Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker has admitted he 'frightened himself with the thought' that he had AIDS.
The ex-footballer was struck down with hepatitis when he starred for Barcelona and feared he might have had the life-threatening disease.
The former England forward, 58, fell ill in 1988 as he was representing his country at the European Championships and then about to start a new season under Dutch legend Johan Cruyff at the Catalan club.
Lineker makes the frank admission in his new book with Danny Baker, 'Behind Closed Doors: Life, Laughs and Football' and says he feared for his health.
He said: 'Johan Cruyff arrived and I got hepatitis – facts which were in no way linked to one another, although the experience of life under Cruyff and the experience of having hepatitis would turn out to have more in common than you might think, certainly in terms of the frustration both caused.
'Let's start with the hepatitis. I started to notice something was wrong during the European Championships in the summer of 1988.
'They took place in West Germany, as it was then, and England did not distinguish ourselves. Our opening group game was against Ireland, we lost 1–0 and I felt mostly terrible throughout – really sluggish and incapable.
'Was it the consequence of a long, tiring season? It seemed a bit extreme if so. In our second game we played, if anything, even worse and lost 3–1 to Holland, which meant we were out of the tournament, and I felt considerably more ill – heavy-limbed and aching.
'There didn't seem to be any explanation for it. I was also losing weight – about a stone and a half, it would eventually emerge. I quietly wondered if I had AIDS.
'This was a period when that disease was in the forefront of people's minds, with all sorts of ridiculous and uninformed rumours about ways in which you could contract it. Maybe I had done so. I managed to frighten myself with the thought.'
Lineker's revelation comes a week after Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas went public to say he is HIV positive and has since said that speaking out about it has lifted a 'massive weight off' him and his husband Stephen.
When Thomas broke the news via an emotional Twitter video, Lineker tweeted him a message of support saying 'Good luck to you'.