Obese mother, 30, loses 18 STONE after getting stuck in a theme park ride
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Becky Edwards from Cannock, Staffs. was so humiliated after becoming wedged in children’s ride she lost more than half bodyweight
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Supermarket worker Becky used Safeway discount card to stock up on pies and crisps
By Deborah Andrews
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A mother-of-two was shamed into losing more than 18 stone after getting stuck on a theme park ride.
Becky Edwards was left a laughing stock when she became wedged in a carriage ride while enjoying a day out with her family three years ago.
The 30-year-old from Cannock, Staffordshire, was so humiliated by her mishap that it forced her to change her unhealthy lifestyle – and lose more than half her body weight.
She said: ‘It was the most embarrassing day of my life. Everyone was staring at me. People were laughing and pointing at me.
‘In a way, I’m glad it happened. I don’t think I would have done anything about my weight otherwise.’
‘It was the most embarrassing day of my life’: Becky will never forget the moment she became stuck in a theme park ride
Healthy: Supermarket worker Becky once used her discount card to buy pork pies and sweets – now she eats low fat foods and grills instead of fries
Becky, who is a full-time mother, ballooned to a dress size 32 and a whopping 33 stone after years of gorging on junk food.
She said: ‘It started when I was in my late teens and I moved out of home into my own flat. I stopped eating proper meals.
‘I got a job in Safeway and used my discount card to buy crisps, chocolates and cream cakes every day. I would stuff myself.
‘I was working shifts and on my way home from work, I’d stop off at the chip shop.’
On an average day, Becky would eat three bags of crisps, two chocolate bars, sandwiches, a pizza, sausage rolls, pork pies and Cornish pasties.
Her weight spiralled out of control after she met husband Gary, 34, a factory worker, and gave birth to their daughter Lilly, now six.
Becky said: ‘When Lilly was a toddler, I started dieting. I tried different things – Weight Watchers, Slimfast – but nothing worked for me.
‘I was always hungry and would fill up on anything I could grab. I was probably eating the same amount.
‘I just got it into my head that I would never lose weight. I just thought ‘that’s me’ and hid myself in baggy clothes.
‘I didn’t own a full length mirror. I didn’t want to see myself.’
It wasn’t until the day out at Drayton Manor Theme Park in Staffordshire that Becky got the wake-up call she needed.
She said: ‘Lilly was only three at the time and she wanted to go on every ride. I always avoided them.
‘I used to come up with excuses but she begged me to go on the cars with her. I didn’t like seeing her upset so I gave in.
Super mum: Thirty-three stone Becky Edwards was humiliated into losing more than half her body weight after getting stuck on a roller coaster at Drayton Manor theme park.
‘As we went round, the wheel was cutting into my stomach. It was very uncomfortable.
‘When the ride finished, I tried to stand up but I realised I was stuck.
‘Lilly sat there waiting for me to get off. She shouted: ‘come on Mum, hurry up.’ She wanted to go on the other rides. She was young and didn’t understand what was happening.
‘It was so embarrassing. My biggest fear was that they would have to call the fire brigade to cut me out.’
After several minutes, Becky finally managed to free herself.
She said: ‘It felt like I was stuck forever.
‘I grabbed Lilly’s hand and walked towards Gary. There was a crowd of people looking at me.
‘I was hot and my face was bright red.
‘Gary had seen everything but he knew it was best not to mention anything. We never talked about my weight. I think he was worried about upsetting me.
‘After that, I refused to go on any more rides.’
Liberating: Now Becky says she can go on any children’s rides she likes
On the journey home, Becky tried to make a joke out of her misfortune.
She said: ‘I laughed it off. I said it was a kid’s ride and adults shouldn’t go on it but I was struggling to hold back the tears.
‘As soon we got home though, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. It really upset me.
‘I hated my body and was ashamed at how fat I’d let myself get.’
She also realised that her bad relationship with food could have fatal health implications.
‘I was always breathless and at risk of having a heart attack.
‘I’d cook a healthy meal for Lilly and Gary but I wouldn’t eat it myself. I was setting a bad example.
‘I decided I needed to do something if I wanted to see her grow up. I didn’t want to leave her without a mum.’
Becky joined her local Slimming World group and within a month she had lost a stone and a half.
She said: ‘You can eat what you want but you change how you cook things. I don’t use oil and I grill everything.
‘Anne my Slimming World leader has been brilliant. When I’m struggling she will always helps me. The group is like one big family. We all look after each other.
