Jamie O’Hara's Hospital Ordeal: Food Poisoning from Cheese on Toast
Jamie O’Hara went to Portugal chasing a bit of sun, sea and a quiet break in Albufeira. He ended up in a hospital bed, hooked up to a drip, blaming a slice of cheese on toast.
The former Tottenham midfielder and talkSPORT regular revealed his ordeal on Instagram on Wednesday night, posting a picture from a Portuguese hospital with a cannula in his right arm and a blunt explanation in the caption: food poisoning, courtesy of cheese on toast.
For a man who spent last season mocking his beloved Spurs for having “an absolute stinker”, this one hit close to home. Now it was his turn.
‘Got food poisoning from cheese on toast’
The claim sparked instant disbelief back in the talkSPORT studio. Breakfast presenters Shebahn Aherne and Gabby Agbonlahor tried to get their heads around the idea that such a simple snack could leave O’Hara floored.
“Is that possible?” Agbonlahor asked on air, voicing what plenty of listeners were thinking.
“I don’t think it is possible,” Aherne replied. “I think he’s had something dodgy before the cheese on toast.”
Agbonlahor, never one to miss a chance for a dig, piled in with a theory of his own. He joked that O’Hara might have taken his own cheese out to Portugal, watched it turn, eaten it anyway, and paid the price.
Aherne went down a more serious route, suggesting it might be listeriosis – an infection linked, as the NHS notes, to soft, mould-ripened cheeses such as camembert and brie. Either way, something had clearly gone badly wrong on the Algarve.
‘Boys, it’s not good, I’m in a bad place’
O’Hara then checked in with the show himself, sending a video update that made it clear this was no minor wobble.
“Boys, it’s not good, I’m in a bad place,” he said. “I can’t come on, I am struggling. I’m out in Portugal, I’ve got food poisoning from cheese on toast.
“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 name of the venue only added to the farce. Aherne, having seen the footage, cut through the laughter with a simple observation: “He is whiter than a ghost by the way!”
Agbonlahor, who had been chuckling away, quickly softened. “He doesn’t look well, does he?” he admitted, before offering an on-air apology. “I want to apologise for laughing at you Jamie.”
A Cundy cure on prescription
Back home, thoughts turned to the man who usually shares a studio with O’Hara. The stricken midfielder is best known to talkSPORT listeners as one half of The Sports Bar alongside Jason Cundy, the station’s chief wind-up merchant and late-night instigator.
The pair are due back on air for the new Premier League season, but Cundy might be called into action a little earlier than planned – not with tactics or transfer chat, but with his trademark sense of mischief.
Agbonlahor had a suggestion for the perfect hospital bedside remedy. “Do you know what he might need while he’s sitting there in hospital?” he asked. “Jason Cundy, ‘Has anyone seen cheese?!’ That’ll cheer him up!”
For now, O’Hara’s job is simple: get well, get some rest and salvage what’s left of his holiday in the Algarve. The jokes will be waiting for him when he walks back into the studio. So will the cheese gags.
