Discovering The Power Of Escape

Written by TVSA Team from the blog Interviews on 24 Apr 2009
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"Man is born free but is everwhere in chains."
(Sarte)

... and some men are lunatics who could be free but choose to deliberately chain themselves to crazy-ass contraptions to see if they can conquer fate.
(Tagg) *Pleased at how schmancy it sounds.*

One such creature is Jonathan Goodwin: Houdini junkie, baldie, YouTube star and an escape artist in One Way Out, a new show starting on Discovery at the end of May.

Even though it's only starting in a while, I've just chatted to Jonathan and it's turned out to be the perfect time to share the news with it being Freedom Day on Monday because he pursues freeedom on the show.

Each episode sees him trying to escape dangerous situations he gets himself into - they're all dreamed up by him to involve max difficulty and once the stunt's over he explains the science behind how he managed to escape. In some instances he's not able to get free, needs to be saved and then analyses why things went whack.

The Susan Boyle Factor

Jonathan first started experimenting with stunts when was about eight, developed them as he grew up and then started posting footage on YouTube. His clips got so popular that he was offered a show in the UK and next thing Discovery spotted him and One Way Out's the result.

Snakes, Girls & Nudity

When I spoke to him I specifically wanted to snoop out what gives him true rigour (rigourmortis/frozen in terror; aka his fears-and-death) ...

Tashi: What's been the closest you have come to death in one of your stunts?
Jonathan: I did a television show in the UK where I was hanged which was fairly dangerous, but the thing is, all of the stuff that I do I plan very, very meticulously. Although it is sort of risky - hanging does sound like, "Well that is death for sure isn't it?" - in actual fact what kills you when you get hanged is the drop and the stop.

What happened to me was that I was lifted by a weight that only weighed a bit more than I did and so that is much less dangerous - I mean it still hurt and it is never a clever thing to do, but that is the thing. I will plan those kinds of stunts around: "What is the worst thing that I would possibly be willing to have happen to me if it goes wrong?"

In One Way Out I think the closest or the most dangerous thing that we did was I was locked in a box which was on top of a washing machine covered in 200,000 bees and that is really dangerous from the point of view of if it goes wrong.

Basically anything over 100 stings is getting to a situation where that is very dangerous and with 200,000 bees on you that can happen in a heartbeat.

Tashi: Yes, a lot of your stunts involve Fear Factor type creatures; bees, scorpions and so on. Is there any creature you would never go near?

Jonathan: To be honest I would never say never. Having said that I have a very good friend, a South African guy actually, who is about to start making a show for Animal Planet - his name is Donald Schelp.

He has a bunch of incredibly venomous snakes in his house and they give me the wiggins; it is just one of those things where there is an animal that is kind of four feet away from you and it's basically just a coiled spring and at any time it can bite you in the face if it wants to.

That to me just is not friendly, so yes, probably, my least favourite would be snakes, but even then I think I would - if there was a cool snake escape then I would probably be up for it as well.

Tashi: Cool, I'm thinking like a python wrapped around you or something?
Jonathan: Yes, that might be very cool, I will make a note.

Tashi: You describe your stunts as involving pain and humiliation, I find that quite interesting; what do you mean by humiliation exactly?
Jonathan: There are parts of it in One Way Out, it’s more of a broad philosophy in what I do. Usually an escape artist is going to risk death, whereas that’s just one bad thing that could happen to you and not something that I’m personally willing to risk, but it could be anything.

In the UK I did an escape where I was chained up in an elevator naked with my clothes next to me in the elevator and I’m on the 16th floor of an office block and at the bottom of the elevator in the lobby are a group of my family and friends including my girlfriend’s parents who are waiting to jump out and give me a surprise party.

They have no idea what’s going on, they think that they’re going to surprise me and somebody presses the button for the ground floor, so I have the time it takes from the elevator to go from the 16th floor the ground floor to escape and put my clothes back on - so from that point of view that’s a perfect example of humiliation of the jeopardy in an escape.

Tashi: Did you manage to do it?
Jonathan: No. I had one hand free by the time I got to the bottom so I could wave and also hide my modesty slightly.

Tashi: This talk about girlfriends and appearing to them naked etcetera. Do you manage to keep them or are you constantly trying to escape from them?
Jonathan: Girlfriends you mean?

Tashi: Yes, do you manage to keep them or do you always plot ways of escaping from commitment and relationships?
Jonathan: You’ll be very surprised to learn that it’s almost exactly the opposite. I have a wonderful girlfriend. My girlfriend is actually a mermaid. She’s a free diver and underwater model but her main business is she’s a mermaid in mermaidsinmotion.com and she has a real prosthetic mermaid tail that she wears when she does photo shoots and films music videos and corporate events and stuff like that.

It’s great at parties when we introduce ourselves because I say I'm an escape artist and people don’t believe me and then they look at her and she says she’s a mermaid and at that point they usually walk away. She’s actually fearfully independent and so she’s the commitment phobe; I’d marry my girlfriend in a heartbeat, but I've got to wait.

Fast facts

Jonathan's dad is a firefighter so it makes sense why he chose his career.

He's inspired by Houdini and believes Houdini's water torture act was his greatest achievement - being dangled and trapped in water. Jonathan's tried the stunt and variations of it and classifies H2O suffocation as his most rigour-inducing escape.