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Cutting Edge The Men Who Jump Off Buildings

Cutting Edge follows two of Britain"s most prolific base 
jumpers and finds out what motivates them to jump from 
famous landmarks and pull their parachutes seconds from 
impact?

There are so many reasons NOT to jump off buildings, it’s hard to know where to begin.

For starters, you have to get up at about 4am when it’s cold and dark and there’s nobody about.

Then you have to work out how to sneak past security and climb on to the roof of your chosen monument.

And just as you leap, you have to pray you’ve packed your parachute correctly and that it won’t open the wrong way, slamming you into glass and concrete on the way down – or deposit you in front of a passing lorry as you hit the ground.

Frankly, you’d lost me at the getting up at 4am part.

But I’m sure there are a tiny handful of people who’ll watch Dan Witchalls chucking himself off Nelson’s Column or the new Wembley Stadium or the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane and think: I fancy some of that.

Witchalls has so far made 800 jumps and lived to tell the tale – touch wood. But his run of good fortune makes him the exception rather than the rule – 151 base jumpers have been killed since 1981 and his jumping partner Neil Queminet died climbing to jump off a cliff in Thailand in 2004.

Dan’s no mindless thrill-seeker and he and his new partner Ian Richardson try to explain what draws them to this most unforgiving of sports.

“I don’t think it’s just an adrenaline thing,” says Ian. “That’s just a simplistic way of explaining something that’s quite complex.”