Yoko Ono in hospital in New York

Yoko Ono has been admitted to a hospital in New York with severe flu-like symptoms - but is on the mend, her spokesman has said.

Elliot Mintz denied US media reports that the widow of Beatle John Lennon had suffered a possible stroke or heart attack.


He said the artist-singer, who turned 83 last week, was getting better and would likely be released from the hospital later today.

Mr Mintz said she went to the hospital on the advice of her doctor.

An ambulance was called to Ono's luxury apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side at around 9pm on Friday, a Fire Department spokesman said.

Ono's career as an artist has spanned more than five decades.

Last year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York marked her achievements with an exhibition of her early works showing how her ideas influenced the development of art in the city in the 1960s.

Ono, also an experimental musician and film-maker, was once described by Lennon as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name but nobody knows what she does".

She and Lennon were married on 20 March 1969, and their son, Sean, was born in 1975.