BBC presenter woke from bicycle horror crash coma thinking he was an American racing driver from the fifties

A BBC presenter who nearly died in a horror bicycle crash woke up from his coma believing it was 1952 and he was an American racing driver.

Will Glennon broke every rib, punctured a lung and suffered a massive head injury after colliding head-on with a Tesco delivery van travelling at 40mph.

The last thing Will, a presenter on BBC Points West, remembers is finishing work on the day of the crash - and waking up in intensive care 12 weeks later thinking he was in 1950s America.

The 44-year-old said: "They tell me they asked me three questions: ‘Where are you? What year is it? And what do you do for a living?’

"I said I was in America, it was 1952 and I was a racing driver.

"Apparently I believed this was the case for some time, a week or so, I looked around at all the medical equipment around me and said 'Who's paying for this?'

"It took a while, and I can only now remember things from about the fourth week after the crash, it took many months for the fog to clear, it was a very slow process."

The crash happened as Will rode his bike near his home in Marlborough, Wilts., in October 2014.

Will – who was travelling at 30mph - said: “It was a combined impact of 70mph.

"I broke every rib, some of them in two places, punctured a lung and suffered a huge head injury.

"If I had not been wearing a helmet, I would have died there and then."

He was treated at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU) at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, where doctors told his wife Emily he probably wouldn't survive.

He added: “When I was in that coma, it was traumatic. But not really for me because I didn't know, but for my wife Emily.

"At one point after a couple of days, they took her to one side and said that they didn't think I would survive the weekend and she should prepare herself for me to die that weekend.