Former Race Across the World contestant dies in crash
Former Race Across the World contestant Sam Gardiner has died after a crash.
The 24-year-old had been driving on the A34 near Manchester on Monday night when his car left the road and rolled before landing on its side, Greater Manchester Police said.
He was the only person in the vehicle and was taken to hospital where he died of his injuries on Thursday, his family said in a recent statement.
The landscape gardener appeared with his mother Jo as they travelled across South America in the second series of the BBC show, which aired in 2020.
They were unable to compete in the final leg after running out of money, but Sam described it as a "life-changing" experience.
While filming for the BBC series, Sam said: "Mum and I are very close - we often think or say the same things.
"She has travelled a lot in her life, so I think it would be fun to do it with her."
In a statement issued by a family member, Sam's parents Jo and Andrew said they were "devastated".
"Sam left us far too soon, and while words will never fully capture the light, joy and energy he brought into our lives, we hold on to the memories that made him so special," they added.
Sam's parents said he was "adored by his family" and described him as "loyal, funny and fiercely protective".
They added the Race Across the World experience "opened Sam's eyes to the wonder of adventure".
Sam's uncle Jonny Gray told the BBC: "What you saw was what you got. Sam loved gardening, animals and doing physical activity."
Mr Gray said his sister Jo and Sam had a "special relationship" and were an "enormous hit on the show", adding: "The public really loved them."
Emon Choudhury, who won the second series with his nephew Jamiul, posted on social media that Sam was "pure sunshine in human form" whose "kindness was a beacon for anyone lucky enough to cross his path".
He added that Sam and his mother "showed us what it truly means to live fully, love fiercely, and embrace every moment with an open heart".
In a statement, a Race Across the World spokeswoman said: "Everyone who worked with him and indeed everyone who watched Sam could see just how precious and transformative the trip was for both him and his mum, Jo.
"Sam embraced the seven-week trip with an energy, love and a determination that saw the pair enjoy adventures across Mexico to Argentina making audiences fall in love with them and their special bond as a result.
"Since filming, both Sam and Jo have been an integral part of the Race Across the World cast family and on behalf of us all from the BBC, production and the rest of the cast, we would like to extend our deepest condolences to his parents, Andrew and Jo; his brothers, William and Charlie; his step mum Justine; his family and friends."
Sam had been recently working on the west coast of Scotland and travelled down to Stockport in Greater Manchester to attend a family birthday celebration earlier this week, according to his uncle.
The family have asked for privacy to grieve for his death.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fresh search for Madeleine McCann gets under way in Portugal
The latest searches for Madeleine McCann are getting under way in Portugal with officers gathering in countryside a few miles from the resort where she was last seen in 2007. Madeleine, then aged three, disappeared while on holiday with her family in the resort of Praia da Luz after her parents went out to dinner and left her sleeping in a room with her toddler twin siblings. Police vehicles were seen around 3.5 miles from the resort on Tuesday, in the Atalaia area, where the Sun has reported search teams are expected to use radar equipment that can scan beneath the ground. The BBC said four vans carrying German officers were seen driving down a road leading to the sea, along with Portuguese police and a fire engine. Journalists were being kept a distance away from the search site amid intense international media scrutiny of the operation. It has been variously reported that investigators will look where trenches were dug near the resort at the time of Madeleine's disappearance, at wells, ruins and water tanks, and that there are plans to examine 21 pieces of land. The search is being carried out at the request of the German federal police as they look for evidence that could implicate prime suspect Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. He is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year, Brueckner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Around 30 German police officers, including forensic experts, are expected to take part in the search along with Portuguese officers, with the activity due to last until Friday. The Metropolitan Police said it is aware of the operation but that British officers will not be present. German investigators and Portuguese officers last carried out searches in the country in 2023 near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz. Brueckner, who spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017, had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir. It was previously searched in 2008, when Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for specialist divers to search it after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that Madeleine's body was there. British police were later given permission to examine scrubland near where she vanished in 2014. Last month, Madeleine's family, who are from Rothley in Leicestershire, marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance, describing her as 'beautiful and unique' before her 22nd birthday, and expressing their determination to keep searching. A statement from her parents Kate and Gerry McCann and the family said: 'The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to 'leave no stone unturned' is unwavering. We will do our utmost to achieve this.' In April, ministers approved more than £100,000 in additional funding for Scotland Yard detectives investigating Madeleine's disappearance.
