TV PRESENTER MARK Cagney has revealed he suffered a stroke at the start of the year.  

Cagney, who hosted Ireland AM for nearly 20 years, said he suffered a pulmonary embolism as well as two strokes in the incident. 

Speaking on Newstalk today, Cagney described how he fell to his knees in a supermarket as he suffered the life-threatening illness. He had been speaking to a shop assistant before the incident occurred.

He told The Hard Shoulder with Kieran Cuddihy: “I said, ‘thank you very much’ and turned to walk away and then the room just went completely 180 degrees on me. Bang, I blacked out, collapsed, dropped.”

Cagney explained that he knew he was not having a heart attack and that this incident was “in his head”. 

His daughter picked him up from the supermarket but he had another incident when he returned home. 

He said: “I lay down on the couch and we were talking away and the next thing, she was leaning over me going ‘Dad, Dad, Dad are you OK’ and I thought, ‘what? I must have nodded off’ and she said, ‘no, you were gone again. If you were standing up, you would have fallen again.”

He said he wanted to tell people that there is life after a stroke and that he feels like he will get back to full fitness soon. He said that he suffered bouts of anxiety and depression in the immediate aftermath but that those feelings have since subsided. 

He told Newstalk: “As far as I can tell, I am pretty much the old me. I am not firing on all cylinders totally yet but that will come.

“But also, to say to anybody else out there who is going through the same thing, you are not dead either.

“It isn’t over. You have survived and there has to be a reason for that. Either you have done something very right or you still have something to do.”