This Morning presenter Eamonn Holmes has said he is looking forward to doing “ordinary things” he could not do before his successful double hip replacement.

The 56-year-old said before the major surgery, which lasted for more than three hours, he had been in “acute pain” that left him unable to walk or stand for long.

Eamonn Holmes
(Dominic Lipinski/PA)

He added he hoped to go for a picnic, shop and do gardening, but ruled out running.

“People will talk about me doing the extraordinary but all I want to do is the ordinary, I have no desire to run a marathon or do crazy things. The ordinary things that I’ve missed out on for years will be extraordinary for me,” he told the Daily Mail.

Eamonn insisted he had not been nervous beforehand but some messages from well-wishers had been a “bit odd”.

Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford
Eamonn and wife Ruth Langsford (Ian West/PA)

“Was I nervous? No! It was just like being on television. In the build-up I was stressed – can I do this? Will I handle it? And it was a bit odd the night before when people started paying me tributes, ‘Eamonn you were brilliant and I’ll always remember when you did this and that’. It was like dying but not dying,” he said.

He awoke to see his wife and co-presenter Ruth Langsford, 55.

He said: “I saw my smiling surgeon, my smiling wife and someone handing me a lunch menu – and I thought I must be alive then!”

Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes
Eamonn and Ruth (Ian West/PA)

Since the surgery, he has undergone physio and hydrotherapy and is walking on crutches.

Eamonn is expected to take 10 weeks off This Morning to recover.