PARALYSED BGT star Jonathan Goodwin asked Amanda Abbingdon to marry him just an hour after they met, The escapologist, 42, has been left wheelchair bound for life after a dangerous stunt went wrong. The couple had previously been friends on social media for around 10 years, with Amanda following his content as her son Joe […]
PARALYSED BGT star Jonathan Goodwin asked Amanda Abbingdon to marry him just an hour after they met,
The escapologist, 42, has been left wheelchair bound for life after a dangerous stunt went wrong.
The couple had previously been friends on social media for around 10 years, with Amanda following his content as her son Joe thought his act was “amazing”.
She explained that they connected after she split with fellow Sherlock actor Martin Freeman and separated from another partner – and when Jonathan had divorced from his wife.
In a new interview, Amanda has revealed they began speaking on the phone, for as much as seven hours at a time, and he proposed to her within an hour of their first actual meeting.
Speaking to The Guardian, she also revealed how Jonathan’s accident had changed her outlook on life: “There was no way of predicting what was going to happen to Jonathan.
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“Now I don’t look too far into the future or the past.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen, so it’s about being in the moment.
“We try to say ‘Yes’ to a lot of things. Life’s too short.”
Jonathan was performing a stunt on America’s Got Talent: Extreme where he attempted to escape from a straight jacket while being hung upside down 30 feet in the air in between two suspended cars.
However, the timing was misjudged and the cars were released too early, causing the escape artist – who has appeared on both BGT and AGT – to be crushed between them as they caught on fire, leading to horrific injuries.
The accident has left him paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.
But the brave star today took a mirror selfie from his chair and wrote an inspirational message to fan.
Previously speaking about the incident, Amanda said: “He fell 30 feet and lost a kidney, broke both shoulder blades, shattered both legs.
“Third degree burns, broke his spine and severed his spinal cord and, nearly died. And then on the operating table, he nearly died again.”
She added to Out To Lunch podcast with Jay Rayner: “He’s paralysed now he’s in a wheelchair. Unless there’s a kind of stem cell surgery or that thing that Elon Musk is designing with the little chip, he’ll be like that forever.”
Despite the life-altering injuries, Amanda explained he has remained “positive and upbeat and so strong”.
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“His courage and his strength is something that I just aspire to be like,” she said.
“He’s just incredible, honestly, like so happy, just like a very happy, positive human being, just liquid sunshine. He’s amazing.”
