This is Richard.
Richard is so scared of heights, he gets vertigo on escalators,
but his wife has always wanted to go skydiving.
And today...
he is going to face his fear for her.
Quickly, quickly.
Switch, switch!
But will she realize...
it’s not actually him?
[I Sent a Lookalike to Skydive with My Wife]
[So She Could Be Proud of Me]
Nowadays, there’s an app for everything, isn’t there?
I often think, “I wish that somebody else could do this for me,”
so I came up with an app idea.
What if there was this app where you could order
a lookalike of yourself to do things you don’t want to do
or wished you could do a better job of?
I put it out online and it went mental.
Thousands of people applied to use lookalikes of themselves.
So now I’m going all over the place,
talking to thousands of people about this dumb app idea
that I created in my bedroom.
And what started out as this dumb idea has gotten way out of hand,
and now I'm having to actually prove that this thing works.
It's my wife's dream to skydive with me, but I'm terrified of heights.
Please help.
Is that even possible to find a lookalike that’s good enough to
fool a wife.
Like he’s been with her for three years, it says.
[Director] He’s got a baby.
He’s got a baby.
Maybe the guy’s just got one of those faces that is quite generic.
Let’s see whether we can do it.
[Step 1 Meet Richard]
If it helps, I’m a bit scared of heights.
How does it feel looking down?
Like I’m going to fall.
I can get vertigo.
It can happen on any escalator,
and I’m clinging on, I’m swaying.
But Chelsey, so your partner, she doesn’t have the same issues?
No, she kind of likes the fear,
whereas I kind of think I’m going to die.
Recently you guys have had a child, a baby.
Yes. At the moment, all she feels is a complete mum.
She’s got this amazing, incredible side
and she likes doing things.
I feel like she's almost trapped.
What do you think it would mean to Chelsey if you were able, somehow,
to confront your fears for her?
She would be incredibly proud of me.
But I don’t think she thinks I could ever do anything at a height.
I need to find someone who looks exactly like you.
I’m quite generic, so hopefully...
Where would someone who looks like you hang out?
Any main busy street.
[Step 2 Find a Lookalike]
Excuse me.
You look kind of like this guy.
No, I don’t.
You do, a little bit.
-No. -No.
-He kind of looks like someone. -Yeah, right?
He’s your bog-standard six out of ten man, isn’t he?
Bog-standard six out of ten man, that’s so harsh.
Maybe my friend Max.
-Can I, like, call him? -Yeah, for sure.
Oh yeah, he does kind of look like him.
How tall are you?
Like, 5′9.
No, he’s too short.
Excuse me, man.
Alright, so we’re trying to catch someone
who looks like this guy, for a film.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got some acting background.
Oh, you do? Oh, amazing.
One down.
It’d be in the next couple of days.
-Yeah, go for it. -OK, cool.
[Step 3 Meet Wife]
The next step was to tell Chelsey, his wife,
that she was going to fulfill her childhood dream of skydiving.
We needed to come up with a reason why we were filming.
So I basically just told Chelsey
that we were making a show about millennials overcoming their fears.
This Friday, you guys are going to skydive together.
That’s insane!
-I mean, he can-- -Literally insane.
I always said as soon as I turned 18 that I’d do it,
but obviously money, and then life gets in the way.
So it’s one of those things I’ve just always wanted to do,
but never got round to.
How are you feeling?
It’s kind of your worst nightmare.
Yeah, I feel if I can push myself so that you can do something,
even if it’s for a death-defying fall to death,
then it’s worth it.
You’re so sweet.
I really hope you can do it for yourself.
Yeah, I’ve got to.
I’ve got to, I will.
[Step 4 Choose Lookalike]
Cheers, everybody, for coming.
This is Richard.
Richard’s a coward.
What we're trying to figure out is
the person who is going to be able to play him—
a nervous man
in a particularly nervous situation—
well enough that it fools his partner of three years.
So I feel powerful, do you?
-No. -No, you don’t?
You called me a coward.
[Round 1]
Go back-to-back with them.
Just going to measure your heads.
Similar-sized heads.
We need to pick somebody, don’t we?
Timo, I think that you’re way too tall.
Then there were three.
[Round 2] One of you will be
the person who skydives with his wife.
I don’t want to skydive.
You don’t want to skydive?
OK.
[Director] That’s a problem.
[Round 3]
Richard, what might you be saying?
I love you. You’re awesome.
