A PUB regular thought his life was over when he nearly choked to death on a pork scratching.

Steven Williams, 59, said he felt “strangely at peace” when he completely blacked out after a piece of rind got lodged in throat.

The disabled pensioner, from Weyhill, purchased a packet of Black Country Pork Scratching whilst enjoying a pint at his favourite pub in Andover, which set him back £1.50.

His quick-thinking landlord leapt into action when his friend suddenly collapsed after the rind got stuck in his airways.

Speaking to the Advertiser, Steven said: “It was total darkness, almost like I’d fallen asleep.

“But strangely, I felt completely at peace with everything.”

Dave Denyer, his landlord and friend, administered the Heimlich manoeuvre as Steven began to lose all feeling on his left side.

The publician told the Advertiser: "I was mid way through pouring a pint when Steve stopped talking. He started coughing and his packet of pork scratchings fell to the floor. It's not like him to waste his food."

Without hesitating, Dave dived out from behidn the bar to help: "He starting going blue."

The landlord thumped his drinking buddy on the back, and managed to free the rouge piece of pork. Steve meanwhile had blacked out.

Steven said: “It wasn’t like I had ever choked before, I wasn’t coughing or spluttering and even when it was all over I didn’t feel sick.

“I just went bluer and bluer and then suddenly I felt a good thumping on my back and then out it came.”

The 59-year-old made the decision not to go to hospital after his life-threatening experience, but instead visited the doctors the following week to make sure everything was okay.

Disabled Steven said he currently suffers from severe arthritis which has left him unable to work.

Despite the worrying experience involving his well-loved afternoon snack, Steven said he hasn’t been put off - and continues to enjoy a packet on occasion.

He added: “It hasn’t stopped me from eating pork scratchings, but I am a little more cautious now.

“I deliberately wait an extra millisecond before I eat any more of them, just in case.”

Dave the landlord said it took a few days to get over the incident. "If I wasn't there, you never know what could have happened," he said.

His grateful friend Steve now keeps offering to buy him a pint to save thank you.

This is not the first time a life has been at risk from choking on a savoury snack.

Retired forklift driver Ronald Burns was tasting the meat at a branch in Sainsbury’s in Basingstoke when he choked on a piece of ham at the deli counter.

While in Tipton in 2016, grandfather James Bell died after a pork scratching was stuck in his throat. He collapsed at a furniture store and fatally hit his head.

And in Billingham, Teesside in December 2016, schoolboy Dom Hollinshead used the skills he learned in school from the ambulance service to save his mum’s life after a pork scratching got stuck in her airway.