Jeremy Clarkson has revealed what could have been his final thoughts when he was in an aeroplane that was struck by lightning and death looked imminent.
The 64-year-old opened up about the terrifying ordeal in a candid new opinion piece.
The Top Gear legend revealed that while he was of course scared for his life, he also – in a bizarre twist – experienced overwhelming feelings of annoyance.
The TV personality explained: ‘I was in a plane that had been built in Russia in the Fifties and used by the Angolan Air Force before being bought by a ramshackle airline in Cuba, and we were flying into Havana when it was struck by lightning. This caused it to turn upside down and start plummeting towards Earth.
So how did I feel knowing I was about to die?
‘Well, here’s the funny thing. Instead of air vents, there were little Pifco-style fans above each seat and, as the plane turned over, my hair got caught in the blades.
‘So that’s what I was thinking as the engines screamed and the pilot tried to regain control: “This is really annoying”,’ the journalist said in an opinion piece for The Sun.
The motor journalist, who was recently voted as the sexiest man in the UK in a poll by an online dating site, has spoken about this near-death experience before.
In a 2009 article for The Times, the journalist again expressed frustration during this ordeal as the contents of the toilets were emptied into the cabin when the plane flipped upside down.
‘You didn’t think about the lavatories did you? When the plane is the wrong way up, they are too, and that means they empty their entire contents, including some home-made tampons, onto the roof.
He again spoke about his head smacking into the fan: ‘What you get above each seat is a small Pifco fan, and because I was upside down, hanging by my seatbelt, the top of my head was actually in the blades.
‘It was very uncomfy, having a haircut while the wrong way up, in a tropical thunderstorm and knowing that if the pilot regained control, I’d be getting a brown shower.’
Jeremy may have been happy to now make jokes about this scary experience but has shown his softer side on his Amazon TV series Clarkson’s Farm, which recently changed the law.
In season three of the show, the journalist cried after several piglets died on the farm.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, he said: ‘You don’t say, “Let’s buy some pigs and hope they die,” I’ve always liked pigs.’
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