... does not have a skull on its abdomen. What it has is a marking that "some people [according to the (Daily) Express] have compared to a skull".
The false widow has a website all to itself, which says that the spider "has become a bit of a tabloid sensation recently. It is cited as being Britain's most dangerous spider, the most poisonous spider in the UK and even potentially deadly."
The Express (not normally known for its moderation) notes that if you get bitten by one of these creatures, "[t]here is no need to panic or rush to the doctor's straight away. But if the swelling gets worse or the bite becomes infected, seek medical help immediately. It goes on to quote "[c]onservation charity Buglife", which advises that "there is no proven link between spider bites and bacterial infection, while there are no proven cases of a false widow killing someone."
The false widow is not native to the UK; "[i]t is believed," says the Express, "that [it] was first imported to Britain in bunches of bananas from its native homelands of Madeira and the Canary Islands. The first sighting of a noble false widow [in the UK] was in 1879 in Torquay but the species has since spread across southern England. False widow spiders have now started to spread further northward, probably due to global warming."
And here is what the false widow's own website thinks of the so–called skull pattern.
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