Jeremy Clarkson has hit back at an online troll after they claimed his meat-heavy diet was behind his recent health scare.
The former Top Gear host, 64, recently underwent an urgent heart operation to have a stent fitted to open up a blocked artery.
Writing in The Times, the TV presenter complained of feeling ‘clammy’ and having ‘tightness in my chest’, which led to him being admitted to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where he underwent a life-saving operation.
One vegan troll berated the star’s zero-carb diet and wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: ‘Now he seems to have had a heart attack, and needed surgery.
‘What does he expect eating all that meat? He can’t be surprised!’
The Grand Tour star replied: ‘Better than dying of vegetable induced boredom.’
Jeremy Clarkson, 64, (pictured) has hit back at an online troll after they claimed his meat-heavy was behind his recent health scare
Jeremy Clarkson hit out at the online troll on ‘X’ formerly known as Twitter
Clarkson said he started to feel unwell after swimming in the Indian Ocean while on holiday on a ‘small island’ and later found it difficult to climb a flight of stairs.
He returned to Britain and a ‘sudden deterioration began to gather pace’.
He was rushed to hospital via ambulance where a heart attack was ruled out after he had an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays.
Clarkson said the operation took around two hours and ‘at one point it felt like he’s put a Hoover pipe up may arm, along with a pile driver, and was busy inside my heart with a B&Q chisel and hammer gift set’.
He wrote in his column in The Sunday Times how he felt ‘mostly dead’ after returning to beach after a short swim.
He spent the rest of his break on a tropical island eating cheese and drinking wine.
It was only when he returned to Britain and he was loading 30 pigs onto a ‘slaughterhouse school bus’ that he noticed pins and needles in his left arm.
Clarkson (pictured at Formula 1 in March) said he started to feel unwell after swimming in the Indian Ocean while on holiday on a ‘small island’ and later found it difficult to climb a flight of stairs
He said he then went to an ‘operating theatre’ on Wednesday, after further checks, and doctors said he was perhaps ‘days away’ from death.
Describing what he called the ‘wearisome effects of growing old’, 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.’
In some cases, a stent is all that’s needed to break up the blockage, without putting any permanent artery-openers in place.
Surgeons will sometimes put in a stent, however, to keep the arteries held open.