TV

A man escaped from dead cows anus in TV stunt banned from ever being broadcast

A man escaped from dead cows anus in TV stunt banned from ever being broadcast
Udder chaos: Cow found in Lake District farm office
Indy

In one of the most vulgar things that you are ever likely to hear, an escape artist has shared how he once escaped from inside of a dead cow by exiting through its bum.

Welsh stuntman and escape artist Jonathan Goodwin recently revealed what happened on the 'incredibly difficult' stunt on an episode on the Manatomy podcast with Danny Wallace and Phil Hilton.

Goodwin, who previous stunts had included him escaping from 50,000 bees, did the stunt for a 2005 Channel 4 show called The Seven Stupidest Things to Escape From. It was inspired by a stunt once performed by the great Harry Houdini.

However, Houdini didn't have to contend with TV executives meaning that Goodwin's replication of the stunt has never seen the light of day.


"Houdini was apparently sewn up inside a dead whale and tried to escape. I just thought, 'That's utterly arbitrary'," Goodwin explained, adding: "Normally an escape is based on something everybody knows it's very difficult to escape from - like a prison or a safe or whatever."

While it might not seem that hard to get hold of a dead cow, Goodwin said that the biggest problem was getting anyone to agree to it as it was happening at the tail end of the mad cow disease crisis so they had to get a cow that was already due to be slaughtered.

Once they had their cow, Goodwin says that it felt like he was being put inside "a big shoe - with legs" as he was literally tied up from inside.

"It was a very, very difficult thing to escape from. I couldn't really breath in there and it was very heavy," said Goodwin but he managed to wriggle out of the cow's backside and his Dad was on set to offer him an "accidental comedy genius" handshake after he was free.

"I managed to get my hand out of the cow and my dad, who’s an accidental comedy genius, walks over and shakes my hand through the arse of the cow."

Sadly Channel 4 wouldn't air the footage. "They saw it they went, ‘We can’t put that on television’" but Goodwin doesn't hold any grudges against the station and instead regards as something of an achievement saying: "Channel 4 back in the day, that's a badge of honour that they refused to show it, because they would do anything."

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