Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen saw 'Holly Willoughby as angel' after nearly dying
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has told Yahoo about the moment he saw an angel in the form of Holly Willoughby after nearly dying on the set of Celebrity Bear Hunt.
In conversation with Yahoo UK, the interior designer shared the near-death experience was like a scene from a "disaster movie". The 59-year-old said he "was not breathing" and "blacked out" before Bear Grylls resuscitated him — all while the cameras were still rolling.
But it was Holly Willoughby who made a huge impact on him after the ordeal.
I saw this beautiful blonde with sunlight behind her and lace... And luckily it was Holly!
Making light of the scary situation, Llewelyn-Bowen half joked to Yahoo UK: "I had a nasty moment where I was actually blacked out on the beach and I came to and I saw this beautiful blonde with sunlight behind her and lace... And luckily it was Holly!
"When she leaned forward and said, 'You alright, Lawrence?' I knew it was Holly, it wasn't the angel Gabriel. But the angel Gabriel looks anything like Holly Willoughby, I think the angel Gabriel is gonna be very chuffed to hear that."
Llewelyn-Bowen got into trouble when he was left unable to breathe in shark-infested waters during one of the first Celebrity Bear Hunt challenges. "When you say freak accident, it was an accident that happened to a freak! It's important to stress," he joked.
In all seriousness, he was quick to explain: "I just got too overexcited, there I was — [a] 60-year-old grandfather — let loose on a Costa Rican jungle and in the middle of the sea. In my head I was all sorts of things. I was all sorts of Marvel superheroes — actually, physically I wasn't!"
Joined by his co-star Steph McGovern in the exclusive chat, she didn't completely agree with Llewelyn-Bowen's retelling of what happened. "He'd leapt off a speedboat at speed in a full gear with cameras on him and you'd got to raft in shark-infested waters, like up to that you'd done loads! You were that Marvel hero," She said.
Llewelyn-Bowen delved into the details of how the moment unfolded. He said: "I got stuck under the raft. There was a moment where the waves were doing this and I was underwater for a while. But I could see all the safety divers and everything, I never felt this is where it ends.
"I just felt, well, this is another part of something that I need to confront. I need to get the other side of. And I think in many ways that was where I went wrong. If I'd at that point just gone, 'Oh, right, I've screwed up here.' I think it would have been a bit more straightforward, but actually I didn't.
"I then thought, 'Right, OK', when I'd freed myself from the raft, I then started trying to get up onto the raft. I was throwing myself at the raft, like a kind of very grumpy rhino hitting a wall, and that's when I suddenly realised that I was not breathing.
"I had no oxygen and that's when I blacked out and that's when I suddenly had Bear all over me."
No the TV presenter wasn't terrified as you might expect in the scenario. He said: "I think it must have been much more terrifying for this lot. I felt almost quite peaceful about the fact that everybody was doing absolute [best to help], it was in the midst of this kind of disaster movie with all of this triage going on, all of this Baywatch going on. This lot were just like, what?"
Sheepishly, McGovern admitted she hadn't noticed Llewelyn-Bowen was struggling in the water. "Oh ta!" He quipped in response, "Oh do you know what she was like he's doing it for attention!"
Once the Packed Lunch star did notice Llewelyn-Bowen was in trouble, she naturally started to worry. "Then it was me and Mel B and we both just started to panic for you. We were like, 'Oh my God', this is I mean that's the thing is that you get so immersed."
Llewelyn-Bowen shared his admiration for Celebrity Race Across the World star Kola Bokinni who pushed on with the challenge. He said: "Kola just carried on and did the challenge on his own, which just sort of shows quite how he is the Marvel superhero, for goodness sake."
It's clear the experience taught Llewelyn-Bowen a lot as he come away feeling enriched. "We're show ponies," he said. "What is so joyful about all of this is when the push and the shove come together, which is absolutely what was engineered here [filming Celebrity Bear Hunt], in fact, we can survive as human beings. We can survive as animals."
Celebrity Bear Hunt is now streaming on Netflix.
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