'It's a no brainer': Jeremy Clarkson is urging men to get checked for prostate cancer after two brushes with death in a matter of months

Jeremy Clarkson is urging men to get checked for prostate cancer after surviving two brushes with death in less than a year.

The 66-year-old is in remission from the disease, after also pulling through an emergency heart scare.

'I am without a doubt, officially, the world's luckiest man,' he said.

The brutal sequence of events began with emergency heart surgery in 2024, where he was fitted with two life-saving stents (small mesh tubes that help keep arteries open).

Then came the cancer blow. A malignant tumour was found in his prostate in August, leading to a secret operation right in the middle of his harvest.

'It was an aggressive type of cancer,' he said. 'It could have spread, it could have gone into the pancreas... and that would have been trouble.'

Now he's using his own experience to deliver a blunt message: 'This is why I have to say to everybody who's reading this, please, please, please go and get checked.

'It's not uncomfortable, it's not undignified. And it's a no-brainer. I did, and that's why I'm sitting here talking to you 11 months down the line.' 

Clarkson's diagnosis came after a routine medical in May 2025.

A blood test showed unusually high prostate-specific antigen levels, leading to scans and a biopsy.

The treatment involved high-intensity focused ultrasound, zapping the affected area without damaging surrounding tissue. It was the same state-of-the-art treatment given to former prime minister Lord Cameron, which avoids side-effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence. The aftermath, Clarkson told The Sunday Times, was its own kind of hell.

'Catheters are terrible all the time, but trying to sleep with one is just a nightmare. You feel like you're sort of running a brewery, all these taps and pipes... then an extraordinary amount of urine comes out of you in the night, when you've got no control over it. But it was a small price to pay.'

In the closing scenes of the fifth series of his show, Clarkson's Farm, he is seen being bundled into an ambulance, headed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital.

From a hospital bed, he explains to viewers that 'some of the treatment has gone awry'.

Clarkson said this was his 'own fault', as it was caused by a blunder with his heart medication: 'I'd been on drugs for heart issues and I had to come off them during the cancer treatment.

'Two or three weeks after the cancer operation, I thought I'd better put myself back on those blood thinners. Big mistake.'

He has now joined forces with Lord Cameron and Soho House's Nick Jones to spread awareness. He said, with trademark bluntness: 'Prostate cancer is now more common even than breast cancer. I don't want to belittle breast cancer in any way but really, to check your breasts, you've just got to play with them...'

The Daily Mail is campaigning for better diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, and the introduction of a targeted screening programme to end needless deaths.

Routine screening is carried out on the NHS only for higher-risk groups. Clarkson says if he wasn't checked privately his cancer would not have been detected early.

The solution, he says, may be 'a little light lying'. 'If you were to say to your doctor, I've been getting up to pee every night for a week, he is then duty-bound to test you.'