Jeremy Clarkson has finally quit smoking after a bout of pneumonia – despite puffing his way through 630,000 fags in 43 years
Sun columnist was hospitalised while on holiday in Majorca earlier this month and kicked the habit when side effects left him unable to use a lighter
JEREMY Clarkson has finally quit smoking after a bout of pneumonia – despite puffing his way through 630,000 fags in 43 years.
The former Top Gear host, 57, kicked the habit when the side-effects left him unable to use a cigarette lighter.
When the infection disappeared, he kept going – and has now reached a full month without smoking.
Despite a 40-a-day habit that stretched into five decades, Clarkson said lung tests showed he still had 96 per cent capacity for a person his age.
"I could breathe out harder and for longer than a non-smoking 40-year-old” he wrote in The Sunday Times.
"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.”
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He joked that people have told him to expand his healthy lifestyle by giving up alcohol or going swimming.
“I was invited this weekend to the south coast so I could go swimming” he wrote.
“Swimming? In the English Channel? I’m off the fags, for Christ’s sake. I haven’t gone mad.”
“Swimming in British waters is something you should consider only if your Spitfire’s been shot down.”