Tweet
Did anyone else see Richard Hammond meets Evel Knevel? Originally shown on BBC2 in 2007, repeated (probably from now on constantly thanks to DAVE...
)
Evel was a hero of mine as a child. I think his fame lasted a bit longer in the UK compared to his fall from grace in the USA (for reasons later explained) and I recall being given a surprise toy sometime after Xmas 1981....Ideal Toys EVEL KNEVEL STUNT BIKE SET!
My Mum bought it from Co -op and forgot to give it to me for Christmas so gave it sometime after, think it was actually toward Feb or March my birthday! Anyhow, Evel was a superstar to me and millions of small boys (and girls?) with his ham-fisted attempts of jumping this, that or the other - it was really the chance of his crashing that made him all the more infamous.
When I first saw the tv show with Hammond it actually broke me - he wasn't the great hero I thought he was. He sadly came across as a rather egotistical man, still trying to hold onto his glory days and seemed very awkward to interview, getting moody and cutting short the attempts to interview him. I felt Hammond too was still holding onto his boyhood innocence - instead of seeing the man as just that, a flawed man he still tried to envision him as the broad shouldered, well built hard man and show man with charisma. I guess its pretty much an apt depiction of meeting your hero and finding out he isn't what he was cracked up to be - i.e., if I met Richard Burton or John Lennon I'm sure they'd illustrate personality flaws that would really put me off them...but Hammond persevered. I'm sure in private perhaps he may have spoke about how disappointing it was to actually get a hint of what Evel was really like...For me, what also cemented my disappointment was the fact he pre-meditated the brutal assault of his manager/business partner - with a baseball bat. It was this that led to his loosing the millions of Dollars in merchandising - especially the lucrative Ideal Toys gig mentioned earlier...
In the programe, he said: 'I AM EVEL KNEVEL!' - and then asked to have the interview stopped as he needed help getting out of the car as a frail old man, you have to take it on the chin that in fact, no, he no longer is Evel Knevel but actually a frail old man...:cry: Maybe one should have admired his spirit and egotism as a form of self-belief, but the cynic in me saw it as just plain egotism...sadly.
I do however still remember revving up my Evel Knevel bike on the red ramp and the crescendo of noise as it built up in 'power' before letting him go - flying off the top of the staircase, off the tops of books and careening to a crashing halt.....all the while the bendy Knevel figure in the main still holding onto the handle bars of his bike...I played with it til it broke and ended up getting a replacement model from the store with a far more inferior plastic molded Knevel that in fact looked more like The Stig in hindsight...even the bike was made to look like a dirt bike on the replacement circa 1981/2...
Part of me would like to get another Evel Knevel toy....but perhaps I should consign this to a memory in the past - the hero I thought he was wasn't that, but a rather abusive man, flawed like a lot of us and that was the real disappointment when I watched the programme...
) Evel was a hero of mine as a child. I think his fame lasted a bit longer in the UK compared to his fall from grace in the USA (for reasons later explained) and I recall being given a surprise toy sometime after Xmas 1981....Ideal Toys EVEL KNEVEL STUNT BIKE SET!
My Mum bought it from Co -op and forgot to give it to me for Christmas so gave it sometime after, think it was actually toward Feb or March my birthday! Anyhow, Evel was a superstar to me and millions of small boys (and girls?) with his ham-fisted attempts of jumping this, that or the other - it was really the chance of his crashing that made him all the more infamous.
When I first saw the tv show with Hammond it actually broke me - he wasn't the great hero I thought he was. He sadly came across as a rather egotistical man, still trying to hold onto his glory days and seemed very awkward to interview, getting moody and cutting short the attempts to interview him. I felt Hammond too was still holding onto his boyhood innocence - instead of seeing the man as just that, a flawed man he still tried to envision him as the broad shouldered, well built hard man and show man with charisma. I guess its pretty much an apt depiction of meeting your hero and finding out he isn't what he was cracked up to be - i.e., if I met Richard Burton or John Lennon I'm sure they'd illustrate personality flaws that would really put me off them...but Hammond persevered. I'm sure in private perhaps he may have spoke about how disappointing it was to actually get a hint of what Evel was really like...For me, what also cemented my disappointment was the fact he pre-meditated the brutal assault of his manager/business partner - with a baseball bat. It was this that led to his loosing the millions of Dollars in merchandising - especially the lucrative Ideal Toys gig mentioned earlier...
In the programe, he said: 'I AM EVEL KNEVEL!' - and then asked to have the interview stopped as he needed help getting out of the car as a frail old man, you have to take it on the chin that in fact, no, he no longer is Evel Knevel but actually a frail old man...:cry: Maybe one should have admired his spirit and egotism as a form of self-belief, but the cynic in me saw it as just plain egotism...sadly.
I do however still remember revving up my Evel Knevel bike on the red ramp and the crescendo of noise as it built up in 'power' before letting him go - flying off the top of the staircase, off the tops of books and careening to a crashing halt.....all the while the bendy Knevel figure in the main still holding onto the handle bars of his bike...I played with it til it broke and ended up getting a replacement model from the store with a far more inferior plastic molded Knevel that in fact looked more like The Stig in hindsight...even the bike was made to look like a dirt bike on the replacement circa 1981/2...
Part of me would like to get another Evel Knevel toy....but perhaps I should consign this to a memory in the past - the hero I thought he was wasn't that, but a rather abusive man, flawed like a lot of us and that was the real disappointment when I watched the programme...
Come Join The Fun!
Comment