Show ended in disaster

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 19

Show ended in disaster

From

TONY VERDON

in London

A television stunt show which began screening in New Zealand on Saturday led to the death of an amateur daredevil late last year, and almost wrecked the careers of Its two hosts. “The Late Late Breakfast Show” was axed by the 8.8. C. late last year, just after a man plunged to his death while rehearsing a stunt for the programme.

The 8.8. C. was later fined the maximum penalty of £2OOO (about $5300) for failing to take adequate safety precautions for the stunt.

While the controversy raged in British newspapers, the broadcasting careers of the two hosts, Noel Edmonds and Mike Smith, slumped. Smith briefly gave up his programme as a disc jockey on the corporation’s Radio One, while Edmonds disappeared from Britian’s television screens.

However Edmonds, one of Britain’s most popular broadcasters, has since returned to television,

hosting a more sedate game show, while Smith has resumed his radio work.

While the vast majority of the stunts performed on what was supposed to be a fun show went without a hitch during the several years it was shown in Britain, several of them went seriously wrong.

In one disastrous stunt, stuntman Richard Smith was almost killed when he tried to break the world record for leaping parked cars.

His own car crashed at 145 miles an hour, and Smith ended up in hospital with a broken neck and pelvis.

In another embarrassing episode, volunteer stuntwoman Barbara Sleeman blasted the programme after she appeared as a human cannonball.

The 21-year-old said she got none of the promised training, and she broke her shoulder while performing the stunt

But it was the death plunge of 25-year-old Michael Lush in November which led to the series being 'scrapped by

the 8.8. C.

The unemployed Southampton man was chosen for the stunt from a list of volunteers because he had a head for heights. He was to fall from a metal box suspended from a crane 40 metres off the ground. His fall was supposed to have been stopped short of the ground, by a bungee elasticated rope. . But on the signal from one of the programme makers, Lush released a mechanism retracting two footplates and, after hesitating, dropped from the box with the rope snaking out uselessly behind him.

Lush was killed instantly during the first rehearsal for the “Hang ’em High” stunt, which has to have been shown live to the programme’s 8.6 million viewers.

During the inquest into his death, it was revealed that Lush had been alone without a back-up lifeline when he jumped, and there had been no safety net or air bag provided to cushion his fall if something went wrong. The tragedy touched the lives of millions of British viewers, partly be-

cause of the immense popularity of the show.

Lush’s name was announced on the show shown the Saturday before his death. Edmonds telephoned and told him he had been selected for the leap. “You better have a head for heights,” the presented told Lush. “I will have a go at anything. I am that kind of guy,” Lush replied on the programme. Edmonds, whose broadcasting career as a radio announcer and television presenter stretches back more than a decade, later took much of the public flak for the tragedy.

Less than a week after Lush’s death, he met 8.8. C. chiefs and agreed that in spite of the programme’s popularity with viewers, it should be scrapped. “I do feel responsibility for what happened,” an anquished Edmonds said at the time. “The actual accident was totally out of my control but It’s my show and when something like that happens your heart goes out of it completely.”