The Traitors villain Paul Gorton left ‘screaming and crying’ in hospital after terrifying health scare

 in an exclusive interview: "My lung collapsed four weeks before going on the show,"

"I was recovered in time for the show but it was from a football injury, someone banged into me.

"My lung collapsed. I was outside A&E, screaming and crying, and I was on morphine and CAT scans and all that type of stuff.

"I nearly had an emergency operation to re-inflate my lung because it had depressed so much, and yeah, it was chaos."

He added: "They also couldn't give me the painkillers that I needed to be on because it affected my body in a different way.

"So I went through all this type of stuff, and then in the back of my brain, I was going, 'Oh my God, in four weeks I'm actually going on The Traitors.'"

Fortunately, Paul recovered enough to participate in The Traitors, but his injury continued to weigh on his mind during the mission challenges.

During the first challenge of the show, Paul had to swim across a lake and assemble puzzle pieces on the water.

However, he was worried that his lung would collapse again, stating that it was the most "strenuous exercise I had done since the injury".

"I was thinking, 'Oh, my God, am I gonna be able to do this? Is it gonna collapse again?' because it can just collapse again on its own," he added. 

The TV villain decided not to tell anyone on the show about his health concerns, as he believed it felt "a bit like a sympathy story, sob story".