The Wiggles star shock collapse: 'It was a wake-up call'

The original Purple Wiggle,  Jeff Fatt, decided to leave the band after he blacked out and was involved in a scary car crash.

The 65-year-old original member of the band has admitted in a new interview that he quit his job after he felt faint at the wheel of his car one night.

‘I was driving home one evening and I started feeling a bit faint,’ he told the ABC. ‘The next thing I knew, I was coming to and actually felt very relaxed, "Oh, that was a nice little nap". And then there was this tree in front of the van.’

In 2011 Jeff, the Wiggle famous for pretending to fall asleep on the stage, had a pacemaker fitted and it was after that that he decided to take a step back from the non-stop touring life of The Wiggles and they started to look for replacements.

‘Yes, it is somewhat ironic that the character known as Wake Up Jeff did black out behind the wheel,’ he explains. ‘You have to laugh.

‘Having a pacemaker implanted, that really was a wake-up call for myself just to be able to see that The Wiggles cannot go on. You can't go on in perpetuity.’

But Jeff said he felt very happy to step back as he was involved in appointing new Wiggles Lachy Gillespie, who’s now the Purple Wiggle and Emma Watkins, the Yellow Wiggle.

'We found Emma (Watkins) and Lachy (Gillespie) and Simon (Pryce), and it made me feel a bit more comfortable in that it was going into the hands of the right people,' he admitted to the ABC. 'Particularly with the directorship of Anthony, who was largely the creative force behind The Wiggles.'

And although we don’t see Jeff singing Hot Potato and Big, Red Car these days he is still very involved in the band and its future.

‘I still feel very connected to the Wiggles,’ he explains, ‘I'm still part of the board. I'm a director and we have regular meetings at The Wiggle headquarters, so I'm always running into Anthony if he's not on tour and the other new Wiggles in the studio.’