Richard Madeley has said he 'would have died' if it wasn't for his sister, as he recalled how he almost choked to death on a piece of beef. The TV presenter, 70, was speaking on Good Morning Britain when he said he swallowed a piece of "very rare beef" without chewing properly during a "lively discussion" and it went "straight into the windpipe."
Near-fatal choking incident
He was speaking to Dr Hilary Jones on the ITV news programme about the experience as the show did a feature on the dangers of choking as they tried to encourage people to learn the Heimlich manoeuvre so they could help in an emergency.
Richard said: "I tried to cough it up but I had no air in the lungs to do that. I suddenly realised I was choking. Pandemonium ensued. People came round behind me, they were hammering on my back. The minutes ticked by and it wouldn’t dislodge."
Sister's life-saving intervention
Richard said his sister Liz Lawrence was 'luckily' trained in the Heimlich manoeuvre, and was present at the dinner and rushed in from the toilet to save him. He said: "She did the Heimlich on me. One, two, three times and it didn’t work, it was still lodged."
"I felt my knees give way and I went down and as I went down, thank God, she did it again. The combination of gravity and her doing it harder than ever before dislodged the beef, got a little bit of air in and managed to cough it up, and 10 seconds later, I was back in the room, but it was touch and go."
He added: "If she hadn’t known what to do, I would’ve died."
