COMEDIAN John Linehan has said he is lucky not to have died in the IRA's Bloody Friday bombings.
Nine people were killed and 130 injured when 22 bombs exploded across Belfast in under two hours on July 21, 1972.
Speaking ahead of the 50th anniversary of the bombings on Thursday the comedian, best known for his character May McFettridge, said he narrowly escaped death.
Then a 20-year-old apprentice mechanic at Dick & Co garage on Donegall Street, he remembered having to move cars out of the showroom amid a wave of bomb scares.
"Later I was replacing the clutch on a Fiat 500 and I had the thing jacked up about two-and-a-half feet off the ground," he told the Sunday Life.
"I was underneath it on a wee jack as there was no health and safety back then.
"The next thing there was a commotion out the front of the building, so obviously everybody went out to see what it was.
"We were all out the front and, all of a sudden, the whole place shook and all the rust off the girders came down on all the cars.
"When I went back to the car I was working on, it had fallen off the jack — there were no wheels on the back — and the whole lot was on the floor.
"If I had not gone to see what was going on I would have been no more. I just went out to have a wee nosey and it saved my life."
Mr Linehan caught a ferry to England that night to visit his girlfriend’s family.
"I was never so glad to get out of the place because it was really brutal that day," he said.
Mr Linehan's parents were also working in the city centre that day. He did not know they were safe until later that evening.
"Is it any wonder that people’s nerves are wrecked now? Some people never got over it," he said.
"I’m just one of those people who thanks God for whatever happens because it happens for a reason. I didn’t let it worry me."
