Latest news with #Smiler
ITV News
02-06-2025
- ITV News
Rollercoaster crash like 'hitting a car at 90mph': 10 years on from Alton Towers Smiler injuries
Ten years after they suffered life-changing injuries on a rollercoaster at Alton Towers, Leah Washington-Pugh and Joe Pugh reflect on how far they have come. Leah and Joe, from South Yorkshire, were just 17 and 18-years-old and on a date when the carriage they were riding on the Smiler ride crashed into the empty carriage ahead. The pair were left serious injuries with Joe suffering two shattered kneecaps and damage to his hands and Leah having damage to her legs and a fractured hand. She went on to have her left leg amputated above the knee. The crash, on 2 June 2015, led to operator Merlin being fined £5m, with compensation paid to the 16 victims. Speaking through representatives at the legal firm Stewarts, the pair described how having each other got them through their recovery. Joe said: 'We had to learn not only how to walk again, but how to build a relationship with each other again.' 'Looking back now, me and Joe sticking together, we were such a good support for each other. Yes, our injuries were there and everything else around us was going off, but we still had that relationship and friendship and that got us through everything,' Leah added. The Smiler was the couple's first ride of the day after entering the park. "I think if I remember rightly if you compare it to a car accident it was the equivalent of driving into a car at 90 miles an hour. It was pretty severe," added Joe. "I looked down at my legs and realised that something wasn't right," said Leah. "I looked at Joe and Joe's little finger was hanging off." It took a number of hours for them to be rescued from the ride in a complex operation which involved the Air Ambulance flying in blood for Leah. "If it wasn't for the air ambulance and other services on the day I know I wouldn't be here today." Leah spent five days in intensive care and was in hospital for eight weeks in total. Partner at Stewarts, Anna Wiseman acted for Leah and Joe in their case. She said: 'Leah was young when I first met her, she was only 17. For her to go through that process and be injured in the way that she was, was quite terrifying for her.' Merlin Attractions Operations Ltd admitted breaches of the Health and Safety Act in what bosses called "the most serious incident" in Alton Towers' history. Reflecting on a decade since the crash, the couple, who recently got married say the incident has brought them closer together. "You've always got to find the positive in the negative and just got to grab life, because it's so precious, and make the most of it" added Leah. The couple are using the anniversary to host a ball to support the Midlands Air Ambulance, Yorkshire Air Ambulance and the LimbBo Foundation, a charity which supports limb-different children.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'We had a song called Heat-Crazed Vole. You know, like a rat. It was pretty awful!': Iron Maiden's Steve Harris recalls his early days
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In the 50 years since he formed Iron Maiden, bassist Steve Harris has been the band's leader and main songwriter - the author of classic heavy metal anthems including Run To The Hills, The Number Of The Beast and The Trooper. But as he admits to MusicRadar, he wrote some very strange songs in his younger days before Maiden. In his first band, Influence, Harris wrote the music but left the lyrics to a school friend named Dave Smith. 'Dave came up with a song that was called Heat-Crazed Vole,' Harris recalls. 'You know, like a rat. Which I thought was a pretty awful title.' Dave Smith also provided the title for another of Harris' early songs - Endless Pit. 'That was a terrible title as well,' Harris says. But that song ended up being hugely significant for Steve Harris and Iron Maiden. The main riff in Endless Pit was developed into a new song named Innocent Exile. Innocent Exile would eventually be featured on Iron Maiden's second album, Killers, released in 1981. But Steve Harris first performed the song with Smiler, the band he joined after his spells with Influence and another group, Gypsy's Kiss. 'I played quite a few gigs with Smiler,' Harris says. 'Maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven shows with them. 'And it was good experience playing with guys that were quite a bit older than me. It's funny because at the time, I was seventeen, and they were like mid-twenties, and I thought they were pretty old! 'Smiler was a boogie band, so they quite liked Innocent Exile, because it's got a sort of a boogie bit at the end. 'But they didn't want to play any of my other songs, and that's when it got a bit weird. "They told me, 'Oh, there's too many time changes in your songs.' And well, fair enough. I mean, I joined them! 'They were a boogie band, and that's what I joined. So I should have been content with that, really, but I wasn't. 'I wanted to introduce more of my stuff, and it wasn't really suitable for that band. 'We played a lot of covers, and because they had two guitar players I introduced a bit of Wishbone Ash. But they liked the boogie stuff like Savoy Brown and bands like that. That's what they were all about. 'So I was trying to pull them in a direction that they weren't really that comfortable with. 'And in the end I realised that the only way to do my own stuff is to leave and form my own band. Then I can do what I want.' Harris put the first line-up of Iron Maiden together in the last months of 1975. 50 years later, the band are celebrating that anniversary with the Run For Your Lives tour.
