British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson off work with pneumonia

[August 07, 2017]  By Emma Rumney

LONDON (Reuters) - British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who gained worldwide fame as presenter of the BBC motoring show "Top Gear", will be off work for "quite some time" after falling ill with pneumonia while on a family holiday.

The star tweeted on Friday that he was "in a wheelchair, connected up to tubes, in a hospital" in Mallorca, Spain after catching the infection, which causes fluid to build up in the lungs.

"I'll be out of action for quite some time apparently," Clarkson said on Sunday in a post on DriveTribe, a discussion website founded by Clarkson and co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May.

The trio now work on Amazon's "The Grand Tour", another motoring show filming its second season, after departing the BBC following a dispute between Clarkson and a member of the "Top Gear" production team.

Hammond is also recovering from a fractured knee after he crashed a sports car while filming for the show on June 10. The presenter had surgery to insert a metal plate and pins, resulting in what he described as his "Swiss Army Knee".

(Reporting by Emma Rumney; Editing by Alistair Smout and Robin Pomeroy)

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