Thank you for being my wife,
and I’ll see you on the other side when we’re dead.
Can you say, “I love you?”
I love you.
[Guillaume vs Simon]
We need to figure this out.
They both did well.
I love you.
Did having a Frenchman say, “I love you,” sound like you?
So not that bad that Chelsey would even notice.
We’ve made our decision.
I love you.
How do you feel about skydiving on my behalf?
Um, I'm a bit nervous.
[24 Hours Until Skydive]
What is the layout of the plane?
-There’s two benches running parallel to each other.
Can they be on the same bench
so that she can’t look to the side at him?
-Right.
I think the idea was we do the swap while she’s on the plane
and then Richard is about to get on,
but then goes [for] maybe something like a toilet break or something.
And then he comes back and it’s the lookalike.
-Yeah, erm--
Can we have him lay under a parachute?
-Err, lay under a parachute?
[5 Hours Until Skydive]
-Guillaume. -Yeah.
The crucial 15 minutes
are the ones where you switch,
you get on this plane, and then...
She tries to talk to you, don’t talk to her,
but we’ll get Richard beforehand to be like, “Don’t talk to me.”
And I’ll spray you with whiskey
so it’ll cover up all of his pheromones.
[2 Hours Until Skydive]
So first things first, jumpsuits.
Please try and go for one size bigger than what you think you are, alright?
Simply because every time we have to wash the mud,
the blood, and the sick out of them, they shrink in the wash.
OK, happy?
You got the helmet on and goggles,
I think it begins to become much more difficult to recognize this man.
But if you get him to open his mouth, he’s definitely French.
She could just hurtle through oblivion,
she looks at Guillaume, and she’s like,
“Who’s this Frenchman who I’m falling towards the Earth with?”
They land, we switch them,
and then Richard gets up underneath the parachute and goes, “I did it!”
and she just goes, “I want a divorce.”
The way we’re going to cover up Guillaume enough is a few things.
So Guillaume is a little bit shorter than Richard,
so we’ve got these things called lifts,
that make you two and a half inches taller than you are.
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve got a couple of inches taller.
There’s other divers who are going to do their induction with them,
who are actually going to be actors.
At the last minute, those two drop out.
That moment triggers Richard saying,
“Oh, my God. I’m too nervous now, don’t talk to me,”
so that she doesn’t talk to him.
The more distractions going on when it’s happening,
the less of a chance that she’s going to realize that
that is not her husband.
Prefer not to talk...
before the jump and in the plane.
Just one last thing.
Oh, ****, that’s them arriving.
Come on, come on, let’s go.
Quickly, quickly, she can’t see you.
Jamie as well.
Get in there.
Jamie, go in.
It’ll be 20 minutes, no longer.
[1 Hour Until Skydive]
Hi!
Let's get you inducted and signed up.
We don't want to force you into doing anything,
so if at any point you don’t feel comfortable,
just tell us, OK?
-Hi, nice to meet you. Richard. -Hi. Chelsey.
One word on how you’re all feeling.
Just unsure.
Anxious.
Excited.
Oh, amazing!
You win.
[30 Minutes Until Skydive]
Her skydiving with a lookalike of her husband,
safely landing, us switching them around.
What are the chances that it works without a hitch?
-Is there a toilet? -Yeah.
-Is that alright? -Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
I feel massively guilty.
You feel guilty?
About the whole thing.
But I think she’s so excited.
But I’m torn about that at the moment, but...
[15 Minutes Until Skydive]
So Richard, at that point,
is going to take a massive gulp of whiskey.
Bit of Dutch courage, is that?
Yes.
He’s going to stink of booze.
He might give off a scent,
so we need to disguise that with whiskey.
This is for Richard.
We’ve got you a special hat.
If he’s got a red helmet, it’s got stickers on,
he’s immediately identifiable as Richard from a group.
Has Guillaume got the jumpsuit?
Feet slightly apart for me.
[AP] You guys go back to the toilet.
OK.
[Time to Skydive]
So all this planning had been building up to
this moment that the couple, the actors, were going to drop out.
I can’t do it, I’m sorry.
I don’t want to ruin anything.
No, no, I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.
So that we had time to switch Richard out for his lookalike.
[Director] What’s going on?
She’s on the plane already.
[Director] What’s the story about where Richard is going?
[Producer] We need to get Richard on the plane.
