Richard Bacon praises Piers Morgan for offering support as he battled life-threatening illness

'When you face the stark reality of death, you also see the best side of strangers and also people you know'

TV presenter Richard Bacon has commended Piers Morgan for reaching out to his wife while he was facing a severe lung infection that made him “stare death in the face”.

The former Blue Peter host fell ill on a flight from Los Angeles to London in July 2018 and was subsequently put in an induced coma while doctors battled to save his life.

Speaking ahead of a guest presenting role on Good Morning Britain on Thursday, Bacon explained how the illness gave him a new perspective on life, allowing him to see the best in people such as Morgan, who he has previously argued with on Twitter.

“When you face the stark reality of death, you also see the best side of strangers and also people you know, including Piers [Morgan], who reached out to my wife and offered support.”

The 43-year-old TV star went on to praise the NHS for their services during that time, explaining that “the system is designed to offer help to everyone, which is not the same in America, where I live. My outcome would have been very different if this had happened to me in the States”.

Bacon added that had he been treated in the US, he would have been “bankrupt” by now due to the “ludicrously expensive” prices for medical aid.

“So, if you don’t have proper insurance, and you get the sort of lung infection I had, you would have been on the hook for hundreds of thousands,” he continued.

“Yet in Britain, you just walk out and say bye, thanks for saving my life. I thanked the doctor and he said, ‘You don’t have to thank me. I’m just doing my job.’ That’s the difference.”

Bacon said the whole experience has changed his outlook “quite significantly”.

“On the one hand I’m more impatient to get things done,” he explained. “You are faced with the reality of things actually being finite; you stare death in the face, it makes you get on with a lot of things in life in a much faster way.

“Death goes from something very distant to being something very real. I want to get things done I want to get done.”