Fans of Netflix hit “The Great British Bake Off” will be surprised to learn that host Alison Hammond has been hospitalized after experiencing heart issues in the midst of a live TV broadcast.
While in the midst of hosting U.K. morning show “This Morning,” reported BBC News, Hammond abruptly left the set while appearing to clutch her chest.
Her co-host, Dermot O’Leary, took over the segment, later telling viewers that Hammond had “feeling a little unwell,” adding, “she’s just had to duck out. Hopefully she’ll be back.”
Hammond did not return, and was reportedly rushed to hospital directly from the set.
Alison Hammond’s Health Scare
On Friday, October 2, Hammond shared an update via Instagram Stories.
“Hello, my lovelies,” Hammond said in a video she posted later that day.
In the clip — which is overlaid with the joking words “Anything to have a day off” — Hammond is lying in a hospital bed, wearing a medical gown.
“I know you’re all worried about me. Honestly, I am fine, first of all,” Hammond tells her followers.
“But I’m getting my old ticker checked out,” she continued. “I had a little bit of a palpitation, and now I’m getting it all checked out. But I think I’m OK. I’m hoping it was just a little panic attack or something like that. I love you all. Thank you for all your lovely messages.”
She continued by addressing viewers of “This Morning,” saying, “I’m so sorry I left you. I would never normally do that. I would never leave a TV show, so you know I wasn’t very well.”
She added: “But hopefully I’m going to be all right. The doctors are so lovely, and they’re checking me out, and hopefully everything’s going to be fine. Everything is fine, look. I’m rocking it. Look how good I look!”
Another ‘Bake Off’ Health Scare
Hammond’s emergency hospitalization comes just two months after former “Greart British Bake Off” judge Prue Leith experienced a health scare of her own.
Back in August, the 86-year-old Leith — who announced her exit from “The Great British Bake Off” in March — was hospitalized after experiencing a migraine so severe she feared she might be having a stroke.
“A few weeks ago, staying in Yorkshire, I had a migraine attack,” Leith wrote.”It followed a familiar path. First, I can see only half of whatever I’m looking at,” she wrote in an essay for The Oldie (excerpted by The Sun), explaining she will typically see “a bright circle of flickering, coloured lights in the upper right field of vision.”
However, her symptoms were accompanied by a slurring of speech that alarmed her husband, John Playfair.
“This time, my incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words convinced John I was having a stroke,” she wrote.
“I tried to tell him it was just a migraine, but I couldn’t string two words together.”
Her husband took her to the ER; happily, a CT scan confirmed she was just having a migraine, and had not suffered a stroke.
“I knew all along that all I had was a migraine. But since the speech problem is a classic symptom of a stroke, and my extreme old age being a time when mini-strokes are common, everyone was determined to be safe not sorry,” Leith added.
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‘Great British Bake Off’ Star Rushed to Hospital After Health Scare on Live Television