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
New Madeleine McCann search under way
Portuguese and German authorities have started a new search into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal nearly two decades ago. Madeleine was three years old when she vanished from an apartment complex in the town Praia da Luz in Algarve during a family holiday on 3 May 2007. Her disappearance sparked a Europe-wide police investigation, and has become one of the highest-profile unsolved missing person cases in the world. On Monday, Portuguese police confirmed they were carrying out the search on warrants issued by German prosecutors. Portuguese police say the search - which covers the municipality of Lagos near Praia da Luz - is due to continue until Friday. Four vehicles carrying German police have arrived on the search site, the roads to which have been closed off. German investigators have taken the lead in the case since they identified Christian Brückner as their prime suspect in 2020. The 48-year-old is currently serving a sentence in Germany for a separate crime - the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Portugal in 2005. He is due to be released later this year. German authorities suspect him of murder but have not found enough evidence to bring charges, while Brückner repeatedly denies any involvement. Portuguese authorities have also named Brückner as a formal suspect, or "arguido". They said they would hand over any evidence seized in the latest search to German authorities. The team of German and Portuguese investigators have been given permission to search 21 plots of land between the Ocean Club resort Madeleine disappeared from and where Brückner had been staying at the time. German authorities told the BBC on Monday that "criminal proceedings are currently under way in Portugal" with the support of Portuguese police. The previous search was two years ago, focussed around a reservoir where Madeleine was last seen. Brückner, who spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017, was found to have photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir. The night Madeleine disappeared, her parents had been at dinner with friends at a restaurant a short walk away while Madeleine and her younger twin siblings were asleep in the ground-floor apartment. Her mother, Kate, discovered her was missing at around 22:00. A German documentary in 2022 found evidence that Brückner occasionally worked at the Ocean Club as a handyman, while German prosecutors have also linked his mobile phone data and a car sale to their case against him. Madeleine's parents last month marked the 18th year anniversary of her disappearance, saying their "determination to leave no stone unturned is unwavering". The Metropolitan Police - which this week said it was "aware of the searches being carried by the BKA (German federal police) in Portugal" - continues its investigation into Madeleine's disappearance. The case, known as Operation Grange, has been going since 2011.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
New 'raw' BBC series What It Feels Like For A Girl was a queer education for the cast
There's a moment in What It Feels Like For A Girl, the new anarchic coming-of-age BBC series, when a 14-year-old queer working-class kid from Nottingham is cycling through conversations on Chatroulette, hoping to land on someone ready to pull their trousers down on camera. For anyone who grew up in the early noughties, it's instantly evocative, landing us securely in the moment when the promise of the internet gave us a peek into the breadth of the world outside our small enclaves. It's a lynchpin moment for Byron, who sees a sexualised existence outside of his rigid, heteronormative upbringing, and plants just enough of a seed to want to seek something else — by any means necessary. He dives headfirst into an underground world of partying, drug-taking and sex work, and navigates his queer, and later trans, identity with the help of a group of 'Fallen Divas'. The show is based on acclaimed writer Paris Lees' memoir of the same name, which chronicled her upbringing in a working-class suburb of Nottingham. "I read the book, and completely fell in love. I felt like it was so unrestrained and honest and unflinching," Ellis Howard, the relative newcomer who plays Byron, tells Yahoo UK. "When I saw that it was being made, I thought, How and why are they making this? Because this is so raw for the BBC!" The series, like the book, is unrestrained in its portrayal of Lees' experiences, from the high highs of ecstasy-fuelled nights on the dancefloor raving to Livin' Joy to the dark lows of the abuse suffered at the hands of clients, groomers and partners and the decisions she makes that eventually land her in prison. Think of What It Feels Like For A Girl as a grungier spiritual sister to Skins, the other 2000s teen series that scandalised a generation of parents. For Lees, who was also the