TV legend Anne Diamond rushed to hospital after her health condition caused paramedics to 'turn white'

Journalist, broadcaster, and children's health campaigner Anne Diamond has told her fans that she was rushed to hospital after suffering from a worrying health symptom - and she’s still waiting to find out what exactly caused it.

The TV icon, aged 69, has a broadcasting career that spans around 45 years, but she was forced to step away from being on-screen recently after suffering from dangerously high blood pressure. Her blood pressure levels were so high that paramedics who were giving her medical attention “turned white" and rushed her to hospital for further medical care.

Speaking on her GB News show earlier today (Saturday May 18), Diamond, who will celebrate her milestone 70th birthday in September, said: “Some of you have been asking why I’ve been off. The reason I've been off was a lot to do with stonkingly high blood pressure. And while that wasn't the whole problem, and I am still yet to get a proper diagnosis as to what was going on, it was an enormous part of the problem.”

This health scares comes a year after mum-of-five Diamond, who was made an OBE for her service to children's health in 2023, was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy as part of her treatment. Announcing her diagnosis in June 2023, she said she had received the diagnosis the same day as finding out she was to be made OBE.

Diamond continued: “I didn't realise that I had such incredibly high blood pressure. When the paramedics saw it they sort of went white and said ‘well, you're off to hospital.’ And that was that. It just made me think because wherever you go nowadays, in the doctor's surgery or in a pharmacy, there's always a notice up about it. And it doesn't matter how young you think you are, you ought to take your blood pressure. It's an easy thing to do and all the rest of it, but it's clearly an enormous thing too.

She went on: “I just think that maybe there is a lot more sort of campaigning to be done, I've done a sort of crash course in the last month. But high blood pressure is a real problem, and probably low blood pressure is as well. But your blood pressure is massively important. And the younger you are keeping an eye on it, the less likely you are to have any big problems later in life. Obviously it impacts absolutely everything so maybe we should all be a little bit more blood pressure aware.”

She then reassured her fans and said she was feeling much better now after having a few weeks off and that she had been able to get her blood pressure down with the correct medical help. She then went on to speak about the difficult year she has had following her cancer diagnosis: "It's been a fight against breast cancer. That's what it's been. It's been a long journey. And five months later, I'm still not at the end of the journey, but I'm through it enough to come back to work."

If Diamond does campaign about blood pressure issues, this would not be the first time she has campaigned around health problems. She became involved in raising awareness of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS, also known as cot death), after her third child Sebastian died from the syndrome in 1991. She fronted the "Back to Sleep", campaign to ask parents to ensure their babies slept on their backs. Incidents of SIDS in the UK fell from more than 2,000 per year to around 300, a drop which has been attributed to the campaign.