Nick Knowles has said that during filming his current series, he had a difficult experience that left him stuck in the Grand Canyon after gaining weight during lockdown.
The 60-year-old TV host trekked into Arizona’s famous rock formation for his series, Into the Grand Canyon with Nick Knowles, but things got a bit too close for comfort at one point.
Nick gained four stone under lockdown and was 18 stone during filming, which he acknowledges put him in a hazardous situation.
‘You have to go through ‘horizontal chimneys’ which are for real cavers, who are like whippets – they’re tiny, skinny people,’ he said.
‘But my director was like, “Go through here, and there’s a cave on the other side which we can talk in”.
‘But halfway along, I was like, “I can’t do this, this is just too much.” I had palpitations, it was seriously terrifying.’
His concerns were completely justified.
“There was a point where I was wedged, I couldn’t get my shoulders through and I was wedged,’ he added while appearing on Radio X.
While he confesses to becoming stressed, he ultimately managed to calm himself down.
‘My heart started to go and I was, “Breath, breath, breath”,’ he added.
He remembered the caver making a joke with him and asking how Nick was feeling about his life choices at the time.
While he made it out safely, it appears that the event will not be forgotten anytime soon.
In 2020, the DIY SOS star opened out about his weight gain, revealing that he had ‘indulged more’ during lockdown, as well as not being able to attend to the gym for months because they were all closed.
While he was a target of teasing after donning a wetsuit on TV when a new series of his programme hit screens, he stated he could be ‘large after lockdown’, but ‘didn’t care’.
He also said that many individuals were’self-conscious’ about their weight gain at the time, but that seeing him appearing ‘hairy, bearded, and big’ would have been a relief.
Into the Grand Canyon with Nick Knowles begins tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.