Jeremy Clarkson was ‘maybe days away from death’ after holiday heart scare

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he underwent emergency heart surgery after waking up with chest pain and pins and needles in his arm.

Reflecting on the scare, the TV presenter, 64, admitted: “Crikey, that was close.”

His health took a turn for the worse during a holiday on an island in the Indian Ocean.

During the trip with his actress girlfriend Lisa Hogan, 51, the ex-Top Gear host noticed he had to “take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly” and struggled to swim the equivalent of two lengths of a pool.

“I was mostly dead,” he wrote in his Sunday Times column.

“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 spent the rest of his break eating cheese and drinking wine.

Back at home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, the Clarkson’s Farm star said the “sudden deterioration began to gather pace”.

‘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.”

Clakrson wrote that “for some reason Alex Salmond – whose bankruptcy arrived very suddenly last week – popped into my head” and he was prompted to call for a doctor.

The former Scottish first minister died from a heart attack aged 69 while he was in North Macedonia for a conference.

Clarkson was taken to hospital by ambulance where tests ruled out a heart attack. However, a scan revealed one artery was completely blocked, while another was heading that way.

Clarkson wrote: “After coming out of that [the scan], I was off to the operating theatre. Because my bankrupcy was most definitely just around the corner. Days away? ‘Maybe,’ [a doctor] said.”

He had a stent procedure, which took about two hours.

“At one point it felt like he’d put a Hoover pipe up my arm, along with a pile driver, and was busy inside my heart with a B&Q chisel and hammer gift set. It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd,” wrote Clarkson.

And it came as he posted online yesterday that his dog had also gone under the knife this week, suffering from pyometra – a life threatening infection – in what he referred to as a “s*** week”.

This is not Clarkson’s first health scare. In 2017, he had to give up smoking after contracting pneumonia while on holiday in Spain.

Last month, Clarkson’s final Grand Tour show, alongside Richard Hammond and James May, was broadcast.

However, he shows no signs of slowing down.

He continues to work on Clarkson’s Farm, his Amazon Prime show about life on his 1,000-acre Diddly Squat farm, and will publish his latest book about it this week.

He also still hosts Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV.