TV's Floyd treated after collapse

Floyd made his names on programmes such as Floyd on Fish

TV chef Keith Floyd has been taken to hospital after collapsing on his return to the UK from Thailand.

"It's probably exhaustion," his agent Stan Green said. "He was in hospital a year ago with a similar complaint.

"He recovered from that, so let's hope he recovers from this. We understand he's stable," he told BBC Radio Stoke.

Floyd, 64, had just spent six weeks in Thailand and was taken ill earlier this week while staying at a pub in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

The Chesters pub is run by his friend Glenn Geldard, who said on Friday morning: "He is not doing very well. I've just been down to the hospital now."

Later, he said: "He has stabilised, that's all the news we have heard."

'Hard work'

The chef had been visiting his restaurant in Thailand, a trip which would have involved "hard work", Mr Green said.

A spokeswoman for the University Hospital of North Staffordshire said she was unable to comment or "give information out about patients".

Floyd, from Faringdon in Oxfordshire, shot to fame in the mid-1980s when he presented a series of cookery programmes with a glass of red wine in his hand.

He was banned from driving for two and a half years in 2004 after crashing his car into another vehicle while three and a half times over the legal alcohol limit.

He went on to front a police campaign against drink-driving.