David Kirke, a flamboyant British thrill-seeker who carried out — and, extra necessary, survived — what’s broadly stated as the primary trendy bungee bounce, died on Oct. 21 at his house in Oxford. He was once 78.

His dying was once showed by means of his brother Hugh Potter, who mentioned no purpose were made up our minds.

Mr. Kirke, an irrepressible daredevil and prankster, helped discovered the Bad Sports activities Membership on the College of Oxford within the overdue Seventies. He inadvertently led this tiny band of eccentrics, plucked from the higher rungs of British society, right into a ancient plunge off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England, on April Fools’ Day in 1979.

Inspiration got here partially from a rite-of-passage ritual at the South Pacific island nation Vanuatu referred to as land diving, through which younger males jump from top towers, the usage of vines to wreck their fall. Mr. Kirke opted for an elastic rope utilized by the army to assist fighter jets land on airplane carriers.

“We hadn’t examined it or the rest like that,” Mr. Kirke mentioned in a 2019 interview with the inside track website online BristolLive. “We have been referred to as the Bad Sports activities Membership, and checking out it first wouldn’t were specifically bad.”

Clad in a most sensible hat and tails, with a bottle of Champagne in hand, Mr. Kirke, who was once nursing a hangover from an all-night birthday celebration, was once the primary to make the leap on that fateful day. The opposite jumpers — Alan Weston, Tim Hunt and Simon Keeling — “waited to look what would occur to me,” Mr. Kirke mentioned in a 2019 interview with ITV Information. “Once I began bouncing up once more, all of them jumped.”

Police promptly arrested the jumpers, charged them with breach of peace and in short tossed them in the back of bars prior to permitting them to off with a small fantastic. Prison was once rarely a demanding revel in, Mr. Kirke advised ITV: “They have been the one police drive I’ve ever recognized to carry half-empty bottles of pink wine, from the birthday celebration, in a brown paper bag and provides it to us in jail.”

Little did they know that their playful prank would encourage a well-liked interest all over the world. A video of a plunge from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco by means of contributors of the membership within the Nineteen Eighties impressed a New Zealander named A.J. Hackett to expand managed strategies for bungee (alternately spelled bungy) leaping and construct a thriving trade that popularized the game.

Fortune, then again, was once no longer the purpose for Mr. Kirke, a creator by means of business whose jobs incorporated ghostwriting a newspaper column for a political candidate. As a substitute, he would in finding reputation with a life-time of extravagant stunts — every apparently extra outlandish than the ultimate.

David Kirke was once born David Antony Christopher Potter on Sept. 26, 1945, within the village of Shropshire, within the West Midlands of England. He was once the eldest of 7 kids of Arnold Potter, a schoolmaster, and Fraye (Kirke) Potter, a live performance pianist from an illustrious army circle of relatives. For causes that stay unclear, he followed his mom’s maiden identify as his surname whilst learning at Oxford.

Entire details about his survivors was once no longer instantly to be had.

Whilst no longer strictly higher elegance by means of British requirements, the Potters controlled a greater than at ease lifestyles. As Vainness Honest famous in a 2013 characteristic article, “The circle of relatives wintered in Switzerland and summered in France, hired 15 servants and drove round in a antique Rolls-Royce — all on the ultimate second of British historical past when it was once imaginable to experience such luxuries and nonetheless be thought to be center elegance.”

In 1964, Mr. Kirke enrolled in Corpus Christi School, Oxford, the place he studied psychology and philosophy. After graduating, he went to paintings for the writer Calder & Boyars in London and edited a poetry magazine.

His existence took a sad flip, his brother mentioned in an e-mail, when his female friend was once run over and killed by means of a bus. Mr. Kirke give up his process and returned to town of Oxford, the place he fell in with a specifically colourful crowd.

The speculation for the membership arose, Vainness Honest reported, on an adventure-seeking shuttle with a pal, Edward Hulton, to the Swiss Alps, the place they met a British department-store scion named Chris Baker, who was once dabbling with grasp gliders. Mr. Kirke cajoled Mr. Baker into letting him take a spin at the contraption, and after his exhilarating flight the lads started musing over beverages about beginning a membership to discover new daredevil sports activities.

“What we hated was once the way in which that formal sports activities had some of these little, necessary bourgeois instructors pronouncing, ‘You’ve were given to get via five-part tests to try this,’” Mr. Kirke advised the mag.

Straddling the road between risk sports activities and function artwork, his stunts incorporated steerage a carousel horse down a ski slope within the Swiss Alps; piloting an inflatable kangaroo suspended by means of balloons over the English Channel; skateboarding a number of the working bulls of Pamplona, Spain; and arranging a sit-down meal at the rim of an erupting volcano at the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.

Whilst his preliminary bounce in Bristol made him well-known, Mr. Kirke had little time to contemplate questions of posterity. As he tipped off the bridge, he advised BristolLive, “The principle factor going via my thoughts was once ‘Whoooppeeee.’”