The Chase star Mark Labbett - aka The Beast - has revealed a five-stone weight loss after contracting coronavirus.

Earlier this year the 54-year-old quizzer weighed in at 27-1/2 stone, with doctors warning him that he was "firmly in the red" zone for serious health risks.

Labbett then experienced a severe fever at the end of February, inadvertently starting him on his path of weight loss.

"I got suspected COVID at the end of February, and got sent home from work, for the first time in 15 years, on Wednesday 27th. ITV were brilliant, and took no chances," he recalled to The Sun.

"Because the testing capacity was so limited then, I never formally got a test but all I can say is that for two weeks I had complete loss of appetite, no sense of smell, a temperature, exhaustion and the worst fever of my life.

"For these brief spells you thought you'd need to be hospitalised but ten minutes later, you'd be fine. It felt like going one particularly brutal round with Mike Tyson."

He continued: "I basically didn't eat for two weeks but since then the weight has continued to drop off because I have continued to eat sensibly. I knew I had to.

"I am still losing weight and beginning to notice the difference in photos which, I can assure you, are not ­Photoshopped!"

Labbett will be back in action on new episodes of The Chase, due to air on ITV from this autumn.