Dangerous Sports Club

The Dangerous Sports Club, a group of adventurers and extreme sports pioneers based in Oxford and London, were active from the late 1970s for about ten years, during which they developed modern bungee jumping and experimented with a variety of other innovative sporting activities.

The Dangerous Sports Club was co-founded by David Kirke, Chris Baker, Ed Hulton and Alan Weston in the 1970s. They first came to wide public attention by inventing modern day bungee jumping, by making the first modern jumps on 1 April 1979, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England. They followed the Clifton Bridge effort with a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California (including the first female bungee jump by Jane Wilmot), and with a televised leap from the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge in Colorado, sponsored by and televised on the popular American television program That's Incredible! Initially, bungee jumping was a niche novelty; it was popularised by A J Hackett, and has become a mainstream activity.

The club's activity and membership peaked in the 1980s, with several dozen active members and holding a wide range of events. The Club was heavily covered in the press, and made a film released in 1982 ("The History of the Dangerous Sports Club") as a supporting feature. Their activities were recorded by photographer Dafydd Jones, including an image of a young Nigella Lawson playing croquet from a sedan chair during a club tea party. The group split into various factions over the years. Monty Python star Graham Chapman was perhaps their most famous member, and working on a feature movie about the club when he died in 1989. When making personal appearances in the mid-1980s, he would show films of Club activities.

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