Hugh Grant has shared a graphic memory of being struck down with some pretty alarming stomach issues while filming one of his earliest films.

Back in the late 1980s, Hugh appeared in The Bengali Night, opposite John Hurt Supriya Pathak, which required him to spend three months filming in Calcutta.

In a recent interview on the podcast WTF With Marc Maron, the Bafta-winning star revealed he became ill “on day three” of filming, with a debilitating (and “explosive”) case of food poisoning that never really got any better as the weeks went on.

He recalled: “On that film, I was there for three months and I didn’t leave the lavatory except to shoot my scenes – and then I had to go back to continue with my explosive diarrhoea.”

During the same interview, Hugh also discussed a day he found himself stuck in traffic in Calcutta, only to discover his car was “next to a dead body on a stretcher”.

The British star was similarly candid last year, when he revealed he’d contracted Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

“It started as just a very strange syndrome where I kept breaking into a terrible sweat. It was like a poncho of sweat, embarrassing really,” Hugh said.

“Then my eyeballs felt about three sizes too big and this feeling as though an enormous man was sitting on my chest – Harvey Weinstein or someone. I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is’.”

Hugh continued: “Then I was walking down the street one day and I thought, ‘I can’t smell a damn thing’. And you start to panic – by then, people were just starting to talk about this as a symptom.

“I started sniffing flowers, nothing. And you get more and more desperate. I started sniffing in garbage cans. You know, you want to sniff strangers’ armpits because you just can’t smell anything.

“I eventually went home and I sprayed my wife’s Chanel No. 5 directly into my face. Couldn’t smell a thing, but I did go blind.”

Listen to Hugh Grant’s full interview on WTF With Marc Maron here.