Jeremy Clarkson says doctor told him to stop working after heart procedure

The presenter, who is a host of Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm and ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? as well as a columnist for The Sun and The Sunday Times, was recently fitted with two stents, which improves blood flow to the heart.

In The Sun, he said that his doctor told him “a lot” of his current work will have “to go”, and suggested replacing it with golf.

Clarkson added: “If I didn’t work, I’d just sit at home all day, rotting.

“The worst problem though is diet. To cut my alarmingly high levels of cholesterol, I need to cut out, completely, ­everything I like eating.

“Bacon, sausages, beef, lamb, pork, butter, chips, proper milk, Cadbury’s fruit and nut bars and the interesting bit in an egg.

“I’ve had a week now to live in the new regime and it’s horrific.”

However, he dismissed the idea of stopping work, saying he would “carry on” and just change his diet.

The former Top Gear presenter, who has a brewery, farm shop and pub in Oxfordshire, also says he has been told to shift towards eating vegetables and away from drinking his own beer.

“We must now move on to the question of exercise,” Clarkson added. “I’ve always seen this is something you do when travelling from the car to the pub, or from the lunch table to the sitting room.

“But apparently, when I’ve rec­overed from the operation, I must do more.”

The 64-year-old also said that he was aware that his lifestyle was unhealthy, and he was unconcerned by the thought of dying, but now wants to see his “grandchildren grow up”.

He had revealed his “sudden deterioration” in his health, which brought on symptoms of being “clammy”, with a “tightness in my chest”, and “pins and needles in my left arm” in a column in The Sunday Times at the weekend.

Clarkson said he went by ambulance to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where after an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays along with further checks, he was told that one of his arteries was “completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way”.

His doctors told him he was perhaps “days away” from getting very ill, and was fitted with the stents in around two hours.

Clarkson, who previously quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain, ended his show The Grand Tour on Prime Video along with Richard Hammond and James May last month.