Jeremy Clarkson in Spanish hospital after falling ill with pneumonia
Clarkson took to Instagram wearing the “wrong sort” of holiday bangles
JEREMY Clarkson has been admitted to hospital in Majorca where he is being treated for pneumonia after falling ill during a family holiday.
The presenter of The Grand Tour and formerly of Top Gear posted a photograph on Instagram of tubes in his arm and his hospital identity tags around his wrist with the caption: “Not the sort of bangles I usually choose on holiday.”
In a message on Twitter, Clarkson, 57, who is also a columnist for The Sunday Times, told his friend Jemima Goldsmith that he was “in a wheelchair, connected up to tubes, in a hospital”.
I could send you one but it’s of me in a wheelchair, connected up to tubes, in a hospital. Better?
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) August 4, 2017
Clarkson told The Sun: “I really don’t have the breath to form words. The doctor has told me he expects me to be in for a week.”
The presenter posted a message on the DriveTribe website yesterday, saying: “Thanks for all the good wishes. And to keep you up to date I’ll be out of action for some time apparently. It’s really, really annoying because I’ve never had a day off work since I started in 1978.” To which his co-presenter Richard Hammond tweeted: “Wow, I didn’t know he had a job.”
Wow. I didn’t know he had a job. Jeremy posted in JEREMY CLARKSON’S TRIBE on @DRIVETRIBE https://t.co/YC6xTt1hvS
— Richard Hammond (@RichardHammond) August 6, 2017
Clarkson is the second Grand Tour presenter to be admitted to hospital recently. Hammond was flown to hospital after crashing an electric supercar in Switzerland in June. The car burst into flames and ended up on its roof but Hammond, 47, escaped from the wreckage with a broken knee.
Clarkson was dropped from Top Gear in 2015 after what the BBC called an “unprovoked physical attack” on Oisin Tymon, a producer. He went on to reveal that he thought he probably had cancer at the time that he hit Mr Tymon, but later got the all-clear.
Top Gear returned to the BBC last year, presented by Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc. But ratings were poor and Evans quit after one series.
Clarkson’s departure from the BBC came after a series of controversies. His jokes about lorry drivers murdering prostitutes, his description of Gordon Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”, his remark that public sector workers on strike should be shot and use of the word “slope” to describe an Asian man caused problems for BBC bosses.
In 2014 Clarkson begged fans for forgiveness after it was claimed that he used the N-word while reciting the nursery rhyme Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. He told his Twitter followers that he loathed the word and had made every effort to make sure he did not use it, but realised it might have sounded as though he had.
Clarkson had been planning to return to work straight after his holiday.
Ben Webster
This article first appeared in The Times
