Bacon’s saved to joke again

RICHARD BACON thought he was actually going to die during his recent illness.

The 42-year-old presenter fell ill while travelling to Britain from the US and was taken off the plane in a wheelchair before being put into a coma by doctors at a London hospital.

He’s now thankfully regained consciousness following a week spent in the medically-induced coma for an “unidentified double chest infection”, initially believed to be pneumonia.

In a response to comedian David Baddiel on Twitter, welcoming him back, the ex-Blue Peter host said jokingly: “I am alive. Or in Lewisham. Or somewhere between the two.” Before adding “So, I did six days straight in a coma. Been here another four since. It’s an [as] yet unidentified double chest infection. I nearly died. At one point, I was run down a hallway to ICU [intensive care unit] at midnight with a massive needle jammed in my chest – bit like Pulp Fiction.”

The father-of-two, who’s been married to Rebecca McFarlane since 2008, then thanked the NHS while also revealing he’d started asking himself some serious questions. “I thought, ‘This is it.’ How’s this going to affect my kids’ lives? Who’s going to sit my poor dad down and say ‘I’m sorry, we did everything we could’.

“But then I didn’t die. And I didn’t die because I’m on the NHS. Viva the NHS! See you for your 100th. By which time I probably will have pneumonia!”