Eamonn Holmes: I just want to do ordinary things after hip op

The Belfast-born 56-year-old said before the major surgery, which lasted for more than three hours, he had been in “acute pain” that left him unable to walk or stand for long.

He added he hoped to go for a picnic, shop and do gardening, but ruled out running.

“People will talk about me doing the extraordinary but all I want to do is the ordinary, I have no desire to run a marathon or do crazy things. The ordinary things that I’ve missed out on for years will be extraordinary for me,” he told the Daily Mail.

Holmes insisted he had not been nervous beforehand but some messages from well-wishers had been a “bit odd”.

“Was I nervous? No! It was just like being on television. In the build-up I was stressed – can I do this? Will I handle it? And it was a bit odd the night before when people started paying me tributes, ‘Eamonn you were brilliant and I’ll always remember when you did this and that’. It was like dying but not dying,” he said.

He awoke to see his wife and co-presenter Ruth Langsford, 55.

He said: “I saw my smiling surgeon, my smiling wife and someone handing me a lunch menu – and I thought I must be alive then!”

Since the surgery, he has undergone physio and hydrotherapy and is walking on crutches.

Holmes is expected to take 10 weeks off This Morning to recover.