Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that he has taken up exercise and is even considering Mounjaro in a bid to prolong his life after a recent health scare.
The former Top Gear host said he had to ‘do everything in my power to not die’ so that he can spend as much time possible with his granddaughters who bring him such ‘happiness’.
The 64-year-old added that his ‘hilarious’ grandchildren were ‘so wonderful that I want it to go on for as long as is humanly possible’.
His resolution to become fitter and healthier has led him down the path of Pilates, after several trials and errors with different forms of exercises.
He joked in his column for The Sunday Times that he ‘may even try that new anti-fat Ozempic-type drug called “Muntjac”’.
Mounjaro is a diabetes medicine approved by the NHS that makes you feel fuller so you eat less.
Patients in trials lost a fifth of their body weight.
Clarkson shared that ‘so far I’ve relied on luck to keep me alive’.
But he felt that something had to change as he is in ‘sniper’s alley right now’ and was working at ‘dodging the bullets’.
In October, Clarkson revealed he had an urgent heart operation after a ‘sudden deterioration’ in his health.
He admitted he was ‘maybe’ days away from death when he underwent two hour surgery.
Now he is ‘buying time’ which ‘hurts’ and is ‘expensive’ but is ‘better than wasting your money on a new watch’.
‘Thanks to my grandchildren, I’m actively looking forward to’ old age, he added.
However, his journey through exercise has been one of some ‘discomfort’ considering he ‘loathes bicycling’ and finds ‘gyms and everyone in them weird’.
He felt that yoga was ‘even worse’ because you would ‘spend the session looking at someone else’s a**e’ or be asked to ‘pull your leg over your head and keep on pulling until it comes off’.
His partner, Lisa Hogan, had bought an expensive ‘cage full of bars and straps and ingots’ as another avenue to pursue exercise.
However, it proved fruitless as ‘it’s only ever been a dust trap’.
When he realised that ‘organised, indoor exercise was not for me’, he thought walking would be the solution.
Clarkson admitted that this came with certain conditions, namely being ‘not when it’s raining obviously. Or if it’s too cold, or hot. And not if I’m busy’, instead opting for a ‘reasonably temperate Sunday’.
When he finally did get going, he realised his problem was he would ‘walk very slowly’ and only ‘continued to get fatter and more out of breath’.
But his newfound exercise that he emphatically doesn’t ‘unenjoy’ is Pilates, that uses a ‘sex orgy dungeon table, with handcuffs and a top that slides backwards and forwards’.
The machine he refers to is a Pilates Reformer and is used to strengthen and condition the body.
The presenter described the workout like ‘rubbing your tummy and patting your head while playing chess and flying a helicopter’, which meant he would hardly notice the ‘burny’ bit.
‘I’m always surprised when I wake the morning after a session to find my legs are stiff because it doesn’t really feel like I’ve done very much at all’, he admitted.
Clarkson first started to feel unwell after swimming on holiday last year and later found it difficult to climb a flight of stairs.
When Clarkson returned to England, he felt a ‘sudden deterioration began to gather pace’ with him feeling ‘clammy’, ‘tightness in my chest’, and ‘pins and needles in my left arm’.
He went to his doctors who then fitted him with a stent – a wire mesh tube – to his hold his arteries open, to improve blood flow to his heart and relieve his chest pain.
To open the narrowed artery, the surgeon may perform what’s known as an angioplasty.
This involves making a small incision in a patient’s arm or leg, through which a wire with an attached deflated balloon is thread through up to the coronary arteries.
After he was operated on, doctors told him he was perhaps ‘days away’ from death.
Clarkson later revealed that his doctor warned him that ‘a lot’ of his current work will have ‘to go’, and suggested replacing it with golf.
Although he said there was little chance he would stop working, his new diet was ‘horrific’ and the renowned meat-eater said he was struggling to ‘make celery interesting’.
At the time, he was skeptical of his commitment to taking up exercise, believing it to be ‘something you do when travelling from the car to the pub, or from the lunch table to the sitting room’.