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Jeremy Clarkson says he was 'unbelievably fat' after giving up smoking

Jeremy Clarkson (Credit: PA)
Jeremy Clarkson (Credit: PA)

Jeremy Clarkson has admitted that he stacked it on after he quit smoking.

The ex-Top Gear presenter made the comments at a screening of the first of the new series of The Grand Tour.

Last year, the presenter said that after smoking ‘half a million’ cigarettes over his life, he ‘didn’t miss them’.

Speaking last night, he asked the audience attending the screening: “Anyone here given up smoking? Anyone else get fat, like unbelievably fat, as a result of it? It’s just terrifying.

“[It’s] horrendous. You could float me over a city to stop a bombing raid.”

Clarkson gave up smoking in August of 2017 on doctor’s orders, after suffering a bout of pneumonia and being admitted to hospital during a family holiday in Majorca.

He also suffered blood poisoning.

In a column for the Sunday Times, a month after giving up, he said: “I was told, by everyone, that I had to stop. Immediately.

Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson pictured in Mongolia (Credit: Amazon Prime Video)
Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson pictured in Mongolia (Credit: Amazon Prime Video)

“I had no choice at the time because the blood poisoning was so bad and I was so racked with the resultant rigors that I couldn’t work a cigarette lighter.

“So now it’s been a month. I’ve pushed it. I’ve got drunk. I’ve stayed up late. I’ve been to bars with smokers and sat outside in a cloud of their exhalations. And so far I haven’t cracked.”

He addd that he had 96 percent of the lung capacity of a man his age, and could ‘breathe out harder and for longer than a non-smoking 40-year-old’.

“In short, getting on for three-quarters of a million fags have not harmed me in any way. I have quite literally defied medical science,” he added.

The Grand Tour returns to Amazon on January 18.

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