FORMER Northern Ireland Secretary and North-East MP Mo Mowlam is gravely ill in hospital with only days to live, it emerged last night.

Dr Mowlam previously suffered a brain tumour and her increasingly frail appearance in recent months prompted fresh fears for her health.

The former Redcar MP is in London's King's College Hospital, where a spokeswoman described her condition as critical but stable.

One of New Labour's most popular figures, she quit the House of Commons at the 2001 General Election after 14 years.

She was made Northern Ireland Secretary when Labour swept to power in 1997, and quickly made a name for herself as a down to earth and often too honest politician.

Dr Mowlam, 55, won universal admiration for her perseverance in working towards the Good Friday peace agreement the following year.

It was magnified by the fact that she was recovering from treatment for the brain tumour at the time - although many in North-East political circles worried that she had returned to frontline politics too soon, without enough convalescing.

Although she was born in Watford, grew up in Coventry and has been living recently in Kent, she has a very good grounding in the region. She got her first degree from Durham University and then lectured at Newcastle University.

Plus, only days before the 1987 General Election, she was selected as Labour's candidate to fight the safe Redcar seat. The town took to her immediately - her open, approachable nature and readiness to share a joke quickly winning her many friends.

"This is very sad news," said one senior Labour figure on Teesside last night.

"There's an awful lot of affection for her."

When she became Northern Ireland Secretary, her white house on the Redcar seafront was heavily guarded and it became a real feature of the town.

Renowned for her light-hearted disregard of formality, chewing gum and kicking off her shoes at meetings, she is reputed to have removed her wig to break the tension.

And she reportedly called Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness "babe" during a phone conversation.

She took a particular political risk in 1998 by entering the infamous Maze Prison to speak with convicted paramilitaries when it became clear the peace process needed their backing.

Loyalist UDA/UFF prisoners had previously withdrawn their support.

She spoke to the prisoners for 60 minutes, and two hours later the paramilitaries' political representatives announced they were rejoining talks.

However, there was growing opposition towards her from more mainstream Unionists.

When she appeared alongside her replacement, Peter Mandelson, the former Hartlepool MP, in 1999, many thought she had been made Health Secretary.

Instead, she was handed the Cabinet "enforcer" role and did a good job of hiding her disappointment.

But her time in the post was marked by a steady flow of reports that someone in high places was "briefing against her".

There were also suggestions that Prime Minister Tony Blair had been irritated when the Labour Party conference gave her a longer standing ovation than him.

Mr Blair disputes this, but there is no doubting that her searing honesty on everything from the Royal Family to her experimentation with cannabis upset party managers.

She became was even more outspoken after she stood down as an MP, saying it was "harder and harder to defend what the Labour Government is doing".

She added: "We have a Prime Minister who has thrown away the British constitution and seems to see himself as our president."

She said that the US and British military action in Iraq was acting as a "recruiting sergeant for al Qaida", and she urged the Prime Minister to sit down and negotiate with its leaders - even Osama bin Laden.

Last night, sources in Ulster said that her husband, Jon Norton, whom she married in 1995, he had been told she had only two days to live