CHASED BY THE REAPER
Could these two disaster-magnets be Britain’s luckiest (or unluckiest) men?
O LUCKY MAN!
Father-of-five Ian Francis, 48, has cheated death a dozen times. In 1989 an electric shock from a television threw him across the room. Three years later he was electrocuted again by a faulty socket. “I was rushed to hospital with burns on my hand,” he said. “It was that year that I was registered blind.” In 1993 a stolen van ran him over. In 1996 he was in the next street when an IRA bomb injured 200 in Manchester. Two years later a growth was found on his brain. “I said my goodbyes to my children, but they managed to take it out through my ear.”
Another hit-and-run driver almost killed him in 2006. Months later, he had a heart attack in the street. He “died” 17 times in the ambulance as paramedics kept battling to bring him back from the brink. A month later an accidental Prozac overdose left him in intensive care. In 2013 he survived a 10-car motorway pile-up on the M4. In June 2015 his guide dog Toffee ran off for three days. In December he had his right kidney removed in a cancer scare. In February 2017 he was fitted with a pacemaker shortly before a gas canister exploded in a neighbour’s Oxford home, causing a three-storey block of six flats to collapse. One resident was killed. Ian, who lives with his girlfriend Sammy Clark, 34, said: “Our block is attached and nearly fell down as well. Luckily, we’d popped out to the shops.” The damage was so severe the couple were homeless. Ian mused: “I think I must be Britain’s luckiest bloke – to still be here.” Sun, 4 Mar 2017.
CAPTAIN CATASTROPHE
Dubbed ‘Captain Catastrophe’ by his friends, Ian Fordrey, 52 is a driving instructor from London who is phenomenally unlucky – or lucky, depending on your point of view. On a school trip to Aviemore in Scotland, aged 11, he and his schoolmates arrived at their destination to find they’d been left dozens of phone messages from worried parents. The train directly after theirs had crashed. A year later, on a school trip to Switzerland, the same thing happened: the train behind them crashed in a tunnel. In 1992, he had lunch with his ex-wife and a friend at the Sussex Tavern in London’s Covent Garden. The following lunchtime, the IRA blew it up, killing one person and injuring five others. In 1995, the day after he had a flying lesson at Biggin Hill, his instructor and another pupil were killed, in the same plane he had flown in. There had been complete engine failure, just one hour after he’d climbed out of the aircraft. Travelling to South Africa, the plane he was flying in narrowly missed landing on top of another plane, which had received erroneous information from air control; and while above Denmark the plane he was in flew so close to another aircraft that it skimmed its wing.
The year after his close call at Biggin Hill, he was working for a motorcycle courier
“The little town we’d driven through earlier was on fire.”
company delivering a package to a company in London’s Dockland before going home. By the time he had got home an IRA bomb had destroyed the building he had delivered the parcel to, killing two and causing £100 million worth of damage. “I missed that bomb by about 20 minutes,” he said. “The same thing happened with the Vauxhall helicopter crash [in January 2013 a helicopter collided with the jib of a construction crane, killing the pilot and one pedestrian.] I’d been right there 10 minutes earlier.”
In 2006 Ian and his then-wife were visiting Elounda in Crete and looking for a spot of lunch when they came to the Megaro restaurant. They looked at the menu and Ian wanted to go in but his wife insisted they walk further into town to eat. They were just 200m (660ft) down the road when she told him to turn round. The restaurant was in flames. There had been a gas explosion in the kitchen and the chef lost his arm. “I just said, ‘For crying out loud…’ and my wife said, “Oh, for God’s sake.’ We were both so used to it at that stage.”
In 2010 Ian and his ex-wife flew to San Francisco for a holiday. They drove from the airport to the centre of town, where they went to a bar for lunch. Everybody was looking up at the telly and watching an orange glow. “The little town by the airport, the one we’d driven through an hour earlier, was on fire,” said Ian. “The gas mains had ruptured, killing 50 people.”
A couple of years later, on another trip to Crete, Ian found somebody in his seat. “I’d paid for extra leg room, but there was an old man in my seat,” he said. “I left him there and took the seat next to him instead. Next thing I know his wife, sitting the other side of him, is screaming. The old boy was slumped over and completely grey. A doctor came and dragged him down the aisle where they resuscitated him.”
“Almost all the bad things happen when I’m on holiday, so anyone who travels with me has raised eyebrows and a sense of ‘bring it on’,” he said. “But actually people travel with me because they know they’ll be safe. Nothing actually happens to me or the people with me. We all miss disaster.” D.Mail, 9 June 2014.