Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that he was sent to hospital in an ambulance after feeling a 'tightness' in his chest.
The Clarkson's Farm star, 64, said he started to experience a 'sudden deterioration' of his health while on holiday in the Indian Ocean.
In his column for The Sunday Times, Clarkson said he all of a sudden found it difficult to swim and that he couldn't walk up a flight of stairs 'without holding someone's hand'.
"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," he wrote.
"Back at home, though, the sudden deterioration began to gather pace.
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"I woke on Wednesday morning not feeling too good. I was clammy and there was a tightness in my chest."
After initially ignoring the symptoms, he started to feel 'pins and needles' in his left arm.
The TV presenter was then taken to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in an ambulance for checks on his heart.
"But then one of the doctors, who was so senior he wasn’t even a mister, decided that before sending me home with a headache pill and a 'fraud of the week' certificate, he’d put me in a big Polo mint," the former Top Gear host continued.
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"And after coming out of that, I was off to the operating theatre. Because my bankruptcy was most definitely just around the corner. Days away? 'Maybe,' he said."
Scans showed that one of his arteries 'was completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way'.
"So he made a hole in my wrist, inserted his Dyno-Rod equipment and went in for a closer look," Clarkson added.
"God, it’s weird, lying there and feeling a metal pipe with a camera on the end wiggling its way round your shoulder and through your chest.
"The question was this. Were the arteries so ruined that I’d need an emergency heart bypass?"
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Offering an alternative to surgery, Clarkson explained: "Or could he use his Dyno-Rods and some ultrasonic battering rams to loosen them up before inserting a stent? Which is a sort of Brillo pad that’s used to keep the blood vessels open.
"Mercifully, this turned out to be possible. But it took two hours and 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.
"The next morning I went home, and here I am, two hours later, writing this and sort of thinking, 'Crikey, that was close'.
"I have no idea why I had felt clammy the previous day or why I’d had those pins and needles.
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"I certainly wasn’t having a heart attack. But if it hadn’t looked that way, I never would have been sent to hospital and fed into that Polo mint."
Topics: Jeremy Clarkson, Health, Celebrity
Anish Vij