STRAPPED to a sophisticated weights machine, Ollie Burt continues to defy the odds which once gave him a tiny chance of survival.

The 25-year-old has made a miraculous recovery after suffering encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain which has a high mortality rate.

He was struck down with the condition at university and spent four weeks in a coma – with just a 16 per cent chance of survival.

Ollie pulled through, but was too weak to lift even a can of baked beans at first, and was told to forget about his studies.

Refusing to go along with the gloomy prognosis, he built himself back up and has since become a personal instructor at Absolutely Fit performance studio in Kembrey Park.

The turnaround will be complete when Ollie marries his fiancee Mary Cheston, who he has been with since secondary school, on April 28.

But it all looked in doubt after he fell ill in the second year of a sports science degree at the University of Gloucestershire.

Ollie said: “When I went into a coma they told my parents to prepare for the worst. At one point my heart stopped and I had to have a pacemaker.

“They phoned my parents at 4am to tell them the news. I was very fortunate to make it through.”

Ollie, from Purton, could remember his family visiting him at his bedside and the clothes they were wearing – even though his eyes were shut.

Possibly due to their support, he pulled through in October 2006, had the pacemaker removed and completed university with a 2:1, despite being six months behind.

“I woke up with a bit of beard and I didn’t know what was going on,” Ollie said. “A lot of people never recover properly and they get personality disorders, have memory problems and are basically left with brain damage.

“They told me I wouldn’t be able to go back to university and I would struggle to learn anything ever again. That was the right thing to tell me, because it made me determined to prove them wrong.

“I couldn’t even lift a can of beans and my vision wasn’t that great. But I came back, saw a few specialists and started from scratch.”

Determined to build himself back up, he started lifting tins of beans and progressed to light weights at a gym in Lechlade.

He became a personal trainer, taking on some of his own clients, and also worked at his dad’s joinery firm.

Mary, who turned 26 yesterday, has stood by him all the way.

“We’ve been together since we were 14 and she supported me through the whole thing,” Ollie said.

“She also runs with me to raise money for encephalitis. We are planning for the future, so everything’s good.”

On Saturday Ollie’s growing list of clients at the studio, set up by food chemist and martial arts expert Manjit Singh Dol, meant he was able to go full-time.

The only signs of his past condition are when he sometimes lets things he is looking at slip into his speech, and a lower-than-average white blood cell count.

But he has followed a scientific-based fitness plan and also manages to raise funds for the Encephalitis Society.

“The future’s bright now,” Ollie said. “No one advised me what to do after I left hospital, I was just determined to prove them wrong, and I'm going to keep on doing it.”