LAST week, doctors announced that the arteries feeding my heart were like something you’d find hanging from the roof of a cave in the Peak District and that I needed extremely urgent surgery.
You might imagine this was all very scary but honestly, it wasn’t.
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The doctors were skilled professionals and they had all the tools they’d need, so during the procedure I was so relaxed that at one point, I nodded off.
I felt like a car. My fuel lines had become all clogged up and they were mending them. Easy.
Sure, they said there was a five per cent chance that my heart would stop but there’s a five per cent chance I’ll be eaten by a lion this afternoon and I’m not worried about that.
What is scary though is what came afterwards. The advice on how I must live my life from now on.
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Literally, I am not allowed to have fun any more. I must live in a Liberal Democrat, holier-than-thou fog of weeds, seeds and yoga. This is terrifying.
And if I go to a party, I must stand in a corner, nursing some refreshing elderflower juice, before going home at about 9.30. That’s terrifying too.
Then there’s my work, which I love. I like it so much in fact, I currently have ten jobs. I honestly make Elon Musk look like a slacker.
I write three newspaper columns a week, I have a brewery, a pub, a shop, I host Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, run a farm, make a television show about that and this week, my latest book came out.
“Yes well, a lot of that will have to go” said the doctor.
“And what would I replace it with? “Golf’s good”, he suggested.
No, it isn’t.
What do people do when they stop work?
It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a hobby but I’ve always thought that hobbies are for people who were caught playing with themselves by their mothers when they were younger. “Stop doing that and get a hobby.”
Have you ever tried kale? Well, don’t, because it’s like eating the contents of a AAA battery
Clarkson
I wasn’t, and that’s why I don’t make Airfix models or play the piano.
Which means that if I didn’t work, I’d just sit at home all day, rotting.
The worst problem though is diet. To cut my alarmingly high levels of cholesterol, I need to cut out, completely, everything I like eating.
Bacon, sausages, beef, lamb, pork, butter, chips, proper milk, Cadbury’s fruit and nut bars and the interesting bit in an egg.
I’ve had a week now to live in the new regime and it’s horrific.
Have you ever tried kale? Well, don’t, because it’s like eating the contents of a AAA battery.
And then there’s Greek yoghurt. What’s that all about?
I’ve suspected for some time that yoghurt is made from the cheese found in a homeless person’s genitals, and now I know this is so.
It’s disgusting.
High on my own supply
But it’s not as bad as almond milk. Which a) isn’t milk and b) tastes like liquefied marzipan. Which is the only foodstuff worse than Greek yoghurt.
Booze? Technically, this isn’t necessarily high in cholesterol, but it does make you fat so that has to go too. All of it.
So, I own a brewery and pub and at the shop, a butcher’s counter.
Yum yum.
Except now, I can no longer get high on my own supply.
Instead I have to buy my “food” from some kind of wholefood store that sells nothing but South African nuclear-free peace beans.
We must now move on to the question of exercise.
I’ve always seen this is something you do when travelling from the car to the pub, or from the lunch table to the sitting room.
But apparently, when I’ve recovered from the operation, I must do more.
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I must even go on the sort of “walk” where I end up back where I started. What’s the point of that?
And I must pick things up with the sole aim of putting them down again.
I’m also encouraged to sit up, using nothing but my stomach muscles.
And why? So I can lie down then repeat the process, over and over again until I’m exhausted.
Of course, you may well argue that I had it coming, that the wonkiness of my arteries is all my fault and that I shouldn’t moan.
And you do have a point.
The problem is that I see the gift of life as being about the same as the gift of, let’s say, a million pounds.
Some people would invest this money and live carefully and parsimoniously on the interest.
I wouldn’t, and indeed I didn’t. I grabbed the gift by the scruff of its neck and went berserk.
Blizzard of hangovers
I wanted to see every country in the world, and have a Ferrari and always be the last to leave a party and never say no to anything that sounded exciting.
Not many people have dropped a laser-guided bomb from an F-15 fighter bomber. But I have.
I lived in a blizzard of hangovers and jet lag for 30 years.
Smoking? Yup. Started at 14 and became a world champion, sucking down sixty Marlboro Reds a day.
Drink? Big time. When doctors asked how much I was putting away each day, I’d tell them straight.
“Three or four pints.” They’d be reasonably happy with that, till I added: “Of wine.”
I always knew this lifestyle wasn’t going to cause me to live to 112, and I didn’t really care.
Because why deny yourself all that fun in your thirties and forties and even fifties just so you can have as long as possible with a grey face and a tube up your nose in an old people’s home?
Here’s the thing, though. I’m now 64 and last week, when the Grim Reaper poked his nose round the door, I decided that actually, I quite fancied living a little bit longer.
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I want to see my grandchildren grow up. I saw the dawn this morning and it was magnificent, so I’d quite like to see a few more of those too. Also, I still want to visit the Galapagos Islands.
To achieve all this, I must live on water and steamed fish, and exercise.
But it’s going to be my eleventh job. Not dying. Of course, there will be those who say I should have started on this new career path earlier.
They have a point, except for one thing.
If you want to avoid spending the last few years of your life in a festival of boredom and denial, you must start the festival when you’re about 32.
And I can’t see the point of that. Living a long life of misery to avoid a short bit of misery at the end.
My recommendation then is to keep your foot hard down until you run out of fuel. And that’s when you buy the Tesla Lib Dem lifestyle.
When you no longer have a choice.
In short, je ne regrette rien.