During a recent interview with Variety, comedian and host Jimmy Kimmel recounted a dramatic incident where he saved his long-time friend and rival, actor Matt Damon, from choking.
Kimmel explained that Damon came late to a dinner party at his house and, being very hungry, began eating a pork rib too quickly. The rib got lodged in Damon’s throat, causing him to choke for what Kimmel humorously said felt like “an hour and a half.”
Initially, Kimmel was concerned about the legal ramifications, joking, “I said, ‘We have got to get him to the hospital,’ because if he dies in my house, I’m going to prison for the rest of my life. I will never be able to explain this as anything other than a murder.”
After the Heimlich maneuver failed, Kimmel said they turned to the internet for help. “We did a lot of YouTube-ing and finally concluded that eating little bits of bread was the way to get that rib to work its way down into his stomach — and bread saved him,” he revealed. He explained that the rib was “too far down” for the Heimlich maneuver to be effective. The actor was eventually able to dislodge the rib and was saved by the quick thinking—and bread—of his host.
