Dawn French's puddle stunt on 'The Vicar of Dibley' left her in need of knee surgery.
Dawn French needed knee surgery after performing her famous Dibley puddle stunt
The 66-year-old actress played Reverend Geraldine Granger in the classic BBC sitcom and famously ended up submerged in muddy water when her character jumped into a deep puddle in the 1999 special 'Autumn' before repeating the stunt once again in the 2006 finale 'The Handsome Stranger'.
In 2009, the former 'French and Saunders' star recreated the jump once again for a guest-hosting appearance on 'The Paul O'Grady Show' but revealed her third attempt at the plunging stunt left her knee "twisted like a pretzel", although she initially misheard the doctor when she sought medical advice.
In her new book 'The Tw*t Files', she writes: "A surgeon gave me an injection to the knee with a steroid and lubricant. Eventually I’d need a knee replacement, but I could have three of these injections. I limped through life in a big vat of denial for ages, dragging my crumbly left knee about, knowing I only had two, and then one more pop."
The comedienne went on to urge fans to always record what they are told by the doctor because she has ended up "suffering" with her knee for such a long time but revealed that she is to undergo surgery once-and-for-all just before the festive period kicks in.
She said: "That is why you should always write down what the doctor tells you.
“I have been suffering for many years for no reason. The surgery is booked for just before Christmas!"
Dawn previously explained that whilst performing the stunt on the teatime chat show, she crashed onto a concrete floor in what she described as a "disaster" waiting to happen.
She told MailOnline: "The idea was that there was a long enough drop for me to disappear into. Then some bright spark had the idea of having a shallow silicon membrane containing two inches of water on top of that. As I jumped through, the water would splash up and look like a deep puddle. But what was I falling onto? The answer is absolutely nothing. Except for 10ft below, there were two very thin crash mats in a film studio with a flat concrete floor. Any fool would know this was a disaster in the making. Any fool but me."
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