124 images Created 5 Nov 2013
The Dangerous Sports Club
The Dangerous Sports club invented bungee jumping and pioneered other dangerous and innovative sports. I first met David Kirke founding member of the Dangerous Sports club at a Piers Gaveston party in Oxford. He called me shortly afterwards to suggest meeting the next day at 5 a.m.at Beachy Head where he planned to bungy jump off. I couldn't make that but did make it to the surreal tea party at the Dutch Ambassador's house. - A beautiful Georgian country house in rolling countryside in Gloucestershire. David buzzed overhead in a microlight. A young Nigella Lawson played croquet from a sedan chair supported by 4 members of the club. A TV crew from Game for a Laugh off-puttingly kept asking everyone to repeat things so their cameraman could catch it. I went to St. Moritz for the years that the annual surreal ski race took place. The Swiss tourist board began advertising the race on the lines of 'watch the eccentric English '. Xan Rufus Isaacs managed to get his double decker ( complete with passengers who had won the trip as a prize in a tv show ) half-way up the slope. The plan was to attach skis to the bus. It was the smart bus conductors uniform he was wearing that probably made the Swiss realise he was deadly serious. It would ahve been REALLY dangerous to go down the slope in a bus. After watching Steve Smithwick's cruise missile go down at high speed narrowly missing the road the Swiss authorities refused to allow the bus to go down on safety grounds. We all stayed at an old fashioned sanatorium converted to a hotel halfway up the mountain that David had wangled from the tourist board. That was where I photographed the attempts to dive into an ice bucket from the bar by Mike Fitzroy and Mark Chamberlain.
I look after an archive of pictures of club activities which include an early attempt at skiing on grass in the summer by attaching blocks of ice underneath skis..Despite their worldwide media attention and innovation they have never gained financially. In fact every idea and piece of work they created cost far more than ever came in. It was a seemingly impossible balancing act. There was an early attempt to capitalise on the club's fame by introducing a Dangerous Sports club wine. Much effort went into selecting a decent vintage and designing the label. But no-one knew how to market the wine. I think we were drinking it at a party David gave in Fulham. There was someone there who after drinking his glass of wine proceeded to eat his wine glass. I could hear the crunching sound..
I look after an archive of pictures of club activities which include an early attempt at skiing on grass in the summer by attaching blocks of ice underneath skis..Despite their worldwide media attention and innovation they have never gained financially. In fact every idea and piece of work they created cost far more than ever came in. It was a seemingly impossible balancing act. There was an early attempt to capitalise on the club's fame by introducing a Dangerous Sports club wine. Much effort went into selecting a decent vintage and designing the label. But no-one knew how to market the wine. I think we were drinking it at a party David gave in Fulham. There was someone there who after drinking his glass of wine proceeded to eat his wine glass. I could hear the crunching sound..
