Jeremy Clarkson has spoken out for the first time after he was rushed to Oxford’s hospital for emergency heart surgery.
The former Top Gear host has opened up about the experience and the lifestyle advice he has since received from doctors after undergoing a heart procedure following a “sudden deterioration” in his health.
The 64-year-old previously spoke in his column in The Sunday Times about how a swim while on holiday in the Indian Ocean appeared to cause him difficulties using the stairs, which when he returned home meant a “sudden deterioration began to gather pace”.
He went to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington via an ambulance, where a heart attack was ruled out after he had an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays.
READ MORE: E-scooters in Oxford a ‘danger’, says Peter Hitchens
Mr Clarkson, whose Diddly Squat Farm is based in Chadlington, said he then went to an “operating theatre”, after further checks, and doctors said he was perhaps “days away” from getting very ill.
Speaking out for the first time since the operation in his column in The Sun yesterday (October 25), he said: “What is scary though is what came afterwards. The advice on how I must live my life from now on.”
After doctors advised him to make numerous lifestyle changes he said he is “not allowed to have fun any more” and that his new “regime” is “horrific”.
“The worst problem though is diet. To cut my alarmingly high levels of cholesterol, I need to cut out, completely, everything I like eating,” he said.
Mr Clarkson opened a pub called The Farmer’s Dog, in Asthall, near Burford, close to where he lives near Chipping Norton in August.
“I own a brewery and pub and at the shop, a butcher’s counter. Yum yum,” he said.
“Except now, I can no longer get high on my own supply.”
In the column he admitted he “always knew” his lifestyle, which included “living in a blizzard of hangovers and jet lag for 30 years” and starting smoking at the age of 14, wasn’t going to cause him to live to 112, but added he “didn’t really care”.
READ MORE: M40 crash leads to man being left with broken jaw in assault
Mr Clarkson, who has 10 jobs, said he makes Elon Musk look like a “slacker”, however doctors told him to a lot of his work will “have to go”.
“If I didn’t work, I’d just sit at home all day, rotting,” he said.
The TV presenter had a stent fitted, which can save lives and stop future heart attacks through improving blood flow to the heart, which was fitted in around two hours.
The motoring journalist previously said “it wasn’t especially painful. Just odd,” and added that he had been thinking “crikey, that was close”.
Help support trusted local news
Sign up for a digital subscription now: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/subscribe/
As a digital subscriber you will get: