Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson said he is doing “everything in [his] power not to die” following heart surgery.
Clarkson, 64, had two stents fitted to improve blood flow during the emergency procedure in October 2024.
The TV host has reflected on the experience in a new column for the UK’s Sunday Times, saying he has decided his life is “so wonderful” that he wants it to “go on for as long as is humanly possible”.
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He spoke about his previous attempts to improve his health, admitting each “ended in failure”.
Clarkson said he didn’t enjoy attending a gym and doesn’t enjoy walking, although he sometimes does it at a very slow pace.
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“Michelangelo’s David burns more calories than I do when I’m out and about,” he wrote in the article.
“So far I’ve relied on luck to keep me alive,” he adds, but says he feels he is at a point where he has no choice.
Of his new workout routine, he said he isn’t “unenjoying it”.
“Two years ago, I saw old age as a wearisome tangle of tubes and knee replacement surgery,” Clarkson wrote.
“Now though, thanks to my grandchildren, I’m actively looking forward to it.
“I’m buying time. It hurts and it’s expensive. But it’s better than wasting your money on a new watch.”
Clarkson said he began feeling clamminess, tightness in his chest and pins and needles in his left arm, explaining the symptoms had begun days earlier while on holiday.
At one stage, he had to “take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly” when he stood up, could not walk down a flight of stairs “without holding someone’s hand” and “struggled” while swimming.
“These problems all manifested themselves in one day, which made the rest of my holiday extremely relaxing because all I did was sit in a chair drinking wine and eating cheese,” Clarkson wrote in an earlier article.
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“Back at home, though, the sudden deterioration began to gather pace,” he continued.
“I woke on Wednesday morning not feeling too good. I was clammy and there was a tightness in my chest.”
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Clarkson was taken via ambulance to a hospital in Oxford, near the farm where he lives and films the series Clarkson’s Farm.
After a series of checks, a heart attack was ruled out – though his chest pain or discomfort, feeling faint or anxious, and the pins and needles, sweating and dizziness, are all classic symptoms of one.
He wrote in his column: ”The next morning I went home, and here I am, two hours later, writing this and sort of thinking, ‘Crikey, that was close’.”
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