‘French Elvis’ Hallyday in hospital for tachycardia
POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe - French rocker Johnny Hallyday is being treated in a Caribbean hospital’s intensive care unit Monday after being rushed there by helicopter, officials said.The “French Elvis” was on holiday on the island of Saint Barthelemy, a millionaires’ playground where he owns a house, when he took ill and was flown to a hospital on the nearby island of Guadeloupe.
The clinic in the French island’s capital Pointe-a-Pitre gave no details about his illness but said in a statement he was stable in its intensive care unit and that a transfer to an unstated destination was being organized.
Hallyday’s producer Gilbert Coullier said the 69-year-old star was being treated for a case of “persistent bronchitis” and denied reports that the quiffed, leather-clad singer had suffered heart problems.
French radio reports said he suffered a bout of tachycardia - an abnormally fast heartbeat sometimes linked to excessive alcohol or drugs.
Hallyday was taken to Pointe-a-Pitre, where his young wife, Laeticia, was with him.
The star’s son, David Hallyday, said on his Twitter account regarding his father’s health: “The news is good and that reassures us enormously.”
The latest incident occurred two and a half years after a health scare in Los Angeles that nearly killed France’s top rocker, who is currently in his fifth marriage.
Hallyday, who last year had his artificial hip replaced, had emergency surgery and was put into an induced coma in late 2009 after falling ill on a flight to Los Angeles from Paris, where he had undergone a hernia operation days earlier.
He attempted suicide in 1966 and collapsed on stage in 1986. In a 1998 interview, he admitted taking cocaine and suffering a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father.
AFP
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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