Late Late Breakfast Show death - 25 years on

Hard to believe that next month will be 25 years since the tragic death of Michael Lush, while rehearsing a stunt to perform on the late late Breakfast Show. Following the death, Noel Edmonds resigned from the show, and then the BBC cancelled that weeks show, and indeed the whole series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdakKgmYH7I

The above is the continuity announcement on BBC1 on 15-11-1986, confirming the series had been axed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lush

And this is the Wikipedia page about the show.

25 years on, audience and viewer participation are common on shows, but will we ever see such things like that which used to be done on the Late late breakfast Show again, stunts like what mr Lush was going to perform? And has TV learned from that experience?

what about "Don't try this at home"? I think that was even more dangerous, Noel did recover somehow and went on to "Noel's Saturday Roadshow " and "House party".

Yes, there have certainly been other programmes with members of the public doing 'stunts'. AIUI the part of the stunt that killed him was essentially a bungee jump, something that is fairly routine now, but unknown at the time.


'Somehow'? There's no reason why that should have been the end of his TV career, after all it wasn't him who was to blame.

It wasn't the first accident on the Late Late Breakfast Show of course, one episode had a couple of car crashes one of which happened fairly close to where John Peel was standing presenting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeQs2fpU1eI

well what about the other presenter of late late ..... he never really recovered did he?

He was treated quite badly by Noel Edmonds after the accident apparently. However his TV and radio career wasn't affected, he was Radio 1 breakfast show host at the time and was the BBC's 'go-to' man for all sorts of big events and specials for years. His career was arguably more affected by his own helicopter accident 4 years later

He's not doing too badly now either, he runs a helicopter TV company... if you've seen any aerial footage on the TV over the past few years there's a good chance his company did it

I think those clips may have been taken from TV Forum in the first place. Here are a few more to put things in context. Especially the last one.
[media:f69ecd3de4]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs1.flv[/media:f69ecd3de4]
[media:f69ecd3de4]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs2.flv[/media:f69ecd3de4]
[media:f69ecd3de4]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs3.flv[/media:f69ecd3de4]
[media:f69ecd3de4]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs4.flv[/media:f69ecd3de4]
[media:f69ecd3de4]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/llbs5.flv[/media:f69ecd3de4]

Well, maybe, but it wasn't the nature of the stunt that did for Michael Lush, but the poor health and safety procedures, for which the BBC were found liable. It would have been perfectly safe had they actually done it properly.

Thanks for them, what an odd observation in the last one.

Amazing how much people's expectations have changed over the years - someone trying a gyrocopter and a down the line interview aren't exactly much of a draw these days.

Even then, for some of the stunts, a few days training (I actually don't know how long the training was) for those stunts could be insufficent.

It also begs the question, should the public have been allowed to do the stunts?

How much 'training' do you get when you do a bungee jump nowadays then?

At the time, he was also presenting 'Telly Addicts', & ISTR there was a con - anno over certain episodes that they had been pre-recorded before recent events!

I thought Telly Addicts started a couple of years after TLLBS ended?
I know Noel was doing a Monday night 8.30pm show called 'Whatever Next' around the same time, so that continuity anno may have come before that.

Interesting to note watching the final end of show stopper stunt would never have been allowed nowadays.
For a start, it's wet and if the stunt was rehearsed in the dry, that would be one black mark. Plus John says that after the last stunt, people were moved back after something went wrong during the last stunt, so to re-set and do another more spectacular one was lunacy.

Also, it was obvious that during the end credits the studio director intended to cut between the studio and the OB location, but couldn't due to the rescue and driver extraction operation, hence a couple of quickly improvised audience shots and trying not to get the footage of Noels on-set monitor in shot.

By the way, did they ever do an update later that evening, that Noel said they would about the condition of the driver, or was it mentioned during the next weeks show?