The harrowing moment Channel Ten nearly announced Grant Denyer was dead.

Grant Denyer has shared the harrowing circumstances surrounding his crash at the Lake Mountain Sprint last year, and revealed that Channel Ten nearly mistakenly announced that he had died.

Talking to the Rusty’s Garage podcast, the game-show host told journalist Greg Rust, “It was frightening … The car just left the road and I wasn’t able to bring it back on.”

The Gold Logie winner, who’s new show Game of Games premieres tonight on Channel Ten, shared that he “came off the road at 160km an hour and hit a tree head on”.

Denyer said “the hardest part in the world” was seeing his co-driver and best friend, Dale Moscatt, get injured. He told the podcast host, “He made this noise as we left the road that will haunt me forever. He thought potentially it might have been the end for both of us.”

“I did my best to avoid a tree … there was a hidden tree root which I didn’t see and that picked the car up and shot it into the giant tree that I was planning on missing,” Denyer explained to Greg Rust.

“We barrel-rolled and tumbled and came to a stop and Dale’s kneecap was up around his hips. He’d broken his back, I’d broken a few bones. I think the only thing that saved us was that it was a rear-engine car.”

“The first word out was that I’d died.”

At the time, rumours began circulating that the game show host had passed away after a horrific car crash, and as Denyer shares, they were reportedly about to mistakenly announce that he had died.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Grant Denyer (@grantdenyer) on Oct 5, 2018 at 11:32pm PDT

“Channel 10 were getting word from emergency services that I had been in an accident and I was killed.

“They were debating whether to talk about it. I know Matthew White (Network Ten presenter) was facing the decision of, do we announce this right now live on television or not? It turns out obviously it was mixed messaging and I wasn’t killed.”

Denyer was the host of Family Feud, at the time, and is now hosting Game of Games Australia, which is a version of Ellen DeGeneres’ game show which proved to be very popular with audiences in America this year.

Game Of Games premieres tonight at 7.30pm on Channel Ten.