Paul Sinha has recalled the moment he suffered two heart attacks at the Edinburgh Fringe but ‘didn’t want to cause a scene’.
The 55-year-old comedian and star of The Chase has opened up before about the health scare he faced during a 2023 run at the arts festival in Scotland.
‘It was a bit of a wild show. It was very much about my life as a gay, disabled son of immigrants, but it was quite a political show, and it was a big show,’ he said on Tuesday’s episode of Good Morning Britain.
‘I was in a room with 400 people in and it all got on top of me and I had two heart attacks in the same Edinburgh Fringe. Two! Week number one and week number three.’
The first happened while he was ‘shaking the hand of Levi Roots’, and Paul decided to excuse himself rather than get someone to ring for an ambulance.
‘I didn’t want to cause a scene. I didn’t want to call an ambulance. I thought I might as well just get into a cab to take me to the nearest hospital as quick as possible, which is what I did,’ he revealed.
He was discharged without a proper diagnosis, but even after the second one Paul – who described the first heart attack as ”not like anything I’ve ever felt before’ – was still determined to continue his Fringe run.
He recalled: ‘The first time they didn’t diagnose it properly, so they sent me home and the second time they said, “These have been two small heart attacks.”
‘And I said, “Can I carry on?” And they said, “We’re not going to tell you what to do”. So I carried on. But looking back on it, that’s not the right thing to do.
‘I know why I did it, because of the Edinburgh Festival, and I didn’t want to lose a huge amount of money.’
Despite being primarily known as a pro quizzer on The Chase, Paul – who is a former GP – has spent three decades honing his craft as a comedian.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, and he admitted on GMB that he makes his ‘comedy goldmine’ condition – which is a neurogenerative disease which affects both motor and non-motor systems – part of his stand-up shows.
‘I do lots of jokes about it. It’s as simple as that. You deal with the cards you’ve been dealt, and if you’ve been given a comedy goldmine, as Parkinson’s is, then you deal with it,’ Paul quipped.
‘I mean, as far as I’m aware, no other comedians at the Edinburgh Fringe will be talking about their own struggles with neurological degeneration so might as well be me.’
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV1.
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