'Divine intervention' credited with man's survival following catastrophic collapse

But Kieran Wilson, who re-opened the Red Lion, Thorpe Hesley, last summer after a two-year closure, said a remarkable chain of co-incidences were responsible for their success and added: “It was some sort of divine intervention, which said ‘not today, mate’”.

Kieran is ex-Royal Navy and first aid trained, so was able to go straight into action with CPR after regular Martin Gannon, aged 59, collapsed in the lounge while out with his family.

He was assisted by another medically-trained customer, Ross James, who was able to share the labour-intensive resuscitation attempts, while Mr Gannon’s son Mitch and others went to fetch a defibrillator from another pub.

They found the user code for that machine missing, rendering it useless, but in a further right-place-at-the-right-time moment, a man who had been instrumental in getting it installed, and who knew the code, was driving past.

The final piece in the life-saving jigsaw was a further customer, Donia Lax, who is a nurse, turning up and she was able to oversee the emergency procedures until paramedics arrived.

By that time, the team had carried out CPR and used the defibrillator, which can re-start a heart by administering an electric shock, with Mr Gannon again showing signs of resumed breathing, after he had initially stopped and begun to turn blue.

Mr Wilson praised the 999 response, with two ambulances, an emergency responder and police turning up within 11 minutes.

"I thought that was fantastic,” he said.

Paramedics were so satisfied with the performance of the amateurs that they asked them to continue while they set up their own equipment.

"The paramedics said he had a pulse and was breathing and that we had given him a fighting chance,” he said.

"We have had some updates. He was in a coma, but on Monday morning we had a message that he was sitting up in bed drinking coffee.

"It was a surreal experience. People have said ‘you’ve done that before’, I have, but only with a dummy.

"The luck that the guy driving past had got the code was like something out of the movies,” he said.