During the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, I got a call from a friend out there, a BBC sports reporter. He said something interesting was going on: a British ski jumper on borrowed skis was performing badly but getting a lot of attention. I am in the music business in management and PR, so I gave Eddie a call. “You obviously need a manager,” I said. “Can I help?”
We negotiated a contract over the phone, signed it by fax, and from then on, I handled all requests for interviews, appearances and promotions. There were a lot: before the games were even over, he was flown to Los Angeles to appear on the Johnny Carson show.
Eddie was ridiculed by many, but he was so refreshing. He was pretty bad, coming last in both his events, the 70m and 90m jumps. He’d switched from downhill skiing to jumping to give himself a better chance of qualifying for the British Olympic team. Back then, there weren’t such strict qualifying rules – that changed in 1990.
He tried really hard. He had no funds behind him – he was from a working-class background – and was using hand-me-down boots too big for him. But for many people, he epitomised the Olympic ethos of amateur effort. He was eccentric and utterly authentic.
When he returned home, there was a media scrum at Heathrow: 50 or 60 camera crews and hundreds of reporters. I wasn’t allowed airside as I didn’t have a ticket, so I didn’t have the chance to brief Eddie before the press conference. But I did manage to grab him and say: “Hi, I’m Simon, your manager.”
After that it all went a bit mad. We did Wogan; he wrote a book, Eddie The Eagle: My Story. Through my music industry connections, he released a single, Fly Eddie Fly – it went to number one in Finland. He opened a ride at Blackpool; he was given an Alfa Romeo. But he had no illusions of grandeur – he slept on my floor for six months.
He was once invited for lunch by a Sun journalist and offered a large sum of money to attend. We agreed we could stop the line of questions at any time. We went away thinking this was the easiest money ever made. The following day Eddie was on the front page with a story saying he was having a chin operation; he had told them an American doctor had offered him plastic surgery on his jaw, and they made more of it. It showed our naivety.
But for me, the money wasn’t a big factor; I enjoyed the challenge. As to how much Eddie made, it was more than he’d ever had – though not nearly as much as he suggested.
I was with him for the next five years. We travelled around the world, from opening a ski resort in Australia to performing a ski jump in Norway. But it was sometimes hard to publicise someone who was famous for being a failure; brands want winners. Eddie went on Question Of Sport and was so bad he was never asked back.
Rumours of a film have been doing the rounds for nearly a decade, and it’s finally been made. It ends when he touches down in London after the Olympics – so that’s my role written out of it. But it’s a great story, of triumph over adversity.
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