Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Peaceful end for daredevil who made first bungee jump
THE man who made the world’s first modern bungee jump in Bristol in 1979 has died peacefully in his bed.
Daredevil David Kirke said at the time that it would not have been dangerous enough if he had tested the rope first.
He died peacefully in his sleep 44 years after he and his friends jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge on April Fool’s Day in 1979 and in doing so, invented the modern day ‘sport’ of bungee jumping.
Friends of the anarchic adventurer paid tribute to him, after reporting that – despite risking life and limb with a lifetime of spectacular stunts and as a founder member of the Dangerous Sports Club – Mr Kirke died in his own bed at the age of 78 last weekend.
Mr Kirke and his friends formed the Dangerous Sports Club in the 1970s, largely based around Oxford and London, and were inspired by and regularly gave credit to - the Pacific Island ‘land-divers’ of Vanuatu, whose culture has a test of manhood in which young men build high towers, jump off and break their fall with vines tied around their ankles that are just short enough to stop them hitting the ground.
When the Queen visited in the mid-1970s, the practice came to world attention, and inspired Mr Kirke and his friends to try something similar. They re-purposed the giant elastic ropes used to snag gliders and jets on landing and gave them the West Country word ‘bungee’ for something elastic or bouncy.
They chose the Clifton Suspension Bridge for their first attempt.
Four people successfully leapt from the bridge in a practice that is still very much frowned upon now by bridge bosses. They were allowed to repeat their feat for the 25th anniversary in 2004.
And in 2019 for the 40th anniversary, they returned to Bristol to reveal what happened that April Fool’s Day.
Mr Kirke said that they thought it would not exactly be a ‘dangerous
sport’ if they tested out the bungees beforehand. They said that their family and friends were so horrified at the prospect that they alerted the police to try to stop them.
Bristolian Chris Baker’s girlfriend pretty much dumped him for considering it, while the two sisters of another club member, Alan Weston, called the police several times the day before to try to stop it.
The police staked out the bridge early that morning, and Mr Kirke said they did approach them.
“They came up and talked to us and decided it was an April Fool, that we couldn’t possibly be considering throwing ourselves off the bridge
with a bit of rope,” he said. “So they wandered off again, and that was our chance.” he added.
In 2019 Mr Kirke said: “We hadn’t tested it, or anything like that. We were called the Dangerous Sports Club, and testing it first wouldn’t have been particularly dangerous.
“I was confident though. We had some very clever guys with us; Alan Weston went on to be head of development at Nasa and they told me it was going to be OK. They had worked out the false extension curves of these ropes.
“They were elastic ropes used to catch jet fighters landing on aircraft carriers, so I thought it would be ok,” said Mr Kirke. “The mathematics of it were not something I really understood, but I did it.”
And did it, he certainly did clutching a bottle of champagne, but forgetting to fasten his top hat, Mr Kirke leapt off the bridge, closely followed by Alan Weston, Tim Hunt – brother of Formula 1 racing driver James Hunt – and Simon Keeling.
“The main thing going through my mind was ‘whoooppeeee’, really, in one word,” he said. “It’s a completely different feeling to anything else, travelling through the air at that speed. I didn’t fasten my top hat, so the wind blew it off,” he added.
The group ended up in the cells after being arrested, but the police treated them well. The officers even brought them the half-drunk bottles of wine they’d left at the bridge that morning, to finish off in the cells.
Mr Kirke, who went on to have a career of crazy stunts, including flying over Mount Olympus in a hang glider, talked of his own impending mortality back in 2019.
“I’m terrified of meeting The Man Upstairs, if I’m honest, but I was always thinking of what it must be like to fall from a bridge and not actually kill yourself, and bounce back. I think bungee jumping is great, because it’s a positive metaphor, literally bouncing back,” he said.
A friend of the family paid tribute to Mr Kirke, telling The Independent: “David upturned apple carts, always. He wanted to do things that diverted and disrupted and stretched imagination. He dared and he sometimes dare-devilled and paid the price.
“He was an anarchic buccaneer who left the world suddenly but he bequeathed a high bar for stretching imagination and adventure; he was Byronesque in thrall to living life to the full. He would have been shocked that he died quietly in his own bed,” they added.