British television star and author Jeremy Clarkson was forced to go into rehab after his controversial Top Gear dumping, he has revealed in a column.

Clarkson, 55, was told by doctors he needed to go to rehabilitation because he had too much stress in his life.

This included being sacked from Top Gear and the recent death of his mother, he wrote in The Sunday Times.

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In what’s been described as a “disparaging column”, Mr Clarkson wrote how he was becoming a “drooling vegetable”.

“They [doctors] said very sternly that after dealing with the stresses of a dying mother and the BBC television chief Danny Cohen and a lost job and a million other things besides, I was about to become a drooling vegetable, and that I must go immediately to a prison where there would be no contact at all with the outside world,” Clarkson writes.

“I readily agreed because in my mind this ‘prison’ would actually be a businessman’s retreat, filled with Scandinavian furniture and half-naked Vietnamese women who’d spend all day smearing my eyes with cucumber juice and rubbing my feet with warm stones.”

Clarkson was booted from Top Gear after allegedly assaulting its producer Oisin Tymon. The BBC did not renew his contract following the investigation into the incident.

However, he has since agreed to work on a new motoring program with Amazon Prime.

Clarkson revealed his vision of rehabilitation was very different from reality.

He wrote about how the centre was like a prison with its early roll call, sleeping quarters and guards. But that was not the worst of it.

Clarkson struggled with hours upon hours of “what I’ve now decided is the the absolute worst thing in the world – yoga”.

“[But] there’s a cure for this that isn’t uncomfortable at all,” he concludes.

“It’s how I spent my last week in prison: sitting in the sunshine, chatting with friends and smoking.”