Hillary Clinton has paid tribute to the NHS after she was forced to rearrange a series of interviews because she fell and broke her toe.

The former US presidential candidate had been due to appear on Woman’s Hour, This Morning and the Graham Norton Show as part of a promotional tour for her book What Happened.

But all three interviews were cancelled or delayed after the accident, which she described when she finally made it to Norton’s set.

“I was running down the stairs in heels with a cup of coffee in hand, I was talking over my shoulder and my heel caught and I fell backwards,” she said. “I tried to get up and it really hurt. I’ve broken my toe. I’ve received excellent care from your excellent health service.”



Her communications director, Nick Merrill, posted a picture of Clinton on set wearing a protective boot, saying she had twisted her ankle.



HRC on The Graham Norton Show, joking about how she caught her heel on some steps & twisted her ankle earlier today. Back to the book tour! pic.twitter.com/Fk30HLjNat — Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) October 16, 2017

Clinton’s praise of the NHS, a publicly funded healthcare system, is in sharp contrast to Donald Trump, who has spent much of his presidency unsuccessfully attempting to dismantle the insurance subsidy programme known as Obamacare. Some Democrats are making the case for a single-payer system that would resemble the NHS.

The incident may bring back unhappy memories of constant questions from Trump during the campaign about her health, speculation over which reached fever pitch when a video emerged showing her unsteady on her feet. Clinton’s doctors later said she was treated for pneumonia and dehydration, and made a full recovery.

The Woman’s Hour host, Jane Garvey, had earlier been forced to apologise live on air after the former secretary of state’s heavily trailed appearance was cancelled at the last minute. “Hillary Clinton has been delayed this morning, as I’ve already said,” Garvey said. “It does look like she’s not going to make it before the end of the programme.



“I’m really, really sorry about that. I think you can understand just how sorry I am. We’re working very, very hard to get this interview rescheduled and Hillary Clinton is very apologetic. So what can I say, that’s the situation.”

But Merrill later tweeted that Clinton had been able to reschedule the interview for later in the day and was “taping it now for tomorrow morning”.

Amid frantic reshuffling of Clinton’s commitments on a publicity tour that has already made her near-ubiquitous in the British media, the This Morning presenter Philip Schofield suggested it had not immediately been possible to schedule a new interview for the ITV show.

Schofield posted on his Snapchat account: “Supposed to be interviewing Hillary Clinton … but she’s fallen over and hurt her foot!! Gutted.”

He later said he had been asked to rush back to the studio to do the interview, before posting a picture of Clinton’s book on the studio sofa with the caption “not happening!”

Clinton was more than an hour late for a speech to Cheltenham literature festival on Sunday, where an audience of 2,500 people awaited her arrival.



During her talk, she blamed her loss to Trump on sexism and the “maddening” double standards women are held to in public life. “The only way we’ll get sexism out of politics is to get many more women into politics,” she said.

Clinton recalled how she “collapsed with grief” after her loss and turned to yoga, mystery novels and long walks in the woods to overcome the shock.

“Everybody gets knocked down. What matters obviously is whether you get yourself back up and keep going. As a person, I’m OK; as an American, I’m worried,” she said, citing Trump’s position on North Korea and the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord as causes for concern.



Hillary Clinton finally arrives 1hr 40 mins later than scheduled for her live chat at the Cheltenham Literature Festival pic.twitter.com/ZWxep0TkfW — David Woodland (@DWoodlanditv) October 15, 2017

Jenni Murray recently wrote for the Guardian about Clinton’s previous appearance on Woman’s Hour, in 2014. At the time, she was preparing to announce her plan to stand again for the Democrats.

“She was late for the Woman’s Hour start time of two minutes past 10am,” Murray said. “Not her fault, but minders underestimating London traffic …

“Into my ear, as my conversation with Shirley [Williams] and [her friend] Eva came to a close, were the whispered, thrilled words of the producer. ‘She’s here! Hillary Clinton’s here.’”