SINGER songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming is in "great shape" following a long-awaited kidney transplant she required after eating a plate of poisonous mushrooms.

Gordon Cumming, wife of the Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans, is recovering at a London hospital after an unidentified living donor gave the mother-of-one a kidney.

She posted on her Facebook page: "A quick message to let you know my transplant has been successful and my kidney is working well and I am in great shape."

The post came less than 24 hours after her operation on Tuesday.

The musician, her husband, her brother and her sister-in-law became critically ill in August 2008 following a lunch of wild mushrooms at the family estate in Forres, Moray. Instead of a portion of wild ceps, the potentially fatal species of deadly webcap was collected from the grounds of Altyre House and eaten instead.

Mr Evans has already undergone a successful transplant after receiving a kidney from his eldest daughter but Gordon Cumming has spent more than three years on dialysis. Both have become vocal campaigners over organ donations.

Gordon Cumming earlier called upon the NHS to stop wasting organs which could be used for transplant.

Her operation was made possible due to a family friend stepping forward to offer one of his kidneys, it is understood.

Despite her poor health, Gordon Cumming, who lives in Devon with her husband, recently released the album The Brave Songs to accompany his latest novel The Brave.

She said of the work: "The warrior came out in me. I had this enormous sense of physical and emotional exhaustion, but when I got to the studio I had to rise up and do the work. What was extraordinary was that the music healed me. I didn't feel sick at all in the studio. When I was working I never for one moment thought I was ill."

Evans is now patron of the charity Give a Kidney – One's Enough.

It is thought that Sir Alastair Gordon-Cumming, the brother of Charlotte, has yet to receive a suitable donor match with his wife, Lady Louisa, now living with limited kidney function.