Ben Fogle will never forgive the unknown stranger who spiked his drink and sent him into a full-scale psychotic meltdown.

The clean-living TV star started to feel the effects of the LSD-type drug while he held his one-year-old daughter after visiting a country pub with friends.

And looking back on events that night he is convinced his life was saved by his terrified wife Marina.

“It started when I was holding my daughter and for that, I will never, ever forgive them,” says Ben quietly.

“If it was a prank which someone thought was funny, I can assure them it wasn’t. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have injured myself very, very badly – if not killed myself – had I not been stopped by my wife and my friends who restrained me. I was desperately trying to jump through a window. There’s no way that would have ended well.”

The family were staying with friends in Gloucestershire when Ben started to feel strange after returning from the pub, where he had drunk about half a bottle of wine with a meal. After going upstairs to settle daughter Iona at around midnight he realised she felt as light as “a grain of rice”.

(Image: BBC)

Putting her down he then “flipped”. He shouted, ranted, hit the walls and threatened to jump out of the window. Seeing that he meant it, Marina and their friends had to physically restrain him after dialling 999 and waiting for help to arrive.

Ben, 39, who tonight makes his debut on Channel 5’s Animal Clinic, says he has never taken recreational drugs.

“One Night Nurse knocks me out for three days,” he says. “I have no tolerance for any sort of medicine so I think I had an extreme reaction to whatever it was.”

The episode left him still “emotional and teary” six hours later. But three days of tests found nothing medically wrong.

“I wanted to prove that it wasn’t me doing anything crazy to myself,” he says.

“It was so far out of character for me. I’m now reassured that it was a drink-spiking. All the doctors have said that’s how I was acting. Why would someone ever do that? My theory is that they did it spontaneously. They saw my drink before it was delivered and thought it would be hilarious. I don’t know how anyone could get a kick from that. I will never, ever take drugs, that’s for sure.”

(Image: Getty)

Always an adventurer, Ben has been in the public eye since 2000 when he was one of a group chosen by the BBC to live on Hebridean island Taransay for a year in Castaway, Britain’s first TV reality series.

He was 27 at the time and these days he meets lots of people who don’t remember the show. “I went through a couple of years trying to not just be known as the Castaway boy. Now I wish people would remember it a bit more!” he admits.

“What you saw there was proper TV innocence, which you’ll never get again. No one was there to be eccentric or over the top and make shedloads of money or be famous. Big Brother hadn’t even been invented. We were the pioneers.”

Animal Clinic is one of many projects that busy Ben currently has on the boil. He got the job after Rolf Harris, 83, stepped down in the wake of child abuse charges which he denies.

(Image: Getty)

“I can’t comment on Rolf – I’ve never met him,” Ben says carefully. “But this is a show that was very much his, so it’s hard to take over. Not everyone will necessarily like that, like when Chris Packham replaced Bill Oddie on Springwatch.”

He’s made another C5 series called New Lives in the Wild, about people who move to the furthest corners of the globe. This took him as far away as India, the Philippines, Panama and South Georgia.

It sounds like a dream job, but with a young family, Ben is beginning to find the travelling more tiresome.

“Iona’s two and Ludo’s three and a half,” he says. “I don’t want to miss their early years but I’ve struggled to find that work-family balance. I’ve made travel and adventure part of my career but now I’m trying to step back a little bit.”

Hence the appeal of Animal Clinic, which follows the stories of animals at Chester Zoo and at a nearby farm.

Ben, whose dad was a vet, warns that it’s a show awash with emotion.

(Image: BBC)

“There are a lot of sad endings,” he says. “It’s important that TV doesn’t just show the rosy side. Sometimes animals do die.”

Also coming up is a TV diary of his trek to the Sahara with Olympic rower James Cracknell. Ben and James Versus the Desert is on BBC1 at Christmas. The pair previously rowed the Atlantic and this is their first project since James was hit by a truck while cycling in the USA and suffered brain damage.

Filming took “ages” and intensifed his desire to stay home a bit more.

He says: “I asked both children what I do as a job. My daughter said, ‘Something very, very, very boring’ and my son said that I watered the flowers. I love that childhood innocence.” His wife will be happy to see him a bit more, I suggest. “I have a very understanding wife,” he says with a smile.

Another new job that keeps him at home is working alongside Liz Bonnin to present Countrywise, ITV’s answer to the Beeb’s Countryfile.

And there are more challenges in the pipeline. He’s keen to take the Fogle clan off for their own Castaway experience. “I still have these mad aspirations to take my kids and Marina off for a year somewhere. Whether it’s in the Hebrides, or we get a yacht and sail around the world, or go to Mongolia and live in a yurt. I want to take my family and share that experience.”

(Image: Channel 5)

And that’s not all. Earlier this year he announced his plan to become only the second man to swim the Atlantic, crossing 3,000 miles from North America to Cornwall. It’s like swimming the Channel every day for 100 days.

“It’s my ultimate goal,” he says.

The first and last man to do it was Frenchman Benoît Lecomte in 1998... and our Ben starts with a handicap.

“I don’t really like swimming and I’m not very good at it,” he admits. “But that’s kind of the point. I just needed one final challenge which everyone thinks is ridiculous and impossible, because I think it’s achievable.

“Sometimes you have to confront things you don’t necessarily like... to achieve. We take the easy option too much. I’m nearly 40, so I’ve got 40 more years by my reckoning. Age is no barrier.”