Tony Blackburn says if sepsis wasn't caught so soon he 'wouldn't be here'
The radio legend was hospitalised earlier this year
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Tony Blackburn has said if his sepsis hasn't been caught early he "wouldn’t be here".
The radio DJ, 80, was unwell earlier this year, citing a chest infection at the time and later telling fans that he’d been admitted to hospital with sepsis and pneumonia.
Tony Blackburn's sepsis battle
Opening up about his health battle on Good Morning Britain, Blackburn said he was rushed to hospital after collapsing at his home.
"I think probably if they hadn’t caught it soon, I wouldn’t be here," he said.
The star said his whole family were round his bed and he made light of the serious situation. He joked: "I thought, 'God! Don’t want them to get my money!'"
Blackburn said before he fell ill he had been feeling a little "under the weather" but pushed on with work, something he loves.
"I was doing shows with pneumonia," he told hosts Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard.
"Because it's very difficult to know if you have got it or not. I felt just a little bit under the weather I suppose a bit. But I was going on and doing the shows and enjoying them. I didn't realise I was so unwell."
When Blackburn explained that getting sepsis was nothing to do with being fit, Shephard mentioned the fact that the DJ did his game show Tipping Point.
"Or over-exuberance and celebrating with me?" he chimed in.
"Probably being on Tipping Point isn’t the best thing to do if you’re feeling under the weather!" Blackburn quipped, as the trio all laughed.
What is sepsis?
The NHS says that sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection.
"It happens when your immune system overreacts to an infection and starts to damage your body's own tissues and organs," it says on its website.
"You cannot catch sepsis from another person. Sepsis is sometimes called septicaemia or blood poisoning."
Read more: Tony Blackburn
Watch: Greg James misses BBC Radio 1 show as wife undergoes surgery
