Evel Knievel

Evel Knievel was probably the closest thing I've ever had to a childhood heroes. I don't tend to have much in the way of strong urges towards celebrities as far as putting them on gigantic pedestals for me to worship at and then they can nosedive off every five minutes, ready for me to ignore then when I realise they truly suck ass from the basin of the vast oceans of suck. No, I have friends, work colleagues and relatives for that fun. Evel Knievel tends to get out of being my childhood hero on several technicalities, luckily for him. Firstly, he stopped doing any motorcycle stunts three years before I was born, so in the interests of being contemporary, I'd be idolising a drunken ex motorcyclist womaniser. Secondly, he was a drunken motorcyclist womaniser anyway. And thirdly, he spelt 'Evil' wrong unnecessarily. Apart from these three minor instances, the man is surely one of this century's genuinely brilliant, ridiculous individuals, and therefore deserves and honorary obituary from just about everybody. Seriously, he's up there with Dustin Diamond, 'The Masked Magician' and Lt. Horatio Caine in the inner circle of stupidity. Only out of the four, Evel was the only one who was for real.
My first real introduction to Evel Knievel was in 1998, when I was 15. At the time, 15 sounds too old to have a childhood hero, but given that seems like such a long time ago (I was still buying CD singles for one thing) I guess maybe that's another techinicality he escapes from. BBC2 for no reason whatsoever, other than having absolutely fuck all else in the archivest to show, decided to have an 'Evel Knievel' night one Saturday, in which they showed an hour long documentary, then another slightly longer documentary in which they encoporated all the now-legendary David Frost interviews and it was all about how he (Knieve, not David Frost) wanted to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho using a rocket powered bike, obviously the pinnacle of his career. This was followed by the fantastically awful 'The Evel Knievel Store' starring George Hamilton. The stuntman had just entered my teenage psyche by firstly appearing on the cover of the single 'Bad Idea' by A, and there was a dance track doing the rounds on Steve Lamacqs Evening Session called simply, 'Evel Knievel', and it was actually pretty good. It's still worth tracking down actually, were it not impossible to find on file sharing networks without it being wedged inbetween two other tracks like a shit sandwich. I watched the entire night, in which they marvellously used the aforementioned 'Evel Knievel' track (despite it having no relevance to motorcycle stunt jumps or anything else within the documentary whatsoever other than the title) all the time. I even watched the film, despite it's utter pomposity and self-publicising nature. It lended itself neatly to the other reason I love Evel Knievel, he was an arrogant self-aggrandising berk, which aren't usually my favourite traits in people, however, if you're a wire-thin greying buffoon who jumps over fountains and buses and fucking canyons for fun, then to be honest the fact you think this is all a brilliant and wonderful thing and you are a brilliant and wonderful person, then bring it on. People who have absolutely no right to be arrogant should be allowed to be as arrogant as they want, really.
But now he's dead, although people die every day, sometimes they're not even famous. But he is dead, and since he just settled a lawsuit with Kanye West, and Kanye West's old dear snuffed it the other weekend, I'd be visiting Bupa pretty sharpish if I'd spent more than five minutes in the company of West in the last year or so. The man's cursed.