Drunk friends who broke their legs after ‘breaking into waterpark’ divide Twitter

Two friends who are now in wheelchairs after drunkenly breaking into a water park have appeared on This Morning to tell a cautionary tale.

The pair, 46-year-old Claire Vickers and 44-year-old Barry Douglas, told hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that the life lesson they want to pass on to viewers is that even if something seems like a good idea at the time, disaster could be just around the corner.

Mum-of-five Vickers explained that she has been going to the water park since she was around 20 years old, and after an evening of boozing in August they let themselves into the park at 2am.

She said: “That night I didn’t plan on going out to do this, it just happened. And it’s happened before to other people so I just think something should be done about it.”

They were swimming at first before braving the flume tubes, with Douglas adding that they were easy to gain access to.

Bizarrely, Douglas decided to strip naked before the pair set off down the slide together with Vickers in front.

However, disaster struck at the end of the slide as they smashed feet-first into a steel barrier.

Vickers explained: “As we were coming down the actual chute, when you come out where the water is supposed to slow you down, there were blocks. As soon as I hit the bottom it just split my leg straight in half.”

She said her bone came out through her skin on her right leg, and she shattered “every single bone” in her left leg and needed three surgeons to put her on the mend.

Douglas broke both of his ankles and his tibia . As he was naked and cold, he passed out — making Vickers fear the worst.

Vickers called for help for three and a half hours before someone finally alerted the police.

“It is like something out of a horror movie,” Willoughby commented.

The pair will now be in wheelchairs for between 18 months and two years.

“It’s seriously changed my life,” Douglas said.

Vickers said she is an active grandmother of two and she starts physiotherapy on Friday.

Schofield asked: “What do the grandchildren think of granny going down a slide with a naked bloke?”

Vickers laughed in reply and said they are only two and three so they keep asking: “Nanny, can you not get up and walk yet?”

Willoughby asked how the pals would respond to critics who would say they shouldn’t have gone to the waterpark while they had been drinking.

Douglas answered: “They should have had security there for a start and the fence should be secured.  There will be legal action being taken.”

Schofield hit back and said they shouldn’t have been going down the slide in the first place.

Vickers interjected and said: “I just think that everybody makes a mistake. Everybody has got drunk at some point in their life and made a silly choice, and that’s what this was.”

Schofield said if perhaps the barrier was at the top of the slide instead of at the bottom, it could have prevented an accident.

Viewers took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the show, and not everyone was as sympathetic as Willoughby and Schofield:

Although they’ve owned up to their poolish mistake and warned others against copying them, we can’t say the same about a TikToker who also had watery woes when he licked a man o' war.