A teacher whose life was saved by quick-thinking gym staff thanked his rescuers last week.

Keith Grey, of Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, nearly died when his heart stopped at the Central YMCA Club in Bloomsbury last October.

But the 41-year-old, a teacher at St Luke’s Primary School in Radnor Street, Finsbury, was saved when staff leapt into action and shocked his heart with a defibrillator to get it going again.

He said: “I was working out and doing some exercise and I decided to do my stretches and I had a cardiac arrest. I woke up three days later in hospital wondering what on earth had happened.

“To the guys that helped me I’m obviously eternally grateful. If not for them I wouldn’t be here today.”

Mr Grey returned to the gym on Monday to meet the people who saved his life.

He had been lucky it was equipped with a defibrillator and staff had been trained in basic life support by the London Ambulance Service.

A fitness instructor on the treadmill next to him when he collapsed, meanwhile, was an ex-nurse and immediately started CPR.

Islington paramedic Stuart Powles, who arrived to treat Mr Grey, said: “By calling 999 for an ambulance straight away and beginning basic life support using the defibrillator, staff at the gym gave Keith the best chance of survival.”

Mr Grey was one of 259 people who suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest last year and survived. The survival rate is 22.8 per cent.