The Surrey Comet’s newest reader made a dramatic arrival eight weeks earlier than expected this week.

Amiee Pepperrell gave birth in the seat of this newspaper’s company car as the mother tried to get to hospital.

The drama unfolded on Tuesday evening, when Miss Pepperrell, 28, started going into labour after 32 weeks and knocked for help on the door of her West Molesey neighbour Sarah-Jane Lambert.

Miss Lambert, a Surrey Comet media consultant, sprang into action and took the struggling mother in the company Ford Fiesta to Kingston Hospital.

But Miss Lambert, 50, was forced to pull into Canbury Place car park halfway into the journey when her passenger started giving birth.

In heavy rain Miss Lambert asked two women to call 999 and hold the phone to her ear.

A London Ambulance operator then told Miss Lambert, who normally spends her days selling advertisements, how to deliver a baby.

Despite a complicated birth, the pair were overjoyed when Jacob Albert Pepperrell, named after his grandfather, was born at 9.09pm, strong and healthy and weighing in at 4lb 11oz.

Ms Lambert said: “It was tipping down and my bum was sticking out of the side of the car getting soaking wet.

“Then I was standing outside my car holding this little thing in my hands.

“I saw my hairdresser in the car park and shouted ‘Sorry my hair is a mess. I’ve just delivered a baby’. What a place to be born.”

Mother Amiee, whose other two children Daniella, three, and Poppy, one, were born at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey two weeks and one month early respectively, had told her driver: “Pull over. This baby wants to be born now.’”

Minutes later he was.

Little Jacob has now been duly christened as the Surrey Comet’s newest reader.

Mrs Pepperrell said: “I was worried because my other baby cried a lot when she came out but SJ [Sarah-Jane] said he was sucking his hands. She was trying to make me laugh and I was shaking.

“Then I felt him kicking me so I knew he was all right.

“Now I look back on it, it’s quite funny. I was just lucky I didn’t stay at home any longer because I would have been on my own.”

An ambulance spokesman said: “We would like to offer our congratulations to the family and are pleased that our call taker was able to help in what must have been a very difficult situation.”