Richard Madeley very close to dying in horror accident: Touch and go

Good Morning Britain presenter and Express columnist Richard Madeley revealed he almost died from choking on a piece of meat. The 70-year-old veteran TV broadcaster opened up on the horror incident on the latest edition of the ITV breakfast show on Tuesday August 18. He described how he came "very, very close to dying" while out for a meal with his family. He explained he was talking animatedly so didn't take care to chew properly leading to the piece of food becoming lodged in his windpipe.

"You can't make a sound because you can't get air up through the larynx. You can't breathe in. You can't breathe out...I tried to cough it up, but I had no air on the lungs to do that. I suddenly realised that I was properly choking," he recalled. Although he made efforts to dislodge it standing up and trying to knock it loose he was unsuccessful. "...My brother-in-law said, 'My God he's gone blue'," he said.

He continued: "People came around behind me, and they were hammering on my back and all that kind of thing. And the minutes ticked by, and it wouldn't dislodge.

"After about two and a half, three minutes, I began to feel my world closing in, black dots coming on either side like squadrons of flies...and a kind of a sense of acceptance came over me.

"I thought, this is it. This is how I'm going to go.

"And luckily, my sister, who was a teacher and was trained in the Heimlich, came running in from the toilet, ran over, and she did the Heimlich 1,2,3, times, and it didn't work. And it was still lodged.

At this point he confessed he could no longer stand up he was so weak. "I felt my knees give way, and I went down. And as I went down, thank God, she did it again.

"So the combination of gravity and her doing it harder than ever before dislodged the meat, got a little bit of air in and I managed to cough it up.

"But it was touch and go. I would have died. No question. It's not an uncommon situation," he said.

Richard shared his experience as the show did a feature on the dangers of choking as they tried to encourage people to learn the Heimlich maneuver so they could help in an emergency.