Martha Lane Fox in car crash

Dan Newling|Daily Mail13 April 2012

MARTHA Lane Fox, the dotcom multi-millionairess, was airlifted to hospital yesterday after being seriously injured in a car crash on holiday in Morocco.

The 30-year-old businesswoman, who achieved fame and fortune through lastminute.com, sustained six fractures to her pelvis, neck and shoulders as well as haemorrhaging while travelling in the desert with her boyfriend and a male friend.

She was taken to hospital in the resort of Essaouira late on Sunday. Two specialist doctors were flown in from the capital, Rabat, to operate.

They judged her injuries so serious that she was airlifted to Rabat on a special stretcher designed to protect her spine during the hour-long flight. Her condition was described as 'serious'.

Miss Lane Fox was travelling in a Mitsubishi 4x4 with her new boyfriend, Chris Gorell Barnes, 29, and his friend Duncan Flower, 31, who is in Morocco working as a film unit manager on the Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Police said Flower was driving the vehicle off-road when he lost control and ploughed into a tree. He may face prosecution. He is not thought to have been injured while Gorell Barnes sustained a broken wrist.

It is understood that doctors at Essaouira's tiny hospital refused to operate on Lane Fox because no travel insurance could be produced. Treatment only went ahead when her mother Louise gave her assurance over the phone that medical bills would be paid.

Initially, it was thought that Lane Fox had suffered three fractures. But that rose to six after two doctors were flown from Rabat in a plane supplied by the health insurance company Assistance Mondiale. The plane then flew back to the capital to pick up the protective stretcher.

Essaouira is four hours' drive from Casablanca and became known during the 1960s as a hippie hang-out. Lane Fox was staying in the town's four-star Hotel des Iles.

A police spokesman said a magistrate would examine the circumstances of the accident before deciding whether to prosecute. He added: 'As far as we know, it was not a high-speed crash and we did not think that the driver had been drinking.'

The businesswoman was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University, where she was known as 'Fast Lane Foxy'.

She became the best-known face of the burgeoning internet industry after setting up lastminute.com with her friend Brent Hoberman in 1998. At the height of the dotcom boom, she had a paper fortune of £40mbut after the company's share price crashed, that was cut to £9m.

Last year she stepped down as lastminute.com's managing director, saying the business meant she was always too busy to have a love life.

Earlier this year she hinted that she had at last found a long-term partner and said she hoped to have 'a football team of babies'.

Gorell Barnes was educated at Bedales public school and appeared on the Channel 4 reality programme Regency House Party earlier this year.

On the programme's website, he describes how he used to run his own production company and hopes to move into advertising.

Lane Fox's brother Henry said last night: 'The good news is that she is stable now and we are planning her return as soon as possible.'

Mr Hoberman said: 'The family is very much hoping for a quick recovery. She has lots of great friends and great colleagues who have been calling all day and giving her their support.'

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