Jonathan Goodwin: BGT star offered fiancee Amanda Abbington ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ after being paralysed

Stunt performer nearly died after falling 30 feet when a trick went wrong last year

Britain’s Got Talent star Jonathan Goodwin has said that he told fiancee Amanda Abbington that she had a “get-out-of-jail-free card” after he was paralysed.

In 2021, Goodwin, who competed on the ITV series in 2019, performed a stunt in which he planned to escape from a straight jacket while hanging upside down between two cars, suspended 30 feet in the air.

However, the cars were released prematurely and Goodwin was crushed between them. Sherlock star Abbington explained on a podcast this week that he “fell 30 feet and lost a kidney, broke both shoulder blades, shattered both legs… third degree burns, broke his spine and severed his spinal cord and nearly died”.

On Friday (6 May), Goodwin made his first TV appearance since the accident on Lorraine alongside Abbington, where he said that he was doing “as well as I can be”.

“It was pretty gnarly,” he said. “It sounds very dramatic sitting here but I nearly died… I saved my life because I fell upside down, head first to the ground but I didn’t hit my head.”

Goodwin, who now uses a wheelchair, said that he told his fiancee that he would understand if she left him after the accident, but that it was never considered by the actor.

“I said, ‘You know, you have a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you want to walk away, then I completely understand,” Goodwin explained, with Kelly incredulously asking: “You did that?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “She told me not to be so stupid and that was that,” he said.

Stressing that that was never going to happen, Abbington explained: “We are closer and tighter than ever. We just have this unspoken thing that we have.

“Every day is a joy. It’s just fun, we have the best time. We said the other day that we are going to be the people that say ‘yes’, we just say ‘yes’. If anything happens, it’s just a new adventure. Life’s too short, that’s what I’ve realised through all of this.”

“He’s a total inspiration to me,” she said. “He’s an idiot, but I’m a wally so it’s fine.”

Abbington previously said that Goodwin would likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, explaining: “Unless there’s a kind of stem cell surgery or that thing that Elon Musk is designing with the little chip, he’ll be like that forever.”