Jeremy Clarkson has revealed his secret health battle which resulted in him losing a stone.
The former BBC star explained how he cut his time on a wellness retreat with girlfriend Lisa Hogan short to check into hospital over concerns of a cyst on his back in October.
The 63-year-old said he struggled to relax at the retreat due to his health worries - and once admitted into hospital underwent an operation to have the 5cm cyst removed.
He told The Sun: "Lisa took me to a health farm and, well, it was so miserable there that I thought, 'I've got to have this cyst taken out at some point, I may as well go now'.
"So I checked out of the whole place and checked into hospital, because it was more fun having an operation than eating juniper berries all day long."
While reassuring fans that the cyst wasn't cancerous, he admitted that he lost a stone in weight as a result of his health woes.
He shared: "I did actually lose a stone though — mind you, half of that was probably the cyst. But it wasn't cancer. It was never going to be cancerous though — I wasn't in the mood."
News of his secret health battle come after he said filming The Grand Tour was “immensely physical” and they ran out of new ideas for the TV show.
The veteran TV star has appeared in five seasons of the Prime Video show, travelling the world with James May and Richard Hammond test driving different vehicles on adventurous road trips.
It was announced in December that the trio, who previously starred on the BBC’s Top Gear together for more than a decade, would be featuring in the final special marking the end of almost 10 years – which Clarkson said felt right.
“I’ve driven cars higher than anyone else and further north than anyone else,” he told The Times.
“We’ve done everything you can do with a car. When we had meetings about what to do next, people just threw their arms in the air.
“(The show) is immensely physical and when you’re unfit and fat and old, which I am … Camping in Mauritania was a stretch.”
Clarkson also said he does not think the move to electric cars across the globe makes “very interesting television”.
“An electric car is no different from a chest freezer or a microwave oven. There’s no glamour or excitement. This week on Top Chest Freezer! I think it suits the written media more,” he said.
The final TV special will see the trio exploring Zimbabwe.
Speaking about his co-stars, Clarkson said: “We’ve spent more time in each other’s company than our families’ over the last 25 years so I don’t think it would have lasted as long as it did if we’d hated each other as much as James (May) likes to think.”
The end of The Grand Tour followed the news that the BBC had decided to rest hit motoring show Top Gear for the “foreseeable future” after host Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff was seriously injured in crash during filming in 2022.
