‘It’s really annoying,’ says Clarkson after being rushed to hospital with pneumonia
JEREMY CLARKSON has been rushed to hospital with severe pneumonia while on holiday with family in Spain.
The Grand Tour host, 57, revealed to friends that he was “in a wheelchair, connected up to tubes, in a hospital” while away in Majorca on Friday.
A photo he posted on Instagram showed tubes in his arm and hospital identity tags around his wrist. Alongside the photo, Clarkson wrote: “Not the sort of bangles I usually choose on holiday.”
Responding to fans’ concerns, he later said that he expected to have to take “quite some time” off work.
In a post on Drivetribe, a motoring social media network used by The Grand Tour presenters, he said: “Thanks for all the good wishes. And to keep you up to date, I’ll be out of action for quite some time apparently. It’s really really annoying because I’ve never had one day off work since I started in 1978.”
A spokesman for The Grand Tour confirmed the news.
Clarkson was on a break with his family in Majorca after shooting the Amazon Prime motoring show with cohosts Richard Hammond and James May, when he fell ill. He had planned to return to work after his holiday.
It comes two months after Hammond was airlifted to hospital when his car crashed while filming The Grand Tour. The television presenter, 47, was driving an electric super-car in Switzerland when it crashed and burst into flames.
Hammond escaped the crash, which left the vehicle scorched and on its roof, with no serious injuries.
Clarkson joked that James May was the “only functioning member” of The Grand Tour team left.
Clarkson was dropped from Top Gear in 2015 over what the BBC called an “unprovoked physical attack” on Oisin Tymon. He later went on to reveal that he thought he probably had cancer at the time he hit the Top Gear producer, but later got the all-clear.