Engelbert Humperdinck opened up about the time he spent in a sanatorium in 1961.
During a recent episode of his podcast, “The Engelbert Humperdinck Show,” the 90-year-old British singer recalled his time at Leicester’s Groby Road Hospital Sanatorium, after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
When speaking about the treatments he endured, he described having “to stay on your back for I don’t know 8 weeks,” without attempting to sit up or “do anything strenuous,” in addition to getting “an injection with a needle about this big in your butt” every morning.
“There was one lady nurse who was, I don’t think she liked me very much because of the injection that she gave me, she really hurt, and I used to scream at her and I used to ask for somebody else. They wouldn’t give me anybody else, but this lady was very bad, and she was really hurt, and I had big blue marks,” he explained.
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK SAYS HE ‘WENT THROUGH HELL’ REJECTING ‘CASTING COUCH’ ADVANCES EARLY IN CAREER
After she continued to hurt him with every injection, Humperdinck thought to himself, “When I’m a little better I’m going to do something” and be a bit “mischievous” to get back at her.
“I said to my friend in the next bed, I said, ‘I’ve got to get some rope. I get some rope,'” he said. “So we got this rope, and when the nurse came around in the morning before doctor’s rounds, I got the nurse, grabbed her, tied her hands behind the back, put her in the empty bed next to us, covered her up.”
He said when the doctor came by for his rounds, “he knew that I was responsible for that..but he ignored it” and “just walked straight by.”
Once she was free from the bindings, the singer said he “was in trouble,” but that he “never let her give me another injection.”
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“I said, ‘I don’t want her to give me,'” he said. “And they had a male nurse come and do it for me, and it was much better.”
Humperdinck spent six months in the sanatorium after he started coughing up blood during a concert in Manchester. After initially receiving a diagnosis of “a bad throat infection,” his mom told the doctor ‘I’m not happy with that. Not when I see blood,’ and demanded an X-ray.
He explained that within an hour of getting the X-ray he was told to pack his belongings as he had tuberculosis and needed to be sent to the sanatorium.
“Eight weeks later, when I became negative from this disease, my mother visited and, I said, ‘Mom, is this place a great place?’ I said, ‘Cause you remember when you brought me in, the priest was here spent an hour with me,'” he said. “She said, ‘Son he was giving you the last rites.’ Apparently I had three days.”
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Humperdinck, born Arnold George Dorsey, had his big break in the music industry in 1967 with the release of his song, “Release Me,” which reached No. 1 in the U.K.
According to his official biography, Humperdinck has sold more than 140 million records worldwide throughout his career, received four Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe for entertainer of the year and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.