Richard Bacon still feeling effects of coma and thinks about death 'every day'

Richard Bacon has admitted he still thinks about death "every day" after narrowly escaping with his life from an illness which put him in a coma for nine days.

The former Blue Peter presenter, 48, revealed his brush with death still haunts him.

It comes after the on-screen star quit his job in 2018 for another career path - but a day later, he was put in an induced coma with doctors expecting him to die.

He had battled a severe case of pneumonia in both lungs and was placed into a coma after doctors decided it was the only way to give him a chance to pull through.

After nine days, Richard awoke and fully recovered but opened up about the lasting effects.

The game show host said he thinks about death "more or less every day. It sort of hovers around my life".

He said his experience "took death from being a kind of slightly abstract concept to not an abstract concept".

'It's probably affecting my life all the time", he admitted to The Guardian in 2021, from his work to his relationship with his children, wife and extended family. "I think it makes me work harder, makes me more impatient, more ambitious."

Richard had fallen ill on a flight back to the UK from Los Angeles and was rushed to A&E at Lewisham hospital.

Months later, Richard returned to the hospital, where he met the consultant charged with his care, who told him: "We expected you to die.

"You were lying on the hospital trolley and we were all surrounding you, you're crashing, and all your signs are terrible. And [your blood oxygen level] went to 58, you turned blue. I thought you were going to go into cardiac arrest and die."

Richard has since gone on to enjoy a successful television career and in recent years presented Good Morning Britain.