A man has spent hundreds of pounds buying a section of roller coaster track for his own home after falling in love with them.
That's despite being petrified of the adrenaline machines as a child - and his piece from The Big One goes along with four wheels and a chain link.
Scott Bickerton, 33, made his latest purchase last week, CheshireLive reports.
He jumped at the chance to own another piece of The Big One after parts they went on sale - with Blackpool’s most iconic ride being refurbished.
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But when the YouTuber heard officials were putting further pieces on sale, he was more than happy to part with £150 for a piece of the track.
He said: “For me it’s priceless, and when you think about it, it’s a bit of history. It is something that is iconic in the UK.”
“Most people who aren’t rollercoaster fans might think it’s just a lump of steel. What are you going to do with it?
“But there are a lot of people like me who are rollercoaster enthusiasts who would be well happy to have any bit of their favourite rollercoaster in their house or their garden.”
Scott said he has an “emotional attachment” to the ride, which was the tallest, fastest and steepest steel rollercoaster in the world when it was constructed.
He said: “I’ve got quite a lot of emotional attachment to that ride because when I was younger, I was absolutely terrified of it.
“My parents used to take me to Blackpool quite a lot when I was little.
“During that time, I wasn’t a confident person, and anything like going on a rollercoaster or talking to people I didn’t know was a big obstacle.
“But when I went on The Big One, it was a massive weight lifted off my shoulders, and it was like, ‘I can do anything now’.”
In later life, when Scott was diagnosed with testicular cancer, the classic Blackpool ride also became a way for him to cope with bad news and his treatments.
He said: “I was diagnosed at the end of February 2015, but as soon as I found out, I went to Blackpool Pleasure Beach to take my mind off it.
“Then after I had my first operation for testicular cancer, I went back to the pleasure beach.
He added: “I had a quite tough 18 months with it. It got to the point where it was life threatening.
“They told me in November 2015 that there was a good chance I wouldn’t make it.
“I had to have an operation in 2016 to remove my kidney, as there was a tumour on the outside of the kidney that was 33cm in large.
“A lot of the time leading up to that operation, I went to Blackpool pleasure beach – even though I wasn’t in a fit state to go on the rides – as a coping mechanism.”
Incredibly, Scott also met his future wife, Becca Bickerton, 30, an IT Manager, at the pleasure beach, and they now have a 3-year-old-son after they wed in 2017.
He said: “We originally met at the pleasure beach in 2009, but at the time were just friends and we got to know each other over the course of the years that followed.
“We got to know each other the more we went to the pleasure beach and spent time together.
“From what was never going to be more than a friendship, we ended up saying: ‘Why don’t we give this a try?”
When Scott found out that officials would be replacing 103m of The Big One’s track just before Christmas last year, he knew he had to get his hands on a piece.
He said: “This is now the third time in the last three years that they’ve taken track out and replaced it over the winter, just to sustain its lifespan, so it can keep going for another 20 or 30 years.
“Me and my wife spoke about it and said we’d probably put it in the garden, or if we got one of the smaller sections, we’d probably have it somewhere in the house.”
He added: “A lot of the time, people do laugh at rollercoaster enthusiasts and think we’re all geeks – and we are.
“But it’s sometimes, for us, a way of escaping and a bit of a coping mechanism from normal day to day life.”
