During his playing career he underwent surgery on knees, toes, fingers - and an ankle from which 'a huge piece of floating bone' was removed - and came to consider being in pain as entirely 'normal'.
But will hulking former 40-year-old England rugby star James Haskell, who regularly rubs shoulders with royalty, be able to shrug off the latest grievous blow?
I ask because his gym empire has just been knocked out cold, thanks to legal action taken by one of its creditors, who, tiring of waiting for payment, has secured a High Court order putting it out of business.
Haskell, who parted from his wife Chloe Madeley, daughter of television presenters Richard and Judy Madeley, in 2023 after five years' marriage, set up Hask 45 - described as a functional training studio - in late 2017.
'It's all the kind of stuff I would use to get fit for rugby,' reflected Haskell, a guest at Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding as well as at the 2011 wedding of former England captain Mike Tindall and King Charles's niece Zara Phillips.
Explaining the virtues of the studio's 45-minute, high-intensity, circuit training workouts, Haskell, who has interviewed Princess Anne for The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast he co-hosts with Tindall and Alex Payne, said people were 'crying out for an accessible, group-based fitness programme that isn't intimidating'.
He might well have been right. But the studio - in the rugby stronghold city of Bath - then became one of innumerable businesses closed during the repeated, protracted lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.
This year, Hask 45 reported debts totaling £927,738. There was the slight consolation that £437,000 was owed to another of Haskell's companies, of which he and his late father Jonathan, 69, are the main shareholders.
But one creditor in particular was not prepared to wait any longer: Bath & North East Somerset Council. It declines to comment on how much money it's owed. But it's evidently one bruise too many for the usually ebullient Haskell, who also refrains from comment.
Downton Abbey star Phyllis Logan, who plays sensible housekeeper Mrs Hughes in the costume drama, is still fondly remembered by male fans as Ian McShane’s glamorous love interest, Lady Jane, in 1980s comedy-drama Lovejoy. Logan says: ‘To this day, people still talk to me about Lovejoy - usually handsome young men who come up to me and say, ‘My dad used to fancy you’.’ Not just their fathers, surely?
Diane Von Furstenberg is credited with inventing the 'wrap dress', but a 1960s socialite tells me that it was, in fact, her outfit that inspired the designer's creation.
Carry Hepworth Smith, whose family owned Hepworth & Son, which eventually became Next, spent summers in Sardinia.
'I was getting ready to go out. I was just wearing my kimono and my boyfriend said, 'Come on, you look great'.
'So, I put a leather belt around my kimono, and everyone said, 'Wow, that's brilliant'.
'So then I went to a dressmaker and she made me about six wrap dresses based on the kimono template.
'Diane was at a party in Sardinia that I was at one night and she said, 'Oh, I love your dress, where's it from?'
'I said, 'I designed it, I made it'. Next thing I know, she's going around saying that she invented this dress.'
With her dazzling Hollywood smile, Lily James admits she’s shocked to learn that her prolific vaping habit has ruined her teeth.
‘I prided myself that I’d never had a filling,’ explains the 36-year-old star of Downton Abbey, Mamma Mia! 2 and Cinderella.
Surrey-born actress Lily James says the devices have ‘f*ed’ her teeth
‘I did just recently get one—I was so upset. Apparently it’s from flavoured vapes, which are full of sugar. They f*ed my teeth.’ While most e-cigarettes don’t contain sugar, dentists warn flavoured vapes can still damage teeth. The sweet flavourings are acidic and erode enamel, leaving smiles more vulnerable to decay.
The Surrey-born actress concedes her dental woes don’t end there. ‘I had braces twice because I never wore my retainer,’ she says. ‘Which I’m doing again now.’
Hit by recent cutbacks at ITV, could Loose Women be rescued by Elizabeth Hurley?
The actress, model and swimwear company boss has suggested that she could be a panellist on the programme which features motormouths such as Denise Welch and Janet Street-Porter. ‘I love the show - and they’ve been incredibly supportive to me, and also if I’ve got a movie to promote,’ The Inheritance star Hurley, 60, trills.
‘I really admire those women, and I like listening to them and what they say - so you never know.’
ITV is implementing budget cuts that will result in the removal of the live studio audience for the daytime show as well as Loose Women airing for only 30 weeks per year, starting in January, instead of year-round.
He was once named by Tatler magazine as one of the world's most eligible bachelors, but Elias Becker seems to be clearly off the singles market now.
Wimbledon champion Boris Becker’s son, 26, attended his first Oktoberfest in Munich with his girlfriend, fellow model Yasmine Dahlberg, 24, and things appear to be getting serious between them.
Elias, whose mother is Boris’s first wife, former model Barbara Feltus, wore traditional Bavarian clothes just as Yasmine did.
‘Acting is something I do and I enjoy. Why the f* should I be knighted for that?’ demands the star of films including Sexy Beast, The Departed and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
‘Give it to a nurse, who actually saves people’s lives. All I do is entertain people. I don’t deserve that s*. And I’ve got no interest in it really, you know?’
Winstone, 68,tells me:‘That should go to people who serve our country in a certain way and people who do good.Not people who get paid well for doing the job they love doing.’