Paul O'Grady said covid took him months to recover from and caused his "breath to go".
The presenter, from Tranmere, was shocked by how badly the illness affected him, reports the Mirror. It was so bad, the 67-year-old had to take two months off work to recuperate.
Paul, who has previously had two heart attacks, was so worried about his health he called his cardiologist as he feared he might not ever recover. He said he would have to take breaks when only walking a short distance.
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He said: “I managed to escape Covid until last year and then I caught it. I didn’t half get it; I was really ill. It wiped me out, I was shocked at how bad I was. I was a good two months getting over it. My breath had gone.
“I’d go out to feed the pigs and I’d have to sit down two or three times on my way there, wheezing.”
His heart doctor took an X-ray and diagnosed Paul as a recovering Covid victim. Paul, host of the long-running ITV series For the Love of Dogs, spent the summer recuperating at his Kent farm.
He added: “All I did was sleep. I’d wake up, go downstairs and sit on the couch and then pass out for another four hours. I’d get up, have a cup of tea and then go back to bed and sleep all night, it was very odd.
"I just felt terrible with it. I’ve never slept so much in my life. I’d had all the jabs, but it just finished me off. Thank God I’m over it now, but at one time I thought: ‘Is this ever going to go? Am I ever going to get my energy back and stop being tired?’ It wasn’t pleasant.”
Paul caught the virus in July while in Malta filming the second series of Sally Lindsay’s The Madame Blanc Mysteries.
He said: “We got one day’s filming in the can and that night I felt a bit off and then the next day I felt like I was dying. I had a vicious headache and a terrible cough. I spent nine days in a hotel room going slowly around the bend.
“There were only two channels on the telly. One was the BBC and the other was E!. I know everything about the Kardashians now. I could go on Mastermind and they could be my specialist subject! It was a really lengthy script and I’d learnt it and then of course I didn’t get to do it. I eventually flew back home and I felt a lot better and then after a couple of days I felt shocked and I was back in bed again, I just couldn’t shake it off.”
Paul, who used to perform in drag as acerbic Lily Savage, eventually recovered and is this year back at work playing Miss Hannigan in a nationwide tour of the musical Annie.
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