Jeremy Clarkson has had an urgent heart operation after a ‘sudden deterioration’ in his health.
The 64-year-old former Top Gear host was just ‘days away’ from becoming seriously ill when he went under the knife where surgeons discovered he had a blocked artery with Clarkson admitting: ‘Crikey, that was close.’
He started to feel unwell after swimming in the Indian Ocean while on an ‘small island’ on holiday and later found it difficult to climb a flight of stairs.
Clarkson returned to Britain and a ‘sudden deterioration began to gather pace’ with him feeling ‘clammy’, ‘tightness in my chest’, and ‘pins and needles in my left arm’.
Alex Salmond‘s recent tragic death from a massive heart attack had sparked the motoring journalist to go see his GP.
He then went to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford via an ambulance, where a heart attack was ruled out after he had an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays.
Jeremy Clarkson has had an urgent heart operation after a ‘sudden deterioration’ in his health. Clarkson in an Instagram post just two days ago with what seemed to be a surgical plaster on his wrist
The 64-year-old former Top Gear host started to feel unwell after going for a swim in the Indian Ocean while on holiday and later found it difficult to climb a flight of stairs.
The worrying health update comes just two days after Clarkson appeared on a post on his Instagram account with a what seemed to be a white surgical plaster on his wrist.
Clarkson spoke in his column in The Sunday Times about what he called the ‘wearisome effects of growing old’.
He said he then went to an ‘operating theatre’, after further checks, and doctors said he was perhaps ‘days away’ from getting very ill.
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.’
He said a stent, which can save lives and stop future heart attacks through improving blood flow to the heart, was fitted in around two hours.
The motoring journalist said: ‘It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd,’ and added that he has been thinking: ‘Crikey, that was close.’
Clarkson concluded saying he was ‘wondering what water tastes like and if it’s possible to make celery interesting’ following the health scare, as he seemed to consider lessening his meat intake.
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’
He has previously revealed he had to quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain.
Last month Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May left their show The Grand Tour behind on Prime Video.
Clarkson has continued to present Clarkson’s Farm, which covers him running his Oxfordshire farm, on Prime Video, as well as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV.
He recently opened a pub, called The Farmer’s Dog, in Asthall, near Burford, close to where he lives near Chipping Norton.
Former Scottish First Minister Salmond died from a ‘massive heart attack’ earlier this month in North Macedonia, aged 69.
He had made a speech at the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Forum in the city of Ohrid before collapsing in the crowded room after suffering a heart attack.
Mark Donfried, the director of the Academy for Cultural Diplomacy, said attendees were having lunch when Mr Salmond died.
Alex Salmond’s recent tragic death from a massive heart attack had sparked the motoring journalist to go see his GP (pictured here in 2011)
Mr Salmond can be seen smiling cheerfully in the center of what is believed to be his last photo alongside his Alba Party chair Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who is wearing a tartan dress
Conservative MP David Davis, right, was a close friend of Mr Salmond
‘He came together with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, also from the Alba Party in Scotland, and they were eating,’ he told Times Radio.
Tasmina was allegedly having trouble opening a ketchup bottle when she asked Mr Salmond for a hand. As he was helping her, ‘he fell back on his chair, totally out of the blue’, Mr Donfried said.
A post-mortem examination ruled that the former first minister of Scotland suffered a ‘massive heart attack’.
Aides reported Mr Salmond had been complaining about pains in his right leg on the morning of his death.