A man from Norwich has thanked the app developer who saved his life after a calamitous fall left him with his iPhone half way up his rectum, and just days from death.

Doctors told Paul N’Ohope that he was just “one phone call away from death” when he checked into the Norwich Royal Hospital last week. N’Ohope told doctors that he was “painting the ceiling”, and fell in an awkward position, leaving his iPhone perilously up his back passage.

“I always paint the ceiling naked,” explained N’Ohope. “It’s just one of our little traditions round our way. I fell at such a terrible angle that my iPhone went all the way up, and I couldn’t get it out. Naturally, I went straight to the hospital and while yes, the doctors found it very funny, their faces straightened pretty quickly when they realised that I may be one vibrating phone call from death.”

For several days, N’Ohope lived in gratitude that very few people ever called him on the iPhone, although said he was “quite excited” at a couple of text messages. “It was bizarre,” he explained, “but it made me realise that life is so precarious. One day you can be trying to insert your iPho… I mean, falling off a stepladder, the next you could be in hospital thinking a text might kill you.”

N’Ohope was given a chance of survival by a plucky iPhone app designer, IT technician “Guru” Nigel Pasdamis from Farnborough, near Ipswich. Pasdamis had been working on an app to make the iPhone find its way out of a maze, something that he himself admits would be “one of the most useless apps ever invented”.

“I was bored,” he said, “and I thought – hey, what if you could write an app that would make a vibrating iPhone find its way around a maze independently of human interaction. I was working on it for several weeks, and wasn’t really making much progress. Then I read Paul’s story in the local paper and realised I could be of assistance.”

Doctors managed to activate the app using revolutionary keyhole surgery, and prayed that the app would find its way out, and not work its way up N’Ohope’s rectum.

“We basically stood back and said a little prayer”, claimed Dr Tueurdejoie of the Norwich Royal Hospital. “Installing the app wasn’t a problem – it took a while to install, and for a second, we thought – hey, what if it’s not compatible? But within a few minutes, it was on its way out and Mr N’Ohope was able to leave hospital.”

N’Ohope claims that he has learned his lesson: “I owe my health to an app developer from Farnborough. That’s the last time I erm, paint the ceiling naked, I tell you.”