LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) – British television presenter Jeremy Clarkson, best known for hosting the “Top Gear” motoring show, has revealed that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
Clarkson, 66, one of Britain’s most popular and high-profile TV figures, made the disclosure during filming for his Amazon documentary show “Clarkson’s Farm” for episodes which were broadcast on Wednesday.
“I’ve got cancer,” Clarkson tells two of the show’s other main characters in a scene filmed last year. “I had a medical, remember, back in May? I disappeared off the other week and I had a biopsy and it is cancer, and it’s aggressive.”
Clarkson said the disease had been caught “really early” and he had since had an operation to remove 10% of his prostate.
“If I hadn’t have got myself checked out and they hadn’t caught the problem early, this could well have been my last harvest,” he said. “It’s only because they did catch it early, there’s every hope that I’ll be harvesting this farm for many, many years to come.”
Ahead of the episodes’ broadcast, Clarkson posted a video on Instagram on Tuesday, saying they were a “difficult watch”.
“Ordinarily, we try to keep the show bucolic, charming, and cheerful,” he said. “But the final two episodes, which drop in the middle of the night tonight, are … they’re none of those things, really. They’re a difficult watch.
“They’re really, really difficult.”
Clarkson, who has cultivated a reputation for being controversial, gained worldwide fame as presenter of the BBC’s “Top Gear” show but lost his job after he punched a member of the production team in 2015.
He moved to Amazon where he made a new car show with his old show’s co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May, and subsequently began making the successful “Clarkson’s Farm”, which chronicles his often haphazard attempts to run the farm he owns in central England.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. But look, what I wanted to say was: if this is all successful, I’ll see you for season six,” he says from a hospital bed at the end of the final show of the latest series. “And if it isn’t, I won’t. Take care, everyone.”
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Sarah Young)
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