Britain's Got Talent performer on life after near-death fall (2024)

Escapologist Jonathan Goodwin was paralysed from the waist down after falling 30ft (9m) when a death-defying stunt went wrong.

Sixteen months on, he says the near-death accident gave him the opportunity of a new life and only made his relationship with Sherlock actress Amanda Abbington stronger.

The accident severed his spinal cord, broke both his shoulder blades, shattered both his legs, left him with third-degree burns and he needed urgent high-risk surgery.

"I had to call Amanda and thank her for everything because there was a good chance that I wouldn't make it through the surgery," said Jonathan, who grew up in Robeston Wathen, Pembrokeshire.

"That was an unpleasant conversation to have and upsetting for both of us."

The couple had been an item for little over a month after he proposed to her on their first date in Vienna.

They first met in 2012 when they were both in a relationships, and followed each other on social media.

Years later when their relationships ended they began to message each other, culminating in a seven-hour phone call before their first date and engagement.

"It felt like the most amazing, natural thing in the world," Amanda told the Guardian, external last year.

"A month may seems like a very short period of time but that month-and-a-half before the accident was certainly enough for me to know that she was my person," said Jonathan.

"We got to know each other incredibly well in that time so in many ways it didn't feel like a new relationship, I feel like I've known her for a very long time."

Shortly after his accident he gave her an opportunity to walk away from the relationship.

"What happened to me changed the rules, it changed the dynamic of what our future looked like and I had to give her the opportunity to say that she didn't want to do that," he said.

"Thankfully she told me not to be so stupid and we've been very happy ever since.

"I think it made us stronger and I firmly believe that Amanda is my soulmate."

Before his fall Jonathan was enjoying an incredibly successful career as a variety entertainer.

He was living in Las Vegas and had performed on New York's Broadway, London's West End, at Sydney Opera House and appeared on Britain's Got Talent in 2019 and America's Got Talent in 2020.

Then in October 2021, while rehearsing for America's Got Talent: Extreme, it all went wrong.

He was rehearsing a stunt where he was supposed to escape from a strait jacket while upside down in the air in between two suspended cars.

He became crushed between the cars as they caught on fire and he fell 30ft.

"I knew it had gone wrong a second or two before it did and I knew what was about to happen and I didn't have any kind of a adrenalized response," he said.

"My response was 'argh' and an expletive, there was no panic or anything like that.

"I've always been quite a sort of calm and pragmatic individual.

"I don't have a memory of the impact... everything went black and the next thing I remember is I was on the ground."

He said despite falling head first he managed to tuck his head in and his shoulders took the impact.

"I don't have any memory of pain or anything like that," he said.

He remembers being conscious and the shock and panic that broke out around him.

"I was told that I wouldn't walk again, and that my injury was essentially the worst the surgeon had seen," he said.

Despite the prognosis he said he had been able to stay positive throughout

"I never had a moment where I felt bleak - I haven't really had a bad day," he said.

"There's no point in dwelling on past trauma because it's literally that - it is in the past.

"For me it was about 'okay, what's next? How do we make the best of the situation I'm in right now?'".

After leaving the trauma ward he was moved to another hospital where he spent two-and-a-half months "relearning the very basics of how to be you".

"When you have a spinal injury it's like somebody waved a magic wand and you become an adult baby," he said.

"When you break your spine, sitting up is equivalent to trying to balance a pencil on a snooker ball, you just don't have any control, and that's just one thing."

He threw himself into his rehabilitation.

"I wouldn't wish what happened to me on anyone but I think I was uniquely suited to dealing with it because I spent my life dealing with physical challenges," he said.

Just as he was due to come out of hospital, Amanda was offered the starring role in action thriller Desperate Measures, which would mean filming in Budapest for seven weeks - he insisted she take the job.

The day he left hospital they travelled together to Heathrow and he got to grips with his new wheelchair on the streets of Budapest.

"It is widely considered to be the most inaccessible city in Europe, and so it was not easy but I've figured that if I could survive there for that amount of time then I would be just fine anywhere," he said.

He never returned to his home in Las Vegas and the couple now share a home in Hertfordshire.

Looking death in the face has given Jonathan a whole new mindset, he said.

"I have been given the opportunity of a new life. I should have died. It was an extremely serious accident and I've been given the opportunity to do new things so I'm forging a new path."

He joked: "I would never recommend nearly dying as a therapy but it is incredibly effective."

Jonathan now has an "incredibly satisfying" new career as a hypnotist, saying it felt like an "obvious" new focus as through his good friend and ex-flatmate Derren Brown, he has been around hypnosis for many years.

He is also determined to help others and said hypnosis was a remedy for many psychological challenges, from phobias to anxiety and depression.

Asked for the secret to his positivity, he said it was all about living in the moment.

"If something like this happens to you, you can either dwell in the past and think about all of the things that you've lost, or you can look at where you are and what you can do," he said.

"We have to try and live in the present moment as much as we can. The past and the future only exist in your head, they're not real.

"We can't change the past and we can't do anything really about the future and so the moment that we're living is right now - that's where your life is."

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