Comic Relief Gave Me Tb ; Tv Presenter Nick Knowles Put His Exhaustion Down to Middle Age. In, Fact He'd Picked Up Tb On a Charity Trip - and Joined the Growing Number of Britons Unwittingly Carrying This Silent and Deadly Disease

Daily Mail › June 27, 2007

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Summary

THREE months ago, television presenter Nick Knowles sat in the chest clinic at Southampton General Hospital and listened in disbelief as a consultant explained why it was he'd been struggling with fatigue and depression for the past few years.

The diagnosis was as unexpected as it was terrifying.

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Extract

Comic Relief Gave Me Tb ; Tv Presenter Nick Knowles Put His Exhaustion Down to Middle Age. In, Fact He'd Picked Up Tb On a Charity Trip - and Joined the Growing Number of Britons Unwittingly Carrying This Silent and Deadly Disease

Nick, 44, who revels in his image as a highoctane action man, had been laid low by that most old-fashioned of diseases: tuberculosis.

'Hearing I had TB was a huge shock,' says Nick, who presents DIY SOS and is fronting The Big Day, a new series for BBC1. 'Like most people, I thought catching the disease myself. I thought I was immune.' TB had been almost eradicated here in the West. I suppose I'd believed my childhood BCG inoculation would protect me against the disease. As soon as I was given the diagnosis, I knew exactly where I'd caught it. In late 2003, I went to Zambia to film a small slot for Comic Relief. I was covering the TB epidemic in Africa and spent three days with a man who was dying of it.

'I was in th...

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