lead writer and executive producer on the series, it was important for young, queer, working-class actors to make up the cast of the show. Alongside Howard, Hannah Jones and Laquarn Lewis star as two of the 'Fallen Divas' who make up Byron's queer circle. In the series, the crew grow, bond and spar together like all teens navigating adolescence, all with the added threatening reality of being visibly queer and trans together. Off-screen, that experience was mirrored too. "This is a book made by a working-class trans woman [and] I've never seen this before," says Jones, who plays Sasha, who's part antagonist, part confidant to Byron. "I think the audacity and the gumption that Sasha had, the time and that Sasha had, I was like, I'm so drawn to that, I love that. It's such an important story to tell of a working-class trans person whose story isn't just about being trans." For Lewis, who stars as Byron's first queer friend Lady Die, starring in the series was an education as much as an experience. "It's still something that is new to me, queer culture. I'm gay, and it's all new, and I'm still learning, and I think this has been the best experience of my life. I've learned so much more and I've met so many more queer friends as well." It's clear that, through the weeks of making this series, Howard, Lewis and Jones are now joined at the hip. They finish each other's sentences, interject with inside jokes, affirm each other's opinions and speak with the mile-a-minute urgency of people who have been patiently waiting for months to finally be able to talk about the thing that's changed their lives. "I just felt so incredibly grateful every single day that I was on that set," says Howard, as he looks to Lewis and Jones. "I couldn't believe that we were making it, I couldn't believe who we were making it with, just like this ragtag gang of queers who liberated me on set and gave me a passport at my big old age to question who I was, and to affirm this new version of Ellis. I felt like I had my own renaissance." The series doesn't shy away from difficult topics that, on more than one occasion, are incredibly hard to watch. The sex work that Byron does in bathroom stalls and on damp shed mattresses is dangerous and bleak, and there's a constant fear that, at any second, something truly awful is going to happen to him; and the reality of transphobia and homophobia for Sasha and Lady Die in the early 2000s is spat like acid through the screen. In confronting these scary triggers, the cast said they had to confront their own vulnerabilities as well. "It is difficult acting-wise, because it's so raw on the page. I have no choice but to meet it, and meet it with [my] own traumas and mess and complications — and I that really cost something emotionally," says Howard. "I'm like, 'Well, if I've experienced these things, I want to reveal it on screen. I want someone to feel seen. I never felt like it was hard. I just felt like I had a responsibility to meet." "As women and as queer people, we have a wall up, a self-defence wall," says Jones. "And I think breaking that down to come into Sasha's world of craziness and unapologetic self was a hard thing for me, and that goes hand in hand with that of reliving some trauma and getting to the nitty gritty parts of my life and going, 'It's okay that this happens, I need to bring this all to the screen'." "I had never tucked to my penis ever before. I was in agony," says Lewis, to an immediate eruption of laughter from Howard and Jones, that's both elated and horrified. The three crumble immediately, that balancing of lightness and darkness that's so prevalent in What It Feels Like For A Girl naturally seeping through. "A big one for me was, Am I doing Lady Die justice? Am I doing the trans community justice? And am I doing queer people justice? Am I doing things right?" he immediately adds, cutting through the jokes with the reality of the albatross that hangs around all their necks with a series like this. There's a tricky line the young cast is aware they're having to walk right now. They don't want to represent all trans and queer people, but they also recognise that, in a time where conversations around LGBTQ+ identity are reaching a horrible and divisive fever pitch, it's inevitable that they'll be held up to some kind of standard. "You want people to actually have empathy for what's going on," says Lewis. "We're not trying to change people's minds, but [we want to] make sure that everybody has some sort of sympathy towards people's experiences, and it's like, okay, is this hard-hitting enough to make people actually want to look after humanity?" "Who knows about what that reaction will be, and best to not anticipate anything," adds Howard. "I'm trying to hold on to [that] I feel incredibly proud of this thing that we've created, and also the friendships that have formed as a result of it." What It Feels Like for a Girl will stream on BBC iPlayer from Tuesday, 3 June.
