Footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones may be known as a hard man of the big screen. But for one Fife man, he is also is lifesaver.
When 39-year-old Alan Linton collapsed and stopped breathing on the golf course last month, his quick-thinking friends remembered Vinnie’s Stayin’ Alive message on how to do chest compressions.
The actor features in a TV advert for the British Heart Foundation in which he tells untrained bystanders to ignore the kiss of life and concentrate on just pushing hard and fast on the chest to the beat of the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive.
Luckily for Alan, the advert is so memorable that when he had a heart attack his friends were instantly able to swing into action to save his life.
Fewer than 10% of people who suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospital survive to leave hospital, so the Ladybank man is in no doubt as to the importance of receiving immediate first aid.
On Tuesday, he was at Leven ambulance station to say a big thank you to friends Paul Pinkney and Brian Henderson and brother-in-law Michael Rennie, who worked together for more than half an hour to get him breathing again.
Also there were Peter Meldrum, from Methil, who was playing behind Alan’s group and joined in the life-saving efforts, paramedics Gordon Christie and Alan McIntyre and emergency call handler Karen Panton, who gave vital instructions until professional help arrived.
Alan and his friends were playing at Charlton golf course, near Colinsburgh, on February 5, when he suddenly fell backwards at the sixth hole.
”I was feeling fine and then I just went dizzy,” he said. ”It was all bubbles in front of me and then I was flat on my back.”
The married father-of-two became emotional when ambulance staff played a recording of a 999 call made by Brian Henderson, during which he tells Karen Panton: ”We’re doing the Stayin’ Alive. We’ve got him breathing again.”
Karen is heard instructing the men to tip Alan’s head back to open his airways and begin chest compressions. While Brian held the phone, Paul began resuscitation and Michael kept his airway open. Paul was relieved by Peter when he began to get tired.
They continued for over 30 minutes before ambulance personnel used a defibrillator and Alan was flown by helicopter to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, where he stayed for three weeks.
Peter told The Courier: ”None of us would have thought to keep going for that length of time. We maybe would have stopped after five or 10 minutes when there was no response but Karen was superb and kept us going.”
Michael added: ”We thought he was just mucking about at first and went to give him a kick. That’s when we realised. We’d played the first five holes and were at the sixth.
“Alan walked towards his clubs and then fell over and swallowed his tongue. Brian phoned 999 straight away and we just did what the advert said until the ambulance came.”
Paramedic Alan McIntyre said: ”We promote the chain of survival, which is calling early to get help and CPR to buy time. We’ve been doing that for many years but Vinnie Jones, with his primetime advert, really gets the message across.
”The sterling work these guys did before we got there made all the difference. They were all shouting ‘come on Alan, come on’ and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. It was a team effort and well done to everybody.”