Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he had a heart procedure after waking up feeling “clammy” with a tightness in his chest and pins and needles in left arm.
The 64-year-old former Top Gear host said he was taken to hospital by ambulance before having a stent fitted to open up a blocked artery, which left him thinking: “Crikey, that was close.”
Writing in his Sunday Times column, Clarkson detailed how he experienced a “sudden deterioration” in his health after a holiday on a small island in the Indian Ocean.
During the trip, he described having to “take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly” before struggling to swim two lengths of a swimming pool.
“I was mostly dead. I’ve never struggled with swimming before, and now, suddenly, I can’t do it any more. Nor could I descend a flight of stairs, not without holding someone’s hand.” he said. “I’m not exaggerating. These problems all manifested themselves in one day.”
The Clarkson’s Farm presenter, who lives in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, said his “sudden deterioration began to gather pace” when he returned home.
He said: “I woke on Wednesday morning not feeling too good. I was clammy and there was a tightness in my chest. Naturally, I ignored these things and, after loading 30 pigs into the slaughterhouse school bus, I noticed that I had pins and needles in my left arm.”
Clarkson said he went to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays ruled out a heart attack. But he said that after further checks he went to an operating theatre with doctors saying Clarkson was perhaps “days away” from getting very ill.
Clarkson said: “It seems that of the arteries feeding my heart with nourishing blood, one was completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way.”
He said a stent, which can save lives and stop future heart attacks through improving blood flow to the heart, was fitted in about two hours. “It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd.”
He said he was “wondering what water tastes like and if it’s possible to make celery interesting” after the health scare.
In 2017, Clarkson said he had to quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain.
Last month Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May ended their show The Grand Tour on Prime Video.
Clarkson, who recently opened a pub, the Farmer’s Dog, in Asthall, near Burford, has continued to make Clarkson’s Farm, which covers him running his Oxfordshire farm, on Prime Video, as well as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ITV.