Richard was convinced that we were
trying to get him to do it at this point,
so we’re going to have to convince Richard to get on.
Yeah, get him on the plane and then--
[Director] And then he’s going to need the toilet.
And to be honest, she’s probably going to find him needing a piss
as the plane is about to take off kind of suspicious.
Switch, switch, switch.
-Sorry, I have to go to the toilet.
-She’s facing towards where he gets on.
So now we have to swap Richard out for his lookalike
with no distraction.
OK, quickly, quickly.
Come on. Guillaume, good, good.
He’s been drinking loads of whiskey, so I need to cover up his pheromones.
This is whiskey. Go.
Let’s go, come on!
He hasn’t got gloves on.
Gloves.
[Director] Gloves.
We’ve got the gloves somehow disappearing.
Nothing was going to plan.
Where are they?
Where the **** are they?
And I wasn’t very hopeful at this point.
Where is he gone?
-Who’s that? -Rich.
-He’s coming back now. -Good.
We’re going to get Guillaume on the plane,
and this is the moment that everything has been hinging on.
Is she going to fall for this?
Oh, God, here it is.
[Instructor] Alright, guys. A bit of an emergency, he wanted a wee.
[Chelsey] Last minute wee.
-OK, takeoff!
-I can hear the mic.
[Producer] She’s going, “Are you OK, honey?” at the moment.
She doesn’t know it’s him.
You sure?
She’s saying, “I’m so proud of you, honey.”
Not only is she thinking that this is her husband,
she's telling him that she's proud of him.
Oh, God, what have we done?
I think it’s worked. I think it’s worked.
She thought it was him.
Now we had ten minutes
where they’re going to go up to the right altitude, jump out.
I need to guess where they’re going to drop,
and when they land, we need to basically unclip Guillaume,
clip Richard to the instructor,
and then he’s waiting.
She’s proud of him, it worked.
It worked!
What are your nerves like now on a scale of one to ten?
Maybe a four or three and a half. Four.
Yeah, not bad, not bad.
It’s worked.
-It worked. -You’re joking.
She was going, “Proud of you, honey.”
But that’s your wife up there with a random French dude.
Good luck to him.
Well, think about how happy she is going to be.
That is the thing of this whole thing,
it was to get her to do this.
And I didn’t know, but her dad did it before she was even born.
So [she] was probably about 10, 11, 12,
he told her the story,
and she wanted to do it as soon as she was 18.
So actually hearing that has kind of balanced up the,
“Oh, my God, I’m betraying her. I’m a terrible human being.
And how can I keep up this pretence?”
Congratulations!
That’s incredible!
What did you think of that?
I thought it would be great, but that was just... oh, my God.
So much better than I thought.
What’s that?
Whiskey.
Where is Guillaume?
Guillaume was going to land,
and then we had 30 seconds to put him in the toilet,
put Richard back,
and hope Chelsey doesn’t witness this
from her bird’s eye view of the whole situation.
That’s Guillaume, isn’t it? That’s Guillaume.
Switch, switch, switch.
Guillaume, run!
-Run! -Guillaume!
Guillaume! Quickly, quickly, get in the toilet.
He smashed it.
-Well done. -Thank you.
Absolutely brilliant, well done.
Hey, you are pretty amazing. Do you want to go over?
-Alright? -Thank you.
-Congratulations. -You did it!
How are you?
Much better now.
Yeah, I loved it.
-You loved it? -Yeah.
Chelsey and Richard, congratulations on your tandem skydives.
Once you’re done, come see us in the office,
we have certificates and vouchers for you.
Well done.
How did you find it?
No words?
No words.
I’ve got no words.
No, I can’t believe it.
Well done.
You just went straight down.
So I was waiting, like, “Is he going to do it?
Is he going to do it?”
And then I was pretty much cheering you on
as soon as you went over.
How happy are you that you were able to skydive though?
So happy. It was just incredible.
-Is that a bucket list thing? -Oh yeah.
Job done.
So after all that, Richard has come out looking like
a brave kind of guy who faces his fear.
Chelsey, she’s fulfilled her childhood dream of skydiving.
And... I’ve pulled the whole thing off.
All of our lives have been improved by this insane action,
which makes me think I should go and do it again.
Come on, you French ****.
Guillaume, you absolute hero.
Thanks. Well, yeah, I tried my best.
Did you manage to say anything before you got out of the plane?
Yeah. I love you, Chelsey.
I love you.