TEARFUL parents today paid tribute to the baby they nicknamed Mighty Joe because of his gutsy battle for life after being born 14 weeks premature.

And the Blackburn family of Joe Kenneth Adams-Grant spoke of how their little angel survived for 15 days and seemed set to defy the odds before dying after contracting pneumonia and a lung infection.

Joe Kenneth weighed just 2lb 3oz when he was born at Queens Park Hospital 14 weeks before he his due date, Boxing Day.

The tiny baby was placed on an incubator in the hospital's Special Care Baby Unit and parents Pat Adams and Tony Grant were encouraged by their son's progress -- nicknaming him Mighty Joe at the suggestion of Joe's cousin Holly Adams.

"I would visit him two or three times a day and ring up every night before I went to bed and every morning when I got up," said Pat at the family home in Oban Drive, Shadsworth. All the family from both sides would come up with us to see him."

Joe kept a constant weight and had begun to breathe for himself. But after a fortnight Joe contracted pneumonia and a lung infection. After receiving a telephone call from staff Tony, Pat and her two sisters Tracey and Dee rushed to the hospital.

Baby Joe died hours later at just 15 days old. "I still can't believe it now," said Tony, who has two other children, Jack, five and 11-year-old Kirstie.

"He was such a fighter, even all the doctors said he was strong, that's why it's such a shock. Tony and Pat were by his side when Joe died and Pat fulfilled a wish she could not when Joe was alive -- she held her son for the first time.

"He was full of wires and he was so small that I couldn't hold him," said Pat. "The doctors said I could hold him when he was next weighed but he was never weighed again."

Joe, like Pat and Tony's other children, would have been doted on by his close family. Tomorrow, Joe's funeral will be held at St Antony's RC Church, Shadsworth, followed by interment at Pleasington Cemetery with the teddy bears and gifts that had been bought for him.