Only Fools and Horses Del Boy actor David Jason says he was nearly killed by a grapefruit.
He swallowed a pip by mistake and went “purple” after it lodged in his throat and feared he would come a cropper.
Sir David, 82, revealed: “As anyone with experience around them will know, your grapefruit is one of your more malicious types of breakfast fruit.
“This one was going to suffocate me.
READ MORE: Only Fools and Horses’ Mickey Pearce star unrecognisable 40 years after BBC debut
“I successfully loosened a segment of this devious grapefruit, spooned it into my mouth, chewed and swallowed – and was on the verge of celebrating a great victory for man over fruit… only for a devilishly camouflaged pip to lodge itself directly in my windpipe.
“My face became purple, my eyes inflated to the size of tennis balls and a whining intake of breath ensued which seemed to last a number of minutes.
“When that whining eventually stopped, there was a brief and pregnant silence during which the whole of London seemed to fall quiet.
“And then – kerblam! I went into a coughing fit so explosive that it was impossible to believe it didn’t involve actual gunpowder.”
In his new book, The Twelve Dels of Christmas, Sir David said he eventually managed to stop choking but had feared the worst.
He said: “Frankly, I was grateful on that particular morning to be breakfasting unaccompanied.
“There are times when a man is better off dining alone, and one of those times is when he is busy hacking up a grapefruit pip that’s got stuck in his throat and, in the process, pebble-dashing the surrounding kitchen with bits of fruit and other parts of his recently ingested breakfast.”
And the Only Fools And Horses star said he was so relieved to have survived that he kept the pip – and grew it into his own grapefruit tree.
He added: “Let’s be as decorous as we can: the pip was in due course, shall we say, ‘produced’, and thereafter lay before me on the table, giving no sign of the true extent of its menace.
“More vengeful people than myself, for instance, would perhaps have flicked the offending item out the window and watched it drop, or angrily beaten it to a pulp with the butter dish.
“I don’t wish to sound pious, but I have always tried to be someone who believes in forgiveness and in the possibility of redemption, and my feeling is that even the very bad grapefruit pips among us probably have goodness in them somewhere, if we only take the trouble to look for it and give it space to flourish.
“Plus I needed a hobby and horticulture was suddenly beckoning. The one I planted, the one that became the tree – had once tried to kill me.”
READ NEXT:
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
