‘I LOST MY TWIN BROTHER’
For this Lego Masters contestant, the game brings back bittersweet memories
Entering the Lego Masters den, Victorian-based contestant Fleur is met with two distinctly different emotions. One is unparalleled excitement, while the other is an intense jolt of sadness. Lego was her favourite game to play with her twin brother Tim, who died in a car accident at 20.
“It was 1997 and I was living in London pursuing musical theatre and he was in New Zealand, and one day I received a phone call from my mum to tell me that both Tim and his girlfriend Stephanie had been killed in a car accident,” Fleur, 44, tells Woman’s Day. “It’s a day I will never forget.”
The mum-of-one says while she and her brother were “chalk and cheese” – he loved computers while she loved the arts – the siblings bonded over their love of the plastic bricks.
“We were extremely close as children – he was my best friend and we very much enjoyed playing Lego together,” she recalls.
“There is always something special about being a twin.”
After hearing of the tragedy, Fleur flew home to New Zealand to be with her family and never returned to the UK, saying his death “dramatically changed the direction” of her life.
“I couldn’t leave my family and go overseas again, so I stayed in New Zealand and while I continued to pursue musical theatre as a hobby, I fell into a job in event management, which has become my career for the past 20 years,” she says.
Her love of Lego also diminished, and Fleur says she entered a very long “Lego dark age” after her brother’s death.
However, after watching the first season of the show, she fell back in love with building and now, boasting more than 100,000 Lego bricks in her house, is ready to tackle the competition with gusto.
“When you experience the death of a family member, while it isn’t something I would wish on anyone, it gives you the opportunity to re-examine the way you live your life,” she says.
“For me it made me a very resilient, strong person, who doesn’t sweat the small stuff.
“And you very quickly realise that life is a gift and every opportunity that comes your way is something you should grab with both hands – even when it’s something scary like being in a hugely popular television show!”
‘Life is a gift… you should grab opportunities with both hands’