Wheelie stupid!

Bob Slayer breaks neck in bin-based crowd surf

Comedian Bob Slayer has fractured his neck after crowd-surfing in a wheelie bin at the Download Festival.

The stand-up is now wearing a neck brace after cracking a vertebra when he fell on his head after being passed above the crowd.

But it took him more than two days to realise the severity of the injury – putting his pain down to usual festival malaise.

Slayer, who was thrown out of a festival in Perth, Australia, earlier this year for his drunken behaviour, admits that ‘drink was involved’ in his decision to climb into the bin at the rock festival on Thursday.

Writing on YouTube, Slayer said of his crowd-surf: ‘I think I have mastered health and safety with my new exoskeleton. Alas I am dropped out of the bin on to my head.

‘The wheelie bin keeps on surfing and ends up back on the stage, as per the plan but I am lay in the mud with a mega winding. My gig ends a little short but lovely nonetheless and someone nice prescribes Dr Jack Daniels. All is fine...’

He said the next day he woke up ‘in someone else’s tent, in a bunch of pain,’ but said: ‘That’s nothing out the ordinary at a festival’.

He returned to London for another gig the following night, but on Saturday, while filming on a tandem, he was in a collision with a pedestrian and dislocated his thumb – which finally took him to A&E.

Slayer said: ‘They X-rayed my hand, the diagnosis is that it is a quite a bit knackered. I am plastered up. They ask about my neck, I tell them about the wheelie bin, more X-rays and more bad news: I have cracked a vertebrae

‘Crikey! I now have a neck brace and a pot on my hand but fortunately I also have some lovely pain killers!

‘The last time I broke my back was in 1992 when a horse landed on me and crushed a couple of vertebrae. That pretty much put an end to my time as a jockey... But this is going to end nothing - well apart from crowd surfing in wheelie bins - those days are behind me now.’

Here is Slayer’s ill-fated wheelie-bin crowd surf: