop and do my promotions and release some music. “I've got my own studio so I like to get really creative in the studio, but I couldn't think straight.

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“It's made me a bit shook of spiders. I wasn't scared of spiders before but I definitely damn well am now.”

The noble false widow is “widely regarded as the most dangerous spider breeding in Britain,” according to a 2020 paper by Clive Hambler, an Oxford University zoologist. However they’re unlikely to attack unless provoked or trapped between clothes and skin.

Now Mr Parmenter is speaking out to warn others to leave them be. He said: “They're the sort of spider that if you just leave them alone, they will not even bother you. “My advice to other people would be: if you find a false widow in your house, leave it.”

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