LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM: A British student swallowed his door key to prevent friends from forcing him to go home because he was drunk, reports said last Wednesday (February 6th).

Chris Foster, studying computer design at Bournemouth University in southern England, had drunk six beers as well as vodka and whiskey when his friends decided he should go home and sleep it off.

But the 18-year-old wanted to keep partying. "My friends said I'd had too much to drink and should go to my room. But I didn't want to so I swallowed my door key," he said, according to the Daily Mirror.

He slept on a friend's sofa, and the next morning couldn't remember a thing. When told what he had done, he thought they were joking. "I thought it was a wind-up when my friend said I had swallowed it.

"But my throat and stomach didn't feel quite right."

A nurse friend advised him to go to hospital just in case - and he was finally convinced when the five cm-long house-key showed up clearly on an X-ray.

"I was stunned when I saw the key, but couldn't stop laughing - even the doctors were sniggering. They said 'let nature to take its course' and it appeared next day," he said.

Fully recovered - albeit still a little sore - Foster remains philosophical about the experience.

"I just laughed at the idea of stopping drinking, I wanted to carry on and not go home. So I dry swallowed my own door key as a prank," he told the Basingstoke Gazette.

"It didn't hurt at the time but now my throat is slightly scratched and it's so painful to eat and drink."