ZDF Pull top show off air following serious injury.

Late Late Breakdast Show recalled ....

German TV contestant suffers head injuries during botched stunt

The biggest live TV show in Europe had to be stopped midway through the show after a 23-year-old contestant suffered serious head injuries during a stunt.

Student Samuel Koch landed on his head during the botched segment

Robbie Williams, Phil Collins and Cher were among the guests taking part on 'Wetten, Dass?' (Want to Bet?) – a German show where celebrities make bets with contestants over stunts – when student Samuel Koch landed on his head during the botched segment.

Mr Koch bet the show's host Thomas Gottschalk that, using springs on his feet called power jumpers, or kangaroo shoes, he could somersault over five cars coming towards him at 15 miles per hour.

On his fourth attempt, while trying to jump over an Audi driven by his father Christoph, he landed on his face.

More on the incident is available

here….

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05-Dec-2010 @ 22:53

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADSSqv5WFLc&feature=related You can see the incident here, the press is a day late on this one.

More similar to the John Peel car racing incident of course, not the more famous one that ended the programme.

Although by coincidence, Thomas Gottschalk was also the presenter of the German version of Noel's House Party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psAM4xfTgAY.

Wetten Das, is the programme that You Bet was based on, although the UK version was never as extreme. According to one thing I read earlier it is up against the German version of 'Got Talent' and they are in a bit of a ratings war which might explain why they tried something like that

I'm glad to see the Mail has taken this story seriously and put it's finest investigative journalists on the case to ask just what could possibly have gone wrong?

http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/grabs/wettendassmail.jpg

Apparently it was a stunt, but Justin's fine so everyone can relax.

The slight irony of Gootschalk/Edmonds and the rather tragic accidents wasn't lost on me.
You are right that Wetten Dass was You Bet but without the music acts and chat show element that pushes the running time to over two hours.
According to the English on-line version of the German heavy Die Spiegel, he failed to do the challenge in rehearsals - and narrowly avoided an injury - so that explains for those that watch the full 12 min version on YT why the strecher and medical team were so quick on the scene.

I doubt anything like that would be allowed on live tv over here - even though the guy performing the challenge was a part-time stuntman. The aftermath was handled perfectly by Thomas and the director. All wide shots, no close-ups of the medical team at work, improtantly no replays and cutting away to vt (from the site) until the studio was cleared. Surprised though that ZDF didn't try cut out of it and run the break in transmission from network tx.

Well there's no commercial break so they could just cut to ads. But it seemed quite appropriate to me. No close ups, replays or anything, just a camera shot of the audience until they could properly access the situation, then to the host to explain, then to a standby highlights package.

No, I don't think it would, certainly not live nor in front of a studio audience . I think that the TV industry here learnt a lot from incidents such as the 2 on the Late Late Breakfast Show and are very wary of any such risk.


Yes, there's no real right or wrong way to handle such a thing but it looks pretty textbook (despite the fact that I understand none of it!), the first couple of shots showing Koch on the floor and the paramedics rushing past are unfortunate but understandable that early on


I've read in at least one report that Thomas did hand back to 'Mainz' (which is ZDF's headquarters and playout centre) who played standbys of past highlights of the programme (the programme went out in at least 2 other countries so they might have done something different). The longest clip of the incident I can find is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUP-9EFsC-4 and they appear to go to a pre-record 8 minutes in, however he's wearing the same jacket but in a different studio so I suspect that's a clip from later that evening edited into the YouTube clip

Could someone fill me in on what exactly the John Peel racing incident was? I'm aware of the accident which ended the show but I've never heard of this one.

I've been trying to find a clip of it, I have seen it online a while back. The only one I can find is on a dodgy video site. I think it was covered in a recent documentary about Saturday night TV

John Peel was one of Noel's 2 co-presenters at the beginning of LLBS, they were either in the studio or doing the OBs (this was before Mike Smith joined). I think it was before the Whirly Wheel but they used to have live stunts and the like, with motor racing featuring prominently because Noel was/is a big car fan.

