The Grand Tour

Clarkson’s pneumonia battle: “I thought often about killing myself”

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he thought about killing himself while battling pneumonia in hospital, and that his illness was so severe that doctors told him he could have died.

The Grand Tour star fell ill earlier this month while on the Spanish island of Mallorca and has opened up about his time in hospital in his Sunday Times column.

Clarkson said he spent “three nights spasming” in his bed before a doctor sent him for tests at the hospital. He was then told he would have to be admitted “for at least a week”, which he called “impossible”.

The doctor added: “If you don’t do as I say you will die.”

Clarkson described his boredom in the hospital as “so bad I thought often about killing myself”.

He wrote: “I’m sure many of you will have found yourself in hospital, not having planned to be there. “But for me it was a new experience. And a weird one.”

“Because I was in a room with nothing on the walls except wallpaper, and most of that was coming off.” – Jeremy Clarkson

Clarkson has now left hospital, but faces two months of recuperation.

He added: “This is the problem with hospitals. People who stay in them become institutionalised and incapable of speaking about anything other than what nurse brought what drug at what time.

“Boredom turns them into bores. And when they get out, as I have, and there is nothing to do for two whole months apart from get better, things are even worse, because all I can talk about is my illness.”

Clarkson announced news of his illness last week, posting on Drive Tribe he would be “out of action for quite some time”.

“It’s really really annoying because I’ve never had one day off work since I started in 1978,” he added.

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