Dawn French spent years in agony after recreating her famous 'Vicar of Dibley' puddle jump scene on a chat show.
Dawn French was left in pain for years after a TV stunt went wrong
The 65-year-old actress has revealed she agreed to act out the famous skit - in which her character disappeared into a deep puddle up to her neck - during an appearance on Paul O'Grady's chat show in 2009 in which she would fall through specially-built set but she landed badly and was left with lasting injuries.
During one-woman stage show in Exeter on Thursday (07.09.23) - as reported by the Daily Mail newspaper - Dawn explained: "[It was] catastrophically misguided ... They constructed a 10ft-high hill out of scaffolding covered in AstroTurf. The idea was that there was a long enough drop for me to disappear into. Then some bright spark had the idea of having a shallow silicon membrane containing two inches of water on top so that, as I jumped through, the water would splash up and look like a deep puddle.
But what was I falling onto? The answer is absolutely nothing. Except for 10ft below there were two very thin crash mats in a film studio with a flat concrete floor. Any fool would know this was a disaster in the making. Any fool but me."
After showing the stage show audience a picture of the moment before she jumped, Dawn said: "This is the last time that my body is actually intact. This is the last time I had two functioning legs."
She went on to reveal she landed badly and heard a "twanging noise" but she didn't want to admit weakness by saying she'd been injured. After driving home, she realised she wasn't ok and spent a long time in pain before consulting a surgeon who warned her she would need a knee-replacement operation in the future but could make do with a steroid injection.
The jabs worked for several years but after working on 2022 film 'Death on the Nile', Dawn was in agony again. She then sought help again, explaining: "I called the surgeon to have the [knee replacement] operation. Then he told me I couldn't have three injections in total but three a year. I could have had loads of injections for all those painful years."
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