There was an OB at a raceway with John Peel presenting, the first 'stunt' ended in the car crashing, it was treated pretty lightly by Noel back in the studio I seem to remember. At the end of the programme they went back for the big second stunt which went very wrong and the car ended up going off course and ploughing into the crowd, about at the place that John Peel was standing. They went back to the studio where Noel ended the show looking pretty shocked this time. As the credits rolled he watched closely the feed from the OB on his desk monitor looking concerned.

The driver ended up with a broken pelvis amongst other things, I'm not sure how many injuries there were in teh crowd. It's mentioned in John Peel's autobiography, his wife says that she and their kids were watching it on TV and were all sure he'd been killed. John and Noel fell out badly over it (although they were never the best of mates!) and he was dropped from the show

No - that is the same 'presentation guest area' on the Wetten Dass set. It looks different as it's a very tight shot.
Also the 'return to live show' segment at the end of the YT clip shows Thomas doesn't use earpiece director talkback, as you can hear the cue from the director over the studio foldback/floor monitors.

They also used the same shots for the live two way interview on ZDF HueteJournal later.

For a bit of leviety - I was asked to explain about Wetten Dass in the office today (must have read about it in Metro newspaper yesterday) knowing I know a bit about obscure forgien tv gameshows. I got the clip from You Tube, and my friend made the comment that the challengers fall wasn't the only serious accident that night for the programme. He noticed the rather 'flamboyant' choice of costume by Herr Gottshalke.
I did tell him, that for Thomas that was rather conservative for him...

I have a copy of the whole episode and at this point in the shows history they had the Whirly Wheel feature.
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I believe the first crash may have been pre-recorded and so Noel's reaction assuming he knew that no one was hurt was understandable. Listen to him introducing this feature using the past tense. He also knows the result of the jumps straight away, something that he probably wouldn't know if it was live. John Peel seems to know that 'everyone is all right' quite quickly too.
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Believe it or not, the car going in to the crowd was not the last stunt of the evening.
[media:b4e1d70055]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs3.flv[/media:b4e1d70055]
They carried on and there was another more spectacular crash. You can hear John Peel swearing through his beard this time.
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It seems odd that John Peel, a man who was at the scene blamed Noel Edmonds a man sitting in a studio 40 miles away. If John Peel thought it was so dangerous then he should have spoken up before the event, not afterwards.

Anyway, it was exciting television. I didn't see it live, I only saw it several years later and I doubt we will see anything like it in this country again.

This episode also featured Tom Jones talking to Noel Edmonds about the increasing number of Arabs now living in London. We probably wouldn't see that on a Saturday night entertainment show nowadays either.
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Thanks for those clips, exactly what I was looking for


I thought it was earlier in the first series that this happened, in it's original less successful incarnation. The Santa Pod stuff wasn't a Whirly Wheel feature though was it?


Yep it looks like it judging by the editing, which makes it even more bizarre that it would happen again, live.


I'm not sure that John did blame Noel. However he did feel like he was being blamed for the accident, as he never appeared on the programme again with little explanation. The animosity stemmed from that, although John's opinion of Noel wasn't great to start with. Why he got that gig I've no idea he didn't look comfortable presenting even before any crashes

If course it was the fault of neither presenter, however whether blame lay with Santa Pod or the BBC is up for debate- the rules nowadays are different depending on whether it's an event that's being televised or an event staged for TV. Things were a lot laxer then in terms of risk assesment and proper procedures for safety.


I don't know whether exciting is the right word, certainly by today's standards it was grossly irresponsible - for it to happen once is bad enough but twice is just negligent.

It seems it wasn't 'exciting' for John Peel's family watching at home, or that of anyone else attending the event. Certainly Noel didn't seem that excited by the live stunt either, I suspect he was wondering whether he was going to be back the next Saturday!