John Bream, talks about his life as full-time thrill seeking record breaker
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00:00 Three, two, one, take off.
00:02 I'm John the Flying Fish.
00:08 Yeah, I'm a...
00:10 Predominantly, I'm a rope worker,
00:13 a stunt rigger and a daredevil performer.
00:18 That's what I like to do.
00:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:45 The way all my stories came around, or the way I became, you know, doing these performances,
00:53 was I was doing a lot of stunt rigging.
00:55 So I was rigging stunts, preparing stunts, coming up with ideas and stuff.
01:00 So for some of the world's leading adventurers all around the world,
01:05 and it was good fun, it was really good.
01:07 You know, I'd become quite a good rope tech,
01:10 and so performing, rigging these stunts was great.
01:14 And I was watching people and I was thinking,
01:16 maybe I could do a bit more, you know, maybe I could go that bit further.
01:21 And there was something in me all along, thinking, you know,
01:24 I could perhaps do something great.
01:27 And yeah, so I thought I'm going to go for a big performance myself.
01:32 And I thought the world's highest jump from an aircraft into water
01:35 was one to keep people smiling, keeping them entertained.
01:39 So the moment before I exited,
01:42 I was up there and the pilot, excellent pilot, army fighter pilot,
01:48 brilliant fellow, Andrew Harvey, mega.
01:50 He is in this little aircraft trying to keep it steady.
01:55 And he was doing such a fine job.
01:57 He kept looking around at me, you know,
01:58 "John, John!"
02:00 I was going, "No, we're doing this!"
02:01 And he's holding it steady and the winds are going,
02:04 and the waves are higher than this room,
02:06 and my safety divers are getting washed off,
02:09 and everyone's in the boat,
02:10 "Ahh!" You know, the pump for the water to break the surface tension
02:13 wasn't even hitting the water, it was flying off.
02:16 And it was going crazy.
02:18 And before I'm jumping, I can just see down below,
02:21 I saw this smoke, smoke got popped to me and to where to go.
02:25 And it was just disappearing.
02:26 And I was thinking, "Hang on a minute,
02:28 that wants to be the area where I'm jumping."
02:29 But it was just blown away.
02:31 And the waves are going up and down.
02:33 And that's taking the altimeter from the helicopter pilot.
02:36 And yeah, it was really exciting.
02:39 And I got a friend of mine, Hugh Kear, excellent bloke.
02:42 He was there dispatching me, ready to go.
02:45 He was the jump master for the day.
02:47 And he's giving me the thumbs up.
02:48 And I remember just there, I took a few deep breaths.
02:50 And I felt good, I felt strong.
02:53 I thought, "Yeah, I'm going to go for it."
02:55 But then I jumped and the wind coming in,
02:57 it took my legs, "Ahh!"
02:59 And I was going down and I thought,
03:01 "Ooh!"
03:02 I thought, "I better brace up before I hit the water."
03:04 And yeah, it was all right.
03:07 - And it was all over in a flash.
03:09 - It was, yeah, it was about three and a half seconds of,
03:14 "This is going to sting."
03:15 So when I surfaced, I came up.
03:19 And I got the boat sped around
03:21 and we all got together and we all climbed in the boat.
03:24 And I really felt my backside was quite sore.
03:28 And I said to the guys, I went, "How was my entry?"
03:32 And a couple of the lads kept quiet and just ignored me.
03:36 And one of them turned around and went,
03:38 "Yeah, it was awful, John.
03:39 "That was probably one of your worst jumps."
03:41 But no, it was okay.
03:44 It turned out good.
03:47 And then you guys came up with the cameras and stuff
03:50 and someone shouted, "John, how did it go?"
03:52 And I said, "Swimmingly!"
03:54 You know, just thinking it was great.
03:56 The feeling before you jump,
03:58 it's actually known as a thing called the flow state.
04:02 So what happens with that is your body,
04:05 it's sort of, you know, your in-body, your mind,
04:09 but you sort of take, you get an out-of-body experience.
04:13 It's sort of, you just go on adrenaline.
04:16 But the feeling you get is just, there's none like it.
04:20 Not a single worry that you had is on your mind.
04:24 Everything, you're focused on this and nothing else.
04:26 And it's a real escapism.
04:28 It's good fun.
04:29 So I have been in talks with certain energy drink companies
04:35 but nothing's confirmed yet.
04:37 You know, it's all just chat and things like that.
04:39 So nothing is confirmed and nothing's official
04:43 or anything like that.
04:44 But if something does get ticked,
04:48 yeah, definitely be looking up
04:50 because there are going to be some serious world records coming from myself.
04:55 (intense music)