A YouTube ‘prankster’ had to be freed by five firefighters in an hour-long rescue after getting stuck as he cemented his head inside a microwave. Friends had managed to feed an air tube into the man’s mouth to help him breathe.
The 22-year-old, believed to be Jimmy Swingler – one half of pranking duo TGFbro – and a group of friends mixed seven bags of Polyfilla before they poured it around his head, which was protected by a plastic bag inside the appliance. Their intention was to use the microwave as a mold. By the time emergency services arrived at the garage of a house in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, at 1:49pm on Wednesday, the group had already been trying to free him for an hour-and-a-half.
“We’re seriously unimpressed. Five of our firefighters were tied up for an hour this afternoon, freeing a YouTube pranker whose head had been ‘cemented’ inside a microwave oven,” the fire service’s official account tweeted.
A look at Swingler’s YouTube channel shows it’s not the first time he’s pulled a stunt like this. Titles of his other videos include: ‘WE SPENT THE NIGHT BURIED IN SOLID CONCRETE’, ‘HAND-HELD FIREWORK SHOOTOUT!! (GOES VERY WRONG)’, and ‘We did the most DANGEROUS thing whilst HIGH ON THE CRAZIEST ENERGY DRINK’.
The video of the microwave incident was posted to YouTube on Friday morning.
Watch Commander Shaun Dakin, the officer in charge of the West Midlands Fire Service crew who responded, said in a statement: “As funny as this sounds, this young man could quite easily have suffocated or have been seriously injured… Taking the microwave apart was tricky, because a lot of it was welded. We video-called our technical rescue colleagues for advice and eventually managed to get him unstuck.
“He was very relieved when we removed a large chunk of the Polyfilla with a screwdriver, allowing him to breathe more easily. But we had to be extremely careful with the screwdriver, working closely to his head,” Dakin added.
“It took us nearly an hour to free him. All of the group involved were very apologetic, but this was clearly a call-out which might have prevented us from helping someone in genuine, accidental need.”