Melua In Drowning Scare

Singer KATIE MELUA is recovering after she nearly drowned during a scuba diving session in London last weekend (28-29Nov09).

The 25 year old is working towards a diving qualification and took to a lake near the British capital’s Heathrow Airport to practice with her instructor.

But Melua failed to properly insert her mouthpiece and breathed in a “lungful” of cold water, which left her panicked and fearing for her life. She was rescued by her teacher and suffered no serious side effects.

Melua has now taken to her official blog to assure fans she is fine.

She writes, “The incident was all my own fault. We swam out to the middle of the lake and… once there, we were practising standard procedure, taking out the regulator (air supply) from your mouth and replacing it. I don’t know what happened, I think I was stressed by the cold, plus the visibility was very poor - the water was pitch black - so I wasn’t concentrating.

“When I tried to replace my regulator I didn’t do it properly, so I breathed in and choked on a lungful of water. I tried to stay calm and clear the regulator but I kept choking on water. Because of the pressure, the force and speed at which the water invaded my mouth was such a shock. I did start to panic, especially as you can’t go to the surface because of the bends. It was the first time (out of 40 or so dives that I’ve done) that I had to pull the ‘out of air’ hand signal. Luckily my teacher was right there helping me through my sorry state of horror. Looking back at it now I was such an idiot!”