‘When I fell pregnant with my son Harry, I had a break from Slimming World and put on two stone but as soon as he was born, I was back again.’
In total, dropped nine dress sizes and has slimmed down to a healthier 14 stone. She hopes to lose a further two stone to reach her target.
Becky says she still has flashbacks to that day but it hasn’t stopped her going to the theme park.
She said: ‘We went to Drayton Manor a couple of weeks ago and I went on everything.
‘Lilly said to me the other day: ‘You used to be fat, Mummy, but now you’re not.’
‘It made me feel so proud.’
London 2012 Olympics: Danny Boyle’s Shakespeare theme for £81m opening ceremony
- Hollywood director Danny Boyle chooses Shakespeare theme for £81m opening spectacular
- 27-ton bell inspired by Shakespeare will form the centrepiece of £27m opening ceremony
- Hundreds of NHS nurses and schoolchildren will be involved in event
- 20,000 performers will take part in Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies
By Emily Andrews
Last updated at 1:43 AM on 28th January 2012
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will feature a performance by hundreds of nurses, it was revealed yesterday.
Artistic director Danny Boyle – the Oscar-winning director behind Slumdog Millionaire – said he wanted to celebrate everything that was ‘unique and special’ to the British Isles…including the National Health Service.
Europe’s biggest bell will be specially made to ring in the start of London 2012.
Our turn next: Mark Foster of the Great Britain Olympic men’s swim team carries his country’s flag to lead out the delegation during the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
The 27-ton bell will be a feat of engineering and twice the weight of Big Ben.
Mr Boyle said the ceremony will be called ‘Isles of Wonders’ after a speech in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
More than anything, he said, he wanted it to be a ‘people’s Games’ and to try to capture the very particular, and sometimes peculiar, British sense of humour.
A sense of humour that has, at times, been tested by the spiralling budget for the Olympic ceremonies – last month it doubled to £81million.
At the vast rehearsal studios in East London Mr Boyle gave a small glimpse of what 80,000 spectators and millions of TV viewers can expect on July 27.
The biggest ringing bell in Europe has been commissioned and will hang at one end of the stadium.
It will ‘ring in’ the start of the Games and will be inscribed with Caliban’s line from The Tempest ‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises’.
Shakespeare, NHS and schoolchildren will be at the centre of the Olympic Opening Ceremony display, Danny Boyle, pictured, revealed today
The half-man, half-monster Caliban is devoted to the island on which he lives – and Mr Boyle hopes to mirror that pride and patriotism in the ceremony.
Indeed he seemed to be rather keen on monsters – he said that last year’s production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre had allowed him to practise lots of ideas.
So perhaps we’ll see lots of prosthetics, green paint and pantomime costumes alongside runners from Kenya and gymnasts from Russia.
Another theme will be the cleansing and recovery of poisoned land – after the Olympic park site was cleaned of all its industrial pollutants.
Greatest show on earth: The spectacular Opening Ceremony in Beijing in the Bird’s Nest Stadium four years ago
One certainty is that there’ll be lots of flying – and flowers. A flying system that can lift 25 tons, the equivalent of five elephants, has been installed in the main stadium to enable some impressive aerial acrobatics.
‘EMPLOYERS UNPREPARED FOR GAMES ABSENCES’
Most employers have not drawn up plans for dealing with an expected surge in staff absence during the Olympics, months before the Games start, according to a report today.
A survey of 1,000 office workers by recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark showed that two-thirds were employed in companies yet to draft a plan.
Among those who have agreed procedures in place, some said annual leave will be given on a first-come, first-served basis, while a small percentage have told staff they will not be allowed to take a break while the Games are held.
Employers in London are among those most likely not to have told their staff about holiday plans when the sporting event is held in the capital.
Nicola Linkleter, managing director at Badenoch & Clark, said: ‘Given the immense interest the London Olympic Games will create among workers, this is poor planning that could lead to employee discontent, confusion or threadbare cover.’
And Sebastian Coe, chairman of London 2012, dropped another hint by saying whenever he popped down to see rehearsals he kept tripping over buckets of flowers.
So it will be noisy, acrobatic, colourful and floral. What else?
Well, the only other confirmed part was that nurses will have a starring role in one ‘sequence’ as the NHS is one of the things that is ‘unique about us…along with our sense of humour’.
Featuring with them will be some 900 children from the six Olympic host boroughs who have been auditioning in recent weeks.
No details of performers were revealed – but again a hint that ‘everyone’ wants to take part. But we can expect the spectacular. And the unexpected.
