Jeremy Paxman has revealed details of several health scares that took him to A&E three times in the space of 24 hours. The former Newsnight presenter, 72, said he was on “first-name terms” with staff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital following the ordeal.
In an article written for Saga Exceptional, Paxman wrote: “I was minding my own business, watching a family of squirrels chasing up and down the tree outside my window, when I was seized by a pain in my chest. I have read enough to know that heart attacks are usually accompanied by pains down the arm, though I couldn’t remember which one.
"Since both seemed to be in working order I assumed I was all right. Not all right enough for my partner, who, instantly, deemed I was in need of attention at the A&E department of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where I was speedily admitted and then examined by a quite charming German-born cardiac specialist.”
Paxman said there was a 24-hour ambulance strike on the day that he was admitted and so he had arrived by taxi at the hospital.
He continued: “At about midnight, my partner remembered we had left the dog at home, and that Derek would be needing a bit of pavement or failing that, the bottom of the outdoor steps of the house of the nearest high-court judge.
“She took a taxi home. She emerged from the taxi to fall straight into a hole dug for gas-mains repairs, breaking her ankle. After she had passed an uncomfortable night at home, the fracture necessitated visit number two to A&E the following day.”
After returning home for the second time, Paxman said his partner was convinced that he was “breathing oddly”.
“Suddenly, with no warning, I was attacked by my chair and thrown against the leg of my desk,” he said. “The back of my head took the full force of the impact. There was an awful lot of blood on the floor and down the back of my shirt.
“Back to A&E. But this time, the one-day strike being over, in a smart new ambulance driven by a Frenchman from Toulon and his Australian oppo.”
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Paxman said he was shown to his “usual bed” and wheeled out for a CT scan before being “wired up to the familiar machines”.
He added: “Some time well after midnight, I was allowed home with my head glued together, looking for all the world like some tonsured ninth-century Irish monk who had got involved in a rather vicious punch-up. It was by now the early hours of Friday the 13th and I thought I was very lucky to have received such excellent treatment from a workforce genuinely world-recruited. In fact, I felt rather proud of them all.”
The full column can be found in the March issue of Saga Magazine, which is out now.
