Helping TV personality, Lorraine Kelly, zipline off Wellington arch for charity awareness!
Stood on top of the Wellington arch with Lorraine Kelly, reading the ‘Globe and Laurel’, the Royal Marines journal.
In December 2012, whilst running the team responsible for raising awareness of the Royal Marines, we were asked to co-ordinate a stunt where the British TV personality, Lorraine Kelly, would zipline off the top of the Wellington arch in central London to mark the official launch of the Uk4u Thanks! Christmas campaign, which was sending Christmas boxes to servicemen and women that were away from home on operations that year.
Image credit: PA
If you’ve not heard of her, she is best known for her work as a daytime television presenter, particularly on the ITV morning show ‘Lorraine’, however her career started much earlier around 1984 at a local newspaper and BBC Scotland.
Having travelled up and down the country, appearing at air shows, TV events, abseiling into Twickenham stadium to deliver the match ball for a 6 nations rugby game, abseiling down the Shard building in central London, and also involved in the 2012 London Olympics, and a whole host of other things, we made our way to the centre of the city to size up how to go about rigging up a zipline from the top to the base, with enough space for the crash mats, and ‘catchers’ to fit in.
The space was tight. Anyone that commutes in London will know the space beneath the archway is like the Tour de France for cyclists, so we’d have to rig up the zipline to a heavy vehicle, and put out some safety barriers, but not so that they appeared in the lenses of the many photographers and videographers that had been arranged.
After we’d set it up and tested it, media crews started arriving the team were using it as an opportunity to practice some of their zipline skills, such as the front slide (as you can see in the photos), and another member coming down dressed as Santa Claus!
And then, Lorraine came up to the top of the arch and joined us for the real thing. She was slightly nervous given what she was about to do, but great fun to chat with and so we reassured her that we’d tested it ourselves and that it was completely safe. We would even put a safety line onto her in case her hands slipped out of the strops that she would use to do the zipline.
The event was good fun to participate in but had come at the end of a busy year. We’d driven the length of the country many times over, however my boss had told me our efforts had reversed a decline from 20% under target to 20% over the numbers we wanted to apply, meaning our hard work hadn’t gone unnoticed or unappreciated. I was sure to share this with my team, and make sure they all felt appreciated for all the bumps and scrapes they had picked up along the way.
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