Eddie Kidd started his motorcycle stunt career at the age of fourteen and was only 18 years old when he jumped 13 double-decker buses in 1978.
Eddie broke a further eight world records, and worked as a stunt double in many films, notably for Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (1987), Roger Moore and Michael Caine in Bullseye! (1990) and Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye (1995).
One of his most famous motorcycle stunts was in the 1979 film Hanover Street when – doubling for Harrison Ford – he jumped a 120-foot railway cutting at 90 miles per hour in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
He also doubled for Val Kilmer in Top Secret! (1984).
Kidd starred as stunt biker Dave Munday in the 1981 film Riding High, performing a motorcycle jump across an 80-foot gap in a disused railway viaduct across the Blackwater River in Essex.
In 1993, he jumped over the Great Wall of China on a motorcycle. The same year, he was challenged by American motorcycle daredevil Robbie Knievel to a world title motorcycle “jump off” competition in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
The televised competition required each rider to make three jumps with the cumulative distance covered used to determine the winner: Kidd won by six feet.
On 6 August 1996, Kidd was involved in a serious motorcycle accident while performing at the Bulldog Bash, at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon. In comparison to some of his previous stunts, the jump he made that day was relatively minor (a jump of approximately 49 feet across a drag strip) but having completed the jump and landed the bike upright, his chin struck the petrol tank of his motorcycle and he was knocked unconscious.
He was thus unable to prevent himself and his bike from continuing up and over a 20-foot embankment where he sustained serious head and pelvic injuries in the resulting fall.
Kidd regained consciousness within three months of the accident but was left paralysed and with brain damage.
