Covid UK: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty, 61, thanks fans for ‘praying for me’

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty struggled for breath as he thanked his fans for ‘praying for me’ as he battles pneumonia and coronavirus in hospital. 

Doctors have placed the 61-year-old Celebrity Big Brother winner on oxygen to help him fight the infection after he was admitted to hospital. 

Speaking to the Star, Doherty said he was warned he ‘may not wake up’ before he was rushed to hospital after suffering from sweats and pain.

He told the paper his condition got worse but he had initially not wanted to go to hospital – and relented when his wife Roseanne Doherty called 999.

In a video posted to Facebook last night, Doherty thanked his fans for praying for him and urged people to keep their distance as he warned: ‘This is not a joke.’

He added: ‘Be lucky, be safe and God bless you all. Look after yourself.’    

Doherty’s son Simey had written on Facebook: ‘Can everybody please keep my father in prayer as I was just speaking to him and he has got double pneumonia. Also claw seen in the lungs and tested positive for Covid.’ 

And his wife Roseanne added: ‘Please will everything pray for my Paddy – he has been taken in to hospital. He is not very well [sic].’   

Doherty told the Star: ‘I was getting worse. I had sweats, pains, exhaustion and headaches. I was in a bit of a mess.

‘The paramedics arrived and said they needed to take me into hospital but I didn’t want to go but they insisted because they were really worried for me.’ 

He added: ‘They said ‘If you don’t go in you may not wake up tomorrow’.’

Doherty also told the publication that he had nothing but praise from the fantastic work of the NHS. He said: ‘Apart from family I’ve never felt love like it. It’s extraordinary. I feel I’m in safe hands.’ 

In March 2019, Doherty had a five-and-a-half-hour operation to treat his prostate cancer after suffering excruciating pains when he urinated and passing blood.

He had his first operation at Manchester Royal Infirmary and said at the time how he had considered taking his own life because of the pain from the cancer.

Doherty is a British former bare-knuckle boxer who rose to national fame when he featured on My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, a Channel 4 documentary about travellers.

He then won the eighth series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2011 after beating Kerry Katona in the final. Other housemates that series included Jedward and Amy Childs.

Doherty also appeared with another housemate, Sally Bercow, on the Channel 5 documentary When Paddy Met Sally which saw them stay at each other’s homes.

Meanwhile it emerged the coronavirus R number in the UK has remained largely unchanged since last week and is now estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.3. 

Figures released by the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) also put R between 1.1 and 1.3 in England.

Last week R was between 1 and 1.4 in the UK, and between 1.1 and 1.4 in England. The R refers to the number of people that an infected person will pass the virus on to.

But experts advising the Government have said that areas that have been under tougher restrictions for a longer period of time – including east of England, London, and the south east – are showing ‘a slight decline in the number of people infected’.

However, they warned that regions such as the north west and south west continue to see infections rise, where the spread of the new UK variant may be playing a role.