Richard Bacon has spoken about "seeing the best of human nature" after he "stared death in the face" and commended Piers Morgan, who he previously rowed with on Twitter, for reaching out to his family while he was seriously ill last year.

Last July, the television presenter fell ill during a flight from Los Angeles to London and was put in a medically induced coma as doctors fought to save his life.

The 43-year-old TV star has now said his illness made him appreciate the people who reached out to him, including Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan.

Speaking to the Press Association ahead of a guest presenting stint on ITV's Good Morning Britain, Bacon said: "It's the kind of experience where something bad happens but you see the best of human nature with all these people trying to save your life.

"The system is designed to offer help to everyone, which is not the same in America, where I live.

"When you face the stark reality of death, you also see the best side of strangers and also people you know, including Piers [Morgan], who reached out to my wife and offered support."

"My outcome would have been very different if this had happened to me in the States," he continued.

"I would have been bankrupt by now. It would have been ludicrously expensive... you go to doctors for an ingrown toenail and it's a couple of hundred.

"So, if you don't have proper insurance, and you get the sort of lung infection I had, you would have been on the hook for hundreds of thousands.

"Yet in Britain, you just walk out and say bye, thanks for saving my life. I thanked the doctor and he said, 'You don't have to thank me. I'm just doing my job.' That's the difference.
 

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Bacon said he is more determined to get things done since suffering from the life-threatening lung infection.

"It's changed my outlook quite significantly", he said. "On the one hand I'm more impatient to get things done.

"You are faced with the reality of things actually being finite; you stare death in the face, it makes you get on with a lot of things in life in a much faster way.

"Death goes from something very distant to being something very real. I want to get things done I want to get done."

The former Blue Peter presenter previously thanked his wife Rebecca for her support.