Asked if the fear of technology going wrong had ensured they play safe, executive producer Stephen Daldry implied they would be pushing boundaries. He said: ‘The idea of jeopardy is one of the great fantastic tensions of the evening.’
Mr Boyle said only about a third of the budget would be spent on the opening ceremony, which was much less than the £65million the Chinese spent at Beijing 2008.
He said: ‘You are standing on the shoulders of giants when you do this kind of job. You cannot but live in the shadow of your predecessors.
Countdown: Sebastian Coe, Boris Johnson and David Cameron discuss the six-month countdown to the Olympic games in Davos yesterday
‘The spectacle of Beijing was just breathtaking. The sheer beauty of Athens is very inspiring but I have to say that Sydney has inspired us. It got the feel of a people’s Games right.
‘It is inevitable that people will compare us – and that is fine.
‘I think there is a sea change and we are lucky enough to be setting it. It will be spectacular but the reduction in scale is inevitable.’
London 2012 said it will release more details of the opening in the run-up to the Games to give people a flavour of what to expect.
Mr Boyle said he would have preferred to keep everything a ‘surprise’ but that was impossible when everyone ‘films everything on their mobiles’.
Estimates suggest the advertising spend during the ceremony, which will last three hours, could be worth £2billion globally.
‘LIKE 165 WEST END SHOWS AT THE SAME TIME’: FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR OLYMPIC OPENING AND CLOSING CEREMONIES
Staging the four showpiece opening and closing ceremonies for the London 2012 Games is ‘challenging, daunting but also incredibly exciting’, executive producer Stephen Daldry said today.
He described it as like putting on 165 West End shows at the same time.
Nurses, the biggest ringing bell in Europe inscribed with lines from Shakespeare, and children will be key features of the opening ceremony.
Here are some of the facts, figures and details behind the ceremonies.
For the Opening Ceremony there is:
- 15,000 square metres of staging – equivalent to 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
- A flying system that can lift 25 tonnes – that is the same as five elephants.
- There will be 12,956 props, which is more than 100 times more than used in a West End musical.
- A million-watt PA system using more than 500 speakers and 50 tonnes of associated sound gear – which is double the amount of speakers than on the main stage at Glastonbury.
- The design team have made enough scale model pieces to cover a 100m running track. Every performer has been represented by a plastic figurine.
- So far, 64 different supplier companies have been contracted to provide services and products.
- For all four opening and closing ceremonies there will be 25 containers full of scenery and props and 75 containers of costumes full of 23,000 costumes. Some cast members will wear more than one costume each.
- 15,000 volunteer cast across all four ceremonies. The people who have auditioned have been aged from 18 to 90 years old. They have come from across the UK and include people who watched the 1948 Games live, according to London 2012.
- A total of 12 hours of music working with an internationally renowned orchestra of around 60 musicians is part of the programme. Organisers will spend three months of recording time in the studio and spend 36 hours in dedicated drum tuition.
- The combined TV audiences for the four ceremonies is predicted to be more than four billion people. Sir Martin Sorrell has predicted that the equivalent airtime value of the four ceremonies will be worth between approximately £2bn and £5bn.
Categories: News Tags: £81m, 2012, Boyle's, ceremony, Danny, London, Olympics, Opening, Shakespeare, Theme
Camelot Theme Park: Boy, 12, with special needs plunges from Excalibur 2 ride
By Sara Nelson
Last updated at 2:14 AM on 24th August 2011
A 12-year-old boy with special needs is in hospital after plunging from a theme park ride.
The unnamed boy fell from the Excalibur 2 ride at the Camelot Theme Park in Chorley.
The incident occurred at 1pm yesterday and the boy was airlifted to Wigan Royal Infirmary.
The boy fell from the Excalibur 2 ride this afternoon at the Camelot theme park in Chorley
His injuries are not thought to be life-threatening, and a joint police and Health and Safety Executive investigation is now under way.
One eye-witness told the Lancashire Evening Post he had seen the boy ‘hanging’ from the ride.
A spokesman for the theme park said: ‘At this stage we do not know the full extent of the injuries sustained and our thoughts are with the young boy and his family.
‘Until we have more information to hand, it would be inappropriate to make any further comment.’
The Excalibur 2 is a white-knuckle ride that spins thrill-seekers around on a rotating arm.
It was installed 10 years ago and is one of Camelot’s most popular rides.
The park’s website describes the ride as ‘fearsome, stomach churning and a test of the nerves.’
It requires a minimum height of 1.4metres and warns ‘only true adrenalin junkies’ should dare to ride it.
