JEREMY Clarkson joked that he is banned from emptying the dishwasher after having life-saving heart surgery.
The Clarkson’s Farm star told how he was days from death in the major health scare.
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Jeremy, 64, revealed he needed an operation to clear blocked arteries after feeling ill on a recent holiday.
Last night he told The Sun: “I’m very grateful to everyone who sent supportive messages but I’m fine.
“I just have to not do any manual labour or dishwasher emptying for the next four years.
“At least I think that’s what the doctor said.”
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Clarkson first felt unwell while on a break on an Indian Ocean island.
He wrote in The Sunday Times: “I was at the breakfast table and when I stood up to leave, I had to take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly.”
He later had issues trying to dive, swim and walk which continued after his holiday.
One day he felt “clammy and there was a tightness in my chest”.
And later, after working on his Cotswolds farm — which features in his Amazon Prime hit series — a doctor was called when he noticed “pins and needles” in his left arm.
Jeremy was then taken by ambulance to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
He 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.
“The question was this.
“Were the arteries so ruined that I’d need an emergency heart bypass?
“Or could he use Dyno-Rods and ultrasonic battering rams to loosen them up before inserting a stent?
“Mercifully, this turned out to be possible.”
Jeremy, who also hosts ITV’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, went on: “I was off to the operating theatre.
“Because my bankruptcy was most definitely just around the corner. Days away? ‘Maybe’, he (a doctor) said.”
A stent was then inserted into the blocked artery to keep it open and restore blood flow to the heart.
Jeremy said: “It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd.”
He returned home the next day, and said he thought: “Crikey, that was close.”
He previously said he is worried about his health and admitted: “I don’t have long left.”
Jeremy has also shared fears over developing dementia, admitting his “memory is shot”.
And he was fitted with hearing aids last year.
But the star has shown no signs of slowing down, with a new book about life on Diddly Squat Farm.
Series four of Clarkson’s Farm is also in production.
Earlier this year Jeremy opened a refurbished pub — The Farmer’s Dog — near Burford, Oxon.
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