William Shatner Deep Fries Turkey, Catches Fire (VIDEO)

"Messy" was how William Shatner described his Thanksgiving to Conan O'Brien Monday night. Charged with cooking the family bird, Shatner said, he decided to deep fry it and something went terribly wrong.

"I had forgotten one major rule," he said. "You use peanut oil and you have this fire going under the five-gallon thing of peanut oil and you take the turkey and immerse it in the oil. You're supposed to keep the neck down and the reason for that is that with the neck up, it forms a spout. And boiling oil could come squirting up and catch fire and act like a volcano."

Of course that's exactly what happened, but luckily Shatner's family was on hand to help save him.

"The oil squirted up, and I ran for my life, and I caught fire," he said. "The whole family knew something amusing was going to happen so they all stood around and threw things at me, some of which were fluids. And they put the fire out."

After all that, the turkey was "quite good."

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