TV host glad to have heart working again

MARTIN Roberts said he watched as doctors used a syringe to remove a “dark red death liquid” which had been stopping his heart from working.

The 58-year-old TV presenter, who has spent almost two decades at the helm of Homes Under The Hammer, went to hospital in April with chest pains to discover there was a serious issue.

Appearing on ITV’S This Morning, Roberts said: “I’d been feeling a bit poorly, under the weather for a couple of weeks.

“As it approached the Easter bank holiday weekend, it was starting to get really bad, where I could hardly walk without struggling for breath.

“The confusing thing about this is that it gets you in the breathing side of things, so you don’t think it’s something to do with your heart.

“It looked like it could have been the symptoms for Long Covid, real lethargy, a tightness in the chest, pain in the chest, difficulty breathing, so you pause it and pause it and by the time it got to just after the bank holiday weekend, I was starting to be delirious.”

The TV star said he ended up in the Royal United Hospital in Bath where he was told the sack around his heart was “filling with liquid”.

Roberts said “you just put your life in the hands of professionals” when asked what was going through his mind at the time.

He said: “I’m lying there in the specialist cardiac drain unit – there’s a special operating theatre and there’s a local anaesthetic.

“I’m watching as they stick a tube into the side of your heart and then with a big syringe, he starts pulling this dark red black liquid, which is almost... I call it death liquid – he pulls it out.”

Despite his health scare, Roberts said he will start filming Homes Under The Hammer again in a few weeks and would like to carry it on.