Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw had to be injected with Valium while suffering from heat exhaustion on the BBC’s Sport Relief trek.
Nick, left, was part of a group of celebrities, including BBC Breakfast’s Louise Minchin, Judge Rinder and EastEnders actress Samantha Womack, who trekked and cycled 100 miles across the Namibian desert last month.
But they had trained for the sub zero temperatures of a Mongolian lake, before the expedition switched to the 40C heat of the desert amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Nick says: “I prepared for it for months, but for ice skating. It changed to 43C the first day we started.”
Nick was instructed to sit out one day on doctor’s orders.
He says: “The doctor said, ‘You looked weird’. They pulled me as I got heat exhaustion.
"It was properly the most scary and most traumatic thing I have ever experienced.
"It brought on like a horrible physical panic attack that just went on from six o'clock until 11pm. I was freaking out.
"The good thing was they had to inject me with Valium.
"It was like a light switch. I was like, ‘I feel fine. I want to go out’.
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was like being in an oven for a week.”
He called his mum, and watching the footage in the BBC’s The Heat Is On documentary, available on iPlayer, he tells the Table Manners podcast: “She nearly had a heart attack.”
But the trek helped raise almost £40million for Sport Relief.
Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at webcelebs@trinitymirror.com or call us direct 0207 29 33033
