TV confession over Eddie’s last jump

14^th April 1999

Lea Valley Star

FORMER stuntrider Eddie Kidd has revealed how he had been drinking and taking drugs the night before the accident which almost cost him his life.

In Snapshot, a mini-documentary for BBC 1, 38-year-old Mr Kidd, who is due to move back to Cheshunt once fully fit, spoke candidly about the crash three years ago in which he suffered brain damage.

During the programme, he tearfully admitted: “I’m never going to jump again”. However, he later added: “But who knows?”

After completing a jump at Long Marston Airfield in Warwickshire he fell from a 20ft bank and suffered concussion to the brain. Since then, Mr Kidd has been convalescing in Warwickshire and Hemel Hempstead and has regained his powers of speech and movement.

Talking about the crash, on last Thursday’s programme, he said: “There were 20-odd thousand people there. I said: ‘I can’t let the people down. I’ve got to do the jump.’ But as I landed I knocked myself out. The rest I don’t know what happened.

“I was a mug, I did the jump without the safety procedures in place. I was up the night before doing a lot of drugs and drinking. The biggest stunt in my life is walking and getting my co-ordination back together. “

But his mother Marjorie said the turning point was when paranormalist Uri Geller sent Mr Kidd a tape, after which he began to talk for the first time since the crash.

Mr Kidd’s sister Sarah Simpson, of High Road, Turnford, added: “Things happen in life and you’ve just got to dust yourself down and pick yourself tip and get on with it – and that’s exactly what we’ve all done, but purely because Eddie’s done that.”