Dan Walker has clarified in spite of the public health scares he’s had in the past he isn’t battling now.
The Channel 5 newsreader, also well-known for his Classic FM radio slot, took to Twitter to set the record straight. “Just for clarity… there was no secret / mysterious health battle,” he told almost 800,000 followers.
“I was away because I was doing some filming for a new show on Channel 5 with Helen Skelton and then I had a holiday with the family,” he explained. “I did tear some ligaments in my wrist back in May but I mentioned that on here which makes it neither ‘secret’ nor ‘mysterious’.”
He then cheekily quipped: “It did stop me playing golf for a few months!” His comments come after he read an article about himself suggesting that his absence could have been a “cryptic message”.
It’s not difficult to see why fans have feared for his welfare, as he’s had multiple health scares in the past. Back in 2012, he had a cancer scare so terrifying that he recalled having an “out of body experience” as he tried to tackle it.
He received an incorrect diagnosis from a hospital in Poland after being rushed there while reporting on the UEFA European Championships, complaining of a “lump” in his stomach.
Dan told Kate Thornton on her White Wine Question Time podcast that he’d received the horror news in the early hours while lying in a hospital bed.
“At about two o’clock in the morning, a Polish consultant came in and told me that I had cancer because they’d seen some shadows on my kidney, and he used the word tumour,” he explained.
He got the all-clear from a different consultant just six hours later, but it was still a gruelling experience, as eight litres of saline were pumped into him to kickstart his ailing kidney function.
“My head was about twice [its normal] size,” the horrified presenter recalled.
“Every part of my body was swollen and I couldn’t even get my boxer shorts on.”
