Jeremy Clarkson contemplates doing "everything for the last time" as Diddly Squat star battles health issues

Jeremy Clarkson has given an update on his health as he contemplates doing "everything for the last time" following his recent near-death heart problems. The former Top Gear star said he is dealing with adopting a lifestyle he broadly mocked for years - avoiding fatty and processed foods.

Having turned 65 last month, the Clarkson's Farm star told The Sunday Times he was coming to terms with growing old - including having regular medical exams.

“I’ve got my medical coming up next week, where you have the indignity of a man putting himself in you, in order to check your prostate,” he said.

Last year, a consultant told Clarkson he might have been days from death before a life-saving op — an angioplasty to insert stents — following a heart episode while on holiday in the Seychelles with partner, Lisa.

After diving off a boat, Clarkson struggled to swim to shore in the way he usually would, explaining: “I always try and dive off a boat on every holiday because at my age you never know when your last dive is going to be, or your last anything, for that matter.

"When I finally reached the beach my lungs were full of water and I realised I can’t do it any more.” Back home in Chadlington he woke feeling 'clammy, with a tightness in my chest'."

His arm later froze with pins and needles and he called an ambulance and, following a scan at a hospital in Oxford, the motoring maestro was told two vital arteries were occluded. Doctors inserted two stents and told him to change his lifestyle, including adopting a healthier diet.

“I’ve eaten grasshoppers and tarantulas, and I once had a seven-day egg that had a bit of beak and an eye in it," he told the Times. "All of those things were pretty awful. But nothing, nothing, gets close to the gut-retching dreadfulness of wheatgrass."

Now, he said, each day he reminds himself whatever he’s doing, it could be for the last time, and added: “When you die, you’ve done everything in your life for the last time, be it clean your teeth or go for a walk with the dog or whatever it might be, you’ve always done everything for the last time.

"I’ve definitely skied for the last time. I was in Zermatt on a beautiful day with magnificent snow and I suddenly thought, I hate this, why do I do it? I’ve never been back and I never will. When we filmed in Zimbabwe for the final Grand Tour I thought that would be the last time I would power-slide a car. I thought, that’s it.”

The interview came ahead of the launch of series four of Clarkson’s Farm, which starts on Amazon Prime on May 23.