Man copies sword swallowing routine

Drunk man had to be rushed to hospital after trying to perform a sword swallowing routine.


Serb Ratko Dankovic, 23, had been drinking Rakia with mates while watching a magician perform a sword swallowing trick on the television.

They then started arguing over how the trick was done, and when Dankovic told mates that sword swallowing was easy and anyone could do it - they challenged him to prove it.

But he had to be rushed to the local hospital after swallowing a knife with an eight inch blade, eight nails, two spoons and a couple of clothes pegs to win the ten pound bet.

His friend Aleksander Tadic, 25, said: "He stood in the corner of the room and was holding this stuff above his head and swallowing it with his head tilted back, and we all thought it was just part of the act. We had no idea he was really swallowing it. He must have been really drunk to have managed to get it down his throat without gagging. I can't believe he really swallowed all that junk - I thought he was just pretending and then hiding it in his pockets or something.

"We only realised there was something wrong when he collapsed and we checked to see where the knife and nails were hidden and could not find them. Then we realised he really had swallowed them."

Doctors at the city hospital in Uzice in southwest Serbia carried out an X-ray to locate the metal objects.

Dr Maja Gulan said: "He was lucky. His stomach or intestines were not significantly injured. It could have been very different. Doctors successfully removed all the items in a five-hour operation."

Dankovic who is still being kept in hospital, said: "I don't remember a thing until I woke up here in hospital with a sore throat and 30 stitches on a cut on my abdomen. My girlfriend has told me she hopes they got everything out, we are planning to fly on holiday next month and she doesn't want me getting stopped by the airport metal detector."