UK Butcher Escapes Freezer by Using Black Pudding as Battering Ram

Tapping into MacGyver-like instincts, an elderly British butcher managed to free himself from a potentially lethal trap by using a large piece of charcuterie as a mallet.

Christopher McCabe, the owner of an eponymous butcher shop in Totnes, England, went to grab something from the walk-in behind his store last week when the wind blew the door shut, trapping him inside the freezer. The emergency release button had frozen over inside the storage unit, where the temperature stays at a steady -20C.

“No one could hear me banging because it is outside, round the back of the shop,” McCabe tells Metro UK. Knowing that he could perish in the room if he didn’t escape in a timely fashion, he began looking around for things he could use to try to pound the release button loose. ”The black pudding was the best thing to hit the button with because it was the right shape,” McCabe explains. “I used it like the police use battering rams to break door locks in, that’s what I did with the black pudding.”

McCabe was lucky to find the black pudding, especially considering that the blood sausage — which is made by the Queen’s butcher, HM Sheridan of Ballater — is a popular item at the shop. “The black pudding saved my life, without a doubt,” he says.

• Black pudding saves butcher trapped in freezer [BBC]
• Butcher batters his way out of -20C freezer with black pudding after getting locked in [Metro UK]