Jeremy Clarkson had 'no idea' he was close to death

The star has heart surgery last year

Jeremy Clarkson "had no idea" he was close to death last year.

The 65-year-old presenter underwent life-saving heart surgery in October to have two stents fitted and he admitted he had no idea how ill he was, and the latest series of 'Clarkson's Farm' will see how his plans for harvest and launching his pub The Farmer's Dog suddenly went awry as his health declined.

Asked if he realised he was at death's door, he told The Sun newspaper: "I had no idea, no idea at all. I just thought, 'Well, I am working very hard'. But it was very tricky.

"The rest is, 'Oh, here he is farming and Kaleb and Charlie and Gerald and Lisa - all the usual suspects.

"Then suddenly, in the last two programmes, it just goes off like a bomb'.

"You can see me becoming more and more ill as the days go on, because I just lose my sense of humour, lose my ability to stay calm.

"I get in a proper old panic.

"I didn't know at the time. I knew I wasn't being me. I was trying to get the pub open for the August Bank Holiday weekend and, at the same time, doing the harvest on the farm. And it's very well documented I ended up in hospital with a heart problem. "

The former 'Top Gear' host admitted it was an "incredibly stressful" time and not the best idea trying to launch the pub at harvest time.

He added: "When you see how stressful it was trying to do those two things . . . there's simply no sleep.

"I was coming back knackered from a day trying to get the pub open, and having to get straight into the tractor to do grain carting through the night.

"You can't make the harvest wait. If it's dry, ready and fit, as they say in farming - if the wheat and barley are fit - you've got to get out there. God, it was knackering.

"And the amount of things that went wrong in the two days in the opening weekend . . . I know everyone's going to say, 'You made that up, it can't possibly be that disastrous'.

"But it was. It was one thing after another after another.

"It was incredibly stressful. That was idiotic to try and do what I tried to do over those weekends."

Meanwhile, Jeremy praised the benefits of weight loss injections but admitted he should cut down on his drinking to be in the best shape possible.

He said: "The Mounjaro has been an extraordinary game changer, though. I'm definitely sticking with it.

"I lost about a stone and a half, maybe a little bit more, and then it's just levelled out now.

"I think I eat pretty well, I just drink too much - that's the essence of it.

"If I could just do something about that, but then I think, 'What's the point?'."