Jamie O’Hara's Food Poisoning Nightmare in Portugal

Jamie O’Hara went to Portugal chasing sun, sea and a quiet break. He ended up under hospital lights in Albufeira, hooked up to a drip and floored by food poisoning – from cheese on toast.

The talkSPORT presenter and former Tottenham midfielder revealed the grim twist to his holiday on Instagram on Wednesday night, posting a picture from his hospital bed with a cannula in his right arm and a caption that did the rest.

“Got food poisoning from cheese on toast in Albufeira,” he wrote, summing up the sort of misfortune Spurs fans know all too well.

If that sounded unlikely, he wasn’t the only one prompting raised eyebrows. Back in the UK, the Breakfast show team tried to make sense of it, and mostly ended up in stitches.

“Is that possible?” Gabby Agbonlahor asked live on air, struggling to believe a humble slice of cheese on toast could bring a grown man to his knees.

Shebahn Aherne wasn’t buying it either. “I don’t think it is possible,” she said. “I think he’s had something dodgy before the cheese on toast.”

Agbonlahor, never far from a punchline, painted his own picture of disaster. “He took his own cheese over to Portugal with him, it’s gone off and he’s eaten it, and got food poisoning?” he joked.

The pair then tried to get slightly more scientific. Aherne floated the idea of listeriosis – the illness linked to soft, mould-ripened cheeses like camembert and brie, which the NHS warns can leave you feeling very unwell. Whatever the cause, the outcome for O’Hara was painfully clear.

From his hospital bed, O’Hara sent a video update into the show, his voice as drained as his face looked.

“Boys, it’s not good, I’m in a bad place,” he admitted. “I can’t come on, I am struggling. I’m out in Portugal, I’ve got food poisoning from cheese on toast.”

Then came the detail that turned a sorry tale into pure O’Hara farce.

“You’ll love this one as well, the restaurant that I got it from, do you know what it’s called? Fat Cats… Fat, Cats! Honestly, absolute stinker. I’m dying. Sums me up, doesn’t it?”

The Breakfast studio had already seen the video, and Aherne didn’t sugar-coat what she’d watched.

“He is whiter than a ghost by the way!” she said, taken aback by how washed out the usually boisterous Sports Bar regular looked.

“He doesn’t look well, does he?” Agbonlahor added, the laughter finally giving way to a bit of sympathy. “I want to apologise for laughing at you Jamie.”

For talkSPORT listeners, O’Hara is most familiar alongside Jason Cundy on The Sports Bar, where the pair have built a reputation for late-night chaos, needle and relentless wind-ups. They are due back together for the new Premier League season, but Cundy’s services may be required ahead of schedule.

Agbonlahor had one prescription in mind. “Do you know what he might need while he’s sitting there in hospital?” he said. “Jason Cundy, ‘Has anyone seen cheese?!’ That’ll cheer him up!”

For now, O’Hara’s job is simpler: get off the drip, get back on his feet and salvage what he can of his Algarve escape. The jokes will be waiting for him in the studio – and so, inevitably, will the cheese.