Paul Nicholls desperately batted away legions of leeches and creepy crabs as they invaded his gaping wound after his knee cap pinged out following his dramatic fall in Koh Samui.
The former ‘EastEnders’ star was just hours from death over the summer when he was found lying at the bottom on a jungle waterfall with serious injuries after he’d taken himself off on a solo ride on his scooter up the mountain in Thailand and went missing for three days.
It was initially thought the actor had slipped while trying to take a photo of the breath-taking scenery, but he has revealed his accident was a lot more dramatic than that as he had actually been attacked by a pack of wild dogs before plunging 20ft down the waterfall.
Speaking on ‘Loose Women’ on Tuesday (07.11.17), he said: "I had been working for a year and a half solidly – for an actor that’s quite a lot – I thought: ‘I’m going to take nine months off.’ I was having a great time and then that happened. I was on a scooter, no one knew where I was. My friend said: ‘You should always tell someone where you’re going!’
"It was 6.30am, I’d be in the gym already. I lived halfway up the mountain, I went to the top to take pictures. I came around the corner, there were about 15 wild dogs. One pack had made a kill and the blood attracted the rest of them. The nearer I got to the waterfall, one of them chomped on top of my foot. It drew blood and then he ran off with my flip flop.
"I pulled into the waterfall and thought the only way I can go is down but I didn’t realise how much I was bleeding. As soon as I touched the rock, I just went over.
"It was a 20 ft drop and my knee hit something on the way down. It looked like something just flew out of my knee – part of my knee cap – and then I hit the water. Where my knee cap should have been, there was just a hole and I was holding it."
But the 38-year-old star’s nightmare didn’t end there as blood-thirsty critters living in the murky water scrambled towards the hole in his knee and tried to feast on his flesh.
Paul – who didn’t eat or drink for three days – was found by a local from a nearby village who spotted his rented motorbike in the jungle and had reported it to the emergency services.
He was found semi-conscious and with hypothermia.
It took two hours to take the British actor to nearby International Koh Samui Hospital, before he was transferred and underwent reconstructive surgery on his knee.
Paul Nicholls recalls horror of Thai waterfall accident
