Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he underwent a heart procedure after a “sudden deterioration” in his health.
The 64-year-old said a swim on holiday appeared to cause him difficulties using stairs, with symptoms worsening when he returned to the UK.
Clarkson told The Sunday Times he felt “clammy”, a “tightness in my chest” and “pins and needles in my left arm”.
The former Top Gear host said he went to see his doctor after hearing about Alex Salmond’s sudden death last weekend.
He ended up going to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital via ambulance, but tests including an electrocardiogram (ECG) ruled out a heart attack.
Clarkson said doctors believed he was potentially “days away” from becoming very ill.
“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 told The Sunday Times.
A stent – a tiny device to keep an artery open – was fitted in about two hours.
Clarkson said the episode left him thinking “crikey, that was close”.
He suggested he’s looking to move to a healthier diet and is “wondering what water tastes like and if it’s possible to make celery interesting”.
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It’s not the presenter’s first health scare.
Clarkson quit a 40-a-day cigarette habit seven years ago, and in his Sun column last year said a doctor had noticed a “worrying rise in my blood pressure” caused by nicotine gum.
The star’s final Grand Tour episode aired last month but he continues to present Clarkson’s Farm and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
He also recently opened a pub called The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire, not far from his Chipping Norton home.