I deliberately caught malaria to fund my Edinburgh Fringe show

He was kept under close observation in a medical facility while he experienced a fever, difficulty in sleeping and concentrating, and a “panging pain” in his fingers and joints.

“And then when my temperature got a bit higher, I had these nightmares which turned into waking hallucinations,” said John, who lives in London.

“At one point I thought that there was a devil in my room that was dragging me into hell or something, which wasn’t ideal at all.”

After four days, the medication kicked in and he quickly started to feel better.

“The really, really, really strange thing about it was how much the physical pain of the malaria was actually very offset by the certainty of knowing exactly what was wrong with me, knowing exactly what the timetable was, and the doctors knew exactly what was wrong with me,” he said.