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Will Dean stunt man
Will Dean takes a tumble on his stuntman course
Will Dean takes a tumble on his stuntman course

The fall guy: a day at stuntman school

This article is more than 13 years old
Shot, stabbed and run over by a car … after a stunt training day with a Hollywood pro you and your mates will be ready to star in your own action movie

The battered Citroën Saxo is hurtling towards me at about 12mph. Which doesn't sound that fast but, as I fly up onto the windscreen, it's enough to make people walking past this car park in the back streets of Morecambe gasp in horror.

My career as a stuntman only started six hours ago but already I've been thrown across a room, jumped on to a trapeze and hurled myself off a 15ft ledge. I'm here to learn how to be a superhero, in the style of the guy from the film Kick-Ass. A group of us have signed up for a day's course with stuntman Martin Shenton, to teach us the basic skills I'll need should newspaper sales continue to decline and lead to a drastic career change. Holy past participle Hackman!

Shenton – previously an army fitness instructor – has been working as a stuntman for 16 years. You may have seen him getting shot by a sniper in 28 Weeks Later or sunk aboard the HMS Devonshire in Tomorrow Never Dies.

He rebuilt a rundown building himself to create Regent Park Studios. As well as high wires, crash mats and a trampoline, there's a wrestling ring in which 6ft 7in Lancastrians periodically turn up to brawl. The main room looks like a cross between Tumble Tots and an MC Escher hellscape.

Our all-action stunt training begins by – what else? – jumping up and down on a trampoline. This seems an incredibly remedial start but a key one for working out how to crash-land, which comes in very handy for one of the day's set pieces, the high fall.

"You can't do any stuntwork half-heartedly," intones Martin as I half-heartedly prepare to jump. Martin has jumped from as high as 98ft but we're going from just 15. Even so, I'm told that means we reach 40mph on impact. Eek. There's a huge thump as we hit the crash pad.

These quick courses obviously won't qualify you to walk through a glass window in Christopher Nolan's latest mind-melder, but they do give ordinary groups, usually of eight, a chance to try many types of action work. There are, for example, guns, swords and bows and arrows to battle with.

Stunt training
Will works on his Kick-Ass image.

A professional cameraman can also make a short film featuring your day's work. We ham-fistedly try to recreate a couple of fight scenes from Kick-Ass with me dressed as the baddy/Rab C Nesbitt in an ill-fitted suit, trainers and T-shirt. Recently, a kids' TV presenter on his stag weekend made a film in which his friends chased him to the "death" for the crime of getting married.

The last thing I learn is how to fall down stairs. And if you're going to be taught how to fall down stairs, who better to teach you than the man who has claimed the world record for falling down the most (109 concrete ones)? "Tuck your head in," Shenton tells me as I try to forget one of his students' anecdotes about an egg-sized lump obtained by smashing his head on the metal balustrades. Thankfully for this action man, they've padded the stairs, so even my ungainly wilt down them doesn't hurt that much.

Like much of the day, it's terrifying on the first go – but after a few callow attempts I'm feeling confident. It's dangerous, but rarely does anything feel particularly unsafe. Maybe there's a career in this after all. If someone had told Hackman that at journalism college, he'd have wrestled them to the floor and thrown them off a building.

Regent Park Studios in Morecambe (01524 419861, regentparkstudios.com) offers a variety of stunt-based activity days and weekends. Two-hour group sessions cost from £10pp. A day similar to Will's can be set up for a minimum of eight people for £450pp. Kick-Ass is out on Blu-ray and DVD from 6 September but available now to pre-order

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