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EPISODE 1 – A TALE OF TWO FAMILIES
Danny:Hello, I’m Danny Drake: journalist, podcast host and 1990s obsessive. And this isWhat Happened That Summer?A seven-part investigative podcast looking at the sudden and shocking death of American teen pop megastar AJ Silver. He was killed in a rollercoaster accident at Wildworld theme park in West Wilding, near Birmingham, here in the UK, on 20 June 1996. Some of you may be aware that the Hunter family who ran Wildworld were later fined £500,000 for negligence and the business went into administration. John Hunter has always maintained the family’s innocence.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours individually interviewing the Hunters and the Campbells (that’s AJ’s family), AJ’s team and the residents of West Wilding, to bring you a more comprehensive record of the events of 1996 than has ever been available before. Along the way, I’ve uncovered brand new information that casts the incident in a whole new light, and will be revealing secrets that are guaranteed to shock you.
Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be talking to everyone who was around in the run up to AJ Silver’s tragic demise. For the first time, we’re going to reveal exactly what happened in microscopic detail and from all angles. Were the Hunter family really to blame? What was it like to be AJ Silver, and did his own actions play a part in his untimely death? And how do you cope with living in the shadow of the death of one of the world’s most famous teenagers?
Today, in episode one, we’re giving you the lowdown on the two families at the heart of this tragedy. The Hunters, who owned and ran Wildworld theme park, and the Campbells – AJ Silver’s parents and his brother. If you want to join in the discussion, you can find us on all the usual social media channels at @WhatHappenedThatSummer.
Pea: It’s funny, because you know that you’ll end up with some big before and after moments in your life, and maybe you can guess at some of them, like before or after you got married, or made this big international move, or became a parent. But others just come at you out of nowhere. And this was one of those. Before, I was just doing whatever teenage girls do. I was taking my GCSEs, hanging out with my friend Alex, pining after boys who didn’t give me a second look. And after… Well, I guess we’ll get on to after.
Danny: That’s Pea Hunter, daughter of Cathy and John Hunter, who owned Wildworld.
Cathy: We were an ordinary family. Me, John, and our two children. Sebastian and Penelope, who we all called Pea. We just happened to have a theme park.
Danny: That’s Cathy.
John: There’s no such thing as normal, is there? Sometimes I think, so Cathy and I ran a business together? What’s so unusual about that? But Wildworld wasn’t just any business.
Danny: That’s John.
Sebastian: I know now that it’s a weird thing, to basically live in a theme park. But it was all we’d ever known. It was just normal to us.
Danny: And finally, that’s Sebastian, Cathy and John’s son, and Pea’s older brother. Now that you know who everyone is, let’s hear about the park, and how it came to be theirs.
John: My grandfather opened Wildworld in 1932, and it was mostly gardens with a couple of carousels, a helter-skelter and some playground equipment. He had the house built just beside the entrance, so he could always be onsite at a moment’s notice. He didn’t really believe in time off, my granddad. And a business like that, it’s twenty-four seven. He worked hard to get it off the ground. My dad took over when Granddad retired, and he made some pretty big changes, adding a lot of rides and making it more ‘theme park’ than ‘park’. I’m an only child, and I grew up in that house, with the park on my doorstep. It was all I knew. I worked alongside Dad after finishing school, and when I married Cathy and we found out we were having Sebastian, he said we should be the ones to live in the house onsite, and him and Mum found a littlebungalow nearby. I pretty much took over at that point but he kept working there for another few years.
Pea: All my earliest memories are of the park. Dad was always working, so Mum and Sebastian and I would spend most of our spare time there, because it was the only way we got to see him. We’d just find him, usually operating one ride or another, and we’d hang out nearby. Mum didn’t have a job when we were little. A couple of years after we’d both gone to school, the woman who worked in the office left, and Mum stepped into that role. It was just part of us, properly ingrained in our beings. WewereWildworld, effectively.
Sebastian: Has anyone explained the layout of the place to you? Would that be helpful? So it was supposed to be a world, right, and there were five cities within it. I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but you’d have to take that up with my granddad. There was Water City, where all the water rides were, Adventure City, which was all the biggest rides and always the most crowded one, Fun City, which had lots of rides and play areas for really young kids, Fantasy City, where all the rides were based on fairytales, and then Animal City, which had a farm and also a few exotic animals. They were arranged in a rough circle, and in the middle there was a huge building that housed a few food places, a handful of little rides and the gift shop. The noise level in there was always insane, and if it was raining, everyone in the park crowded in and it was horrendous. But other than that, I think it worked pretty well. Something for everyone, you know?
Cathy: I actually haven’t been to many other theme parks. Busman’s holiday and all that. We were smaller than AltonTowers and Thorpe Park, but people still seemed to come from all over. I think we had a nice mix of things for younger children and rides for thrill-seekers. And it was all very manageable, very walkable. John’s dad had done a good job with it, really. John was proud of it. I mean, I was too. It was a great little theme park.
Danny: So there you have it. A great little theme park. Did you ever visit Wildworld in the 80s or 90s? We’d love to hear from you if you did. Find us at @WhatHappenedThatSummer on all the social media channels.
Next up, we got onto the subject of the theme park’s future, something Pea in particular was quite het up about.
Pea: Wildworld had come down the family on the male side, right? Dad’s grandfather, then Dad’s dad, whose two sisters didn’t get a look-in, then Dad, who was an only child. Sebastian knew Dad wanted him to take it on, but he didn’t want to. It just wasn’t his thing, and him and dad were always arguing about it. And then there was me, practically waving my arms around trying to get their attention, because I really wanted it. I wanted to run that theme park more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I knew every ride, every operator, every bit of space that might have potential for a new ride in the future. I spent every hour I wasn’t at school roaming around. When we got old enough that Mum didn’t have to supervise us all the time, Sebastian spent most of his time inside the house, watching TV or sketching these incredible battle scenes. He used to use reams of computer paper, you know the stuff with the holes down each side? He liked being onhis own. And I spent pretty much every waking moment in the park.
Cathy: Oh yes, it was an issue. It was clear to me that Sebastian didn’t want it and Pea did, so pretty obvious, right? But John was so adamant that he wanted it to be Sebastian. I don’t know whether it was an age thing or a gender thing or what. When we talked about doing our wills, I said we should leave it to both of them, like you would with a property, but John thought if we did that, they’d sell it and split the money. He wanted it to stay in the family.
Pea: I would never have let that place go. I would have fought tooth and nail to keep it in the family.
Sebastian: I guess I might have sold it, if the right offer had come along. I don’t know. It’s all a bit immaterial now, isn’t it? What I do know is that Dad was obsessed with me taking it over, and it didn’t matter how many times I told him I didn’t want to.
Cathy: John felt like he owed it to his father and his grandfather to keep things running. And I don’t think Sebastian had that same compulsion. He’s never seemed to care as much about family as the rest of us. He’s just… wired differently, I suppose.
I always had this feeling, while this was going on, that it wouldn’t matter, that it wouldn’t survive beyond our working lives. But I couldn’t say that to John; he would have been crushed. So we kept putting it off and putting it off. And in the end, I was right.
Pea: Mum often says after the fact that she knew stuff was going to happen. I’m not saying that to be unkind. I think she genuinely believes that she knew.
John: Did I want Sebastian to take over Wildworld? Yes, I did.
Pea: He said outright – even now – that he wanted Sebastian to have it? Jesus Christ. I don’t even know why I’m surprised.
Sebastian: I don’t know why we’re dragging it all up, to be honest. None of it mattered in the end.
