'I remember sitting on top of the tank and I had enough time to make sure my hair looked okay!' she says. 'Once your head's under you get past the point of no return,' he says I was lifted upside down and then lowered into a tank of water and the stocks were locked onto the tank,' Helen explains.Īrthur never doubted his daughter, but concedes it required nerves of steel. 'My ankles were locked into a set of stocks. Helen can laugh about it now, but it still makes for dramatic viewing. 'I was so nervous, and at the time I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing? Why did I have to prove this to these guys?' she says. Her preparation had included holding her breath for increasing periods of time in the bath, singing Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in her head to distract her from the urge to breathe. Undeterred by Arthur's brush with death on live television, Helen repeated the water torture escape live on the Derryn Hinch show in 1994, by now a mother of a one-year-old daughter, Maddie. He's working behind the scenes as his daughter Helen takes centre stage in front of a global television audience. 'But unfortunately, it didn't work and that's when I started to panic because I was stuck.'įast forward more than 40 years and Arthur is still making magic happen and is enjoying a career renaissance, albeit with feet firmly on the ground. 'I knew exactly what I had to do,' Arthur recalls. She took a deep breath as Don Lane announced the barrel would be hoisted to a height of 100 feet (about 30 metres) by a crane, and then 'dropped automatically out of that big box and it will crash to the concrete surface below'. Lane then quipped: 'We have hopes Arthur will be out of it before it crashes to the bottom.'Īs the box rose into the air, Arthur had 90 seconds to get out. 'I would rather be at home, and they let me know it was successful.' 'I never ever went to see any of Arthur's escapes,' Val says. 'To me, there is no physical way he can do it,' one of the engineers told the audience.Īt the family home on the Gold Coast, Arthur's wife Val paced nervously in the kitchen, as Helen and her two older siblings sat glued to the television.

They brought their own locks which they fastened to the steel rod that threaded through the barrel from one end to the other.

'No escapologist is going to put their life on the line to be on a variety show.'Įarlier, independent engineers had checked over the barrel with a fine-tooth comb to ensure there was no deception and the escape was the real deal. 'I was assured it was impressive, it would look spectacular, and it was a legitimate escape, and he was a legitimate escapologist,' Faiman says. Arthur's assurances it would all be fine were enough to satisfy the program's executive producer, Peter Faiman. In the 70s, safety wasn't what it is now. 'I don't think anybody wants to see anybody die, but I mean, they don't want to miss it if somebody does.' Loading. 'I thought it had to be dangerous for people to watch it,' Arthur says. 'He decided he had to do something really big if he was going to go on the biggest variety show in Australia,' his daughter Helen Coghlan recalls.Īnd so, Arthur dreamed up the most daring, most dangerous escape his magical mind could think of. It was August 6, 1979, and the millions of Australians watching at home had no idea how close Arthur came to death.Īrthur had turned to escapology to raise his profile as a magician and being booked for Channel 9's top rating Don Lane Show was the break he needed. He would have just 90 seconds to escape before the barrel was dropped from a height of 30 metres. With superhuman powers of contortion, he wedged himself far enough in for the lid to be locked from the outside.

In the Channel 9 car park in Melbourne, with a crane looming overhead, Arthur Coghlan lowered his slender frame into a 44-gallon steel barrel.

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