I’m A Celeb star Richard Madeley almost DIED as a child
I’M A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! star Richard Madeley almost died as a child – after being struck down by tuberculosis.
The 65-year-old – who assured fans yesterday that he is as “fit as a fiddle” following a medical scare – has recovered from a childhood ordeal, which at one point saw him ask: “Mummy, am I going to die?”
Madeley, who left the Castle in the early hours of Thursday morning, said: “I had pneumonia when I was five and nearly died. The reason I remember this so clearly was that my mother brought my bed downstairs to the living room, and the custom then was this only ever happened one step before death.
“This was why, when my father died of cancer, he refused right to the end to have his bed downstairs. When I was ill, I couldn’t sit up and had this long, thin spout which I had to drink from.
“One day, very alarmed, I said to my mother, ‘Mummy, am I going to die?’. This must have been on my birthday because I remember mum had a cake with candles on it, and I was too weak to blow them out.”