Michael Edwards, better known to the world as "Eddie the Eagle", recently found himself battling a familiar, yet distinctly different, kind of pre-performance anxiety.
Not the bone-shattering fear of a perilously steep ski jump, but the nerve-wracking prospect of facing a theatre packed with children on the opening night of Beauty and the Beast.
The athlete-turned-performer, who once risked his neck on the slopes, now faced the gentler challenge of tripping over lines and failing to elicit laughs.
This foray into acting is the latest chapter in the bustling career of Eddie the Eagle, a testament to his enduring celebrity, which has stretched far beyond his brief, yet iconic, flight as Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper. Despite finishing last at the 1988 Calgary Games, his fame has never truly waned.
Since entering the spotlight, Edwards has embraced a remarkable array of ventures.
He has recorded songs, danced on ice, donned a chicken costume twice (eagle suits, he notes, are scarce), been interviewed in an Amsterdam brothel, filmed commercials for cars and spectacles, and spoken for hours about the improbable journey that led him to global recognition.
"I’m always very, very grateful that I got christened Eddie The Eagle and it’s amazing that I’m talking about it 38 years later," he told The Associated Press.
"I’m hoping that I encourage other people to get out there, get off their bum and go for their dream."
Edwards’ path to fame was anything but conventional. Growing up in the Cotswolds, an area where snow is rare and hills are no mountains, his father expected him to follow the family trade of plastering.
However, a school trip to the Italian Alps ignited a passion for skiing in an adolescent Edwards. He became a regular at the Gloucester Ski Centre, a dry slope shorter than three football fields, where he honed his skills.
He became a proficient downhill skier but missed out on the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Undeterred, he set his sights higher upon realising Britain had no ski jumpers.
He travelled to Lake Placid, New York, scavenging for equipment, including a helmet secured with string and oversized boots padded with five pairs of socks. At 22, he was learning a sport that the world’s best had mastered as children.
"It was like a crash course. And, yeah, I did take huge risks," he recalled. "When I finished ski jumping, I was just as scared to do my last jump as I was to do my first. You never get used to it."
Short on cash and sponsors, he resorted to scrounging food from bins and sleeping in barns, a car, and even a Finnish mental hospital.
His body bore the brunt of his ambition: "It would be easier to name the bones I haven’t broken," he quipped, listing two skull fractures, a broken jaw, a collarbone shattered in five places, three broken ribs, and damage to a kidney and a knee.
Despite efforts by British sports federations to prevent him from competing, he eventually jumped far enough to represent Great Britain at the Olympics. He arrived in Calgary to a sign welcoming "Eddie the Eagle," unaware it was for him.
Reporters were captivated by his enthusiastic underdog spirit and distinctive appearance: hefty for a ski jumper, with a lantern jaw, wispy moustache, and eyes bulging behind thick, pink-rimmed aviator glasses.
While few remember the winner, "Flying Finn" Matti Nykänen, who swept all events, the most famous remains the man who finished last.
Edwards, 19 metres behind his nearest competitor, still set a new British record of 71 metres. He flapped his arms wildly upon landing, and the crowd of 85,000 erupted. He returned home to a hero's welcome, escorted by police through throngs at London's Heathrow Airport.
"My feet didn’t touch the ground for, oh gosh, about three and a half, four years," he said.
"I was traveling all over the world opening shopping centers, golf courses, hotels, fun rides, doing lots of TV shows and radio shows, meeting film stars, TV stars, musicians, bands, famous people, royalty, all over world and it was amazing."
However, the ski jumping world was less impressed. Torbjorn Yggeseth, the technical director for the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), famously groused, "We have thousands of Eddie Edwards in Norway. But we never let them jump."
The subsequent "Eddie the Eagle rule" set a minimum distance beyond his reach, effectively ending his competitive jumping ambitions. As promotional opportunities dwindled, Edwards returned to plastering.
His second wave of fame began with a winning turn on Splash!, a reality diving contest, in 2013.
Three years later, the biopic Eddie the Eagle, starring Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman, allowed him to retire his trowel for good.
He now earns between £3,000 and £12,000 for speaking engagements several days a week, helping him recover from past financial setbacks, including a poorly managed trust fund and an emotionally taxing divorce in 2016.
His current role in the Beauty and the Beast adaptation at the Watersmeet Theatre in Rickmansworth, outside London, marks his second foray into pantomime.
As Professor Crackpot, Belle’s bumbling father, Edwards’ fame is woven into the plot.
Van Halen’s Jump plays as he enters, toting jet-propelled skis. At 62, his once-blond hair is shaved, his moustache gone, his underbite surgically corrected, and his nearsightedness corrected with implanted lenses. A recurring gag sees children shout "on your head" when he fumbles for his gigantic eyeglasses.
Later, he skis on stage in a replica of his baby blue Calgary suit, outrunning Santa’s sleigh before flying off a jump, sticking the landing, and being presented with a gold medal.
The scene, though not crucial to the plot, is a crowd-pleasing nod to his legacy: taking a leap and always landing on his feet.
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