Tim Healy was in a coma "for days" when he fell unwell while shooting ‘Benidorm’ last year.
The 65-year-old actor – who is known for playing cross-dresser Lesley in the ITV sitcom – was left fighting for his life in a Spanish hospital last spring when he contracted a illness while filming the show but, although it was touch and go at first, his wife Joan Anderton managed to coax him out of the unconscious state by playing his son Matthew’s band The 1975’s music on loop.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper "I was in a coma for days, so obviously I don’t remember any of it. She [Jo] was in bits, as you can imagine. She said that while I was in a coma she kept playing my son’s music to me, she had his album on a loop. After a few days I started smiling and then I came round – so my son’s music brought me back to the land of the living."
Although he’s a major character in the sitcom, Tim’s hospital dash has meant he wasn’t able to finish shooting the forthcoming series and he was subsequently written out temporarily.
He explained: "I came off set that day and then went to hospital, that was it. I don’t know how Derren [scriptwriter Derren Litten] wrote me out. I’m going to have to wait and see it like viewers. There were complications at the hospital and I ended up in intensive care."
He may have had a brush with death less than a year ago but Tim is feeling "better now" and has already told bosses that he’s willing to return to the Spanish resort this year to shoot series 10 – providing it gets re-commissioned.
He said: "I’m feeling so much better, I’m on the mend now. It’s been a long few months and we’ve really been through the wringer as a family, but we’ve come out the other side and I’m starting to work again. There’s no holding me back. I lost about three stone, which is good but I wouldn’t recommend losing it the way I did. I’ve put a stone back on, but where I was a pit bull terrier, I’m now a sparrow. I’m a lightweight now …
"ITV and everyone at ‘Benidorm’ have been so amazing to me this last year with all my health problems. We’re a family on that show, there’s a loyalty there, so if they want me, and a 10th series is commissioned then I want to be there. I’ve got my bags packed already, I’m itching to be back there! I love that job and I love ‘Benidorm’."
As well as Matthew, 27, Tim also has 16-year-old son Louis with his ex-wife Denise Welch.
Tim Healy was in coma ‘for days’
