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Outlook: Mr Motivator: from homeless to household name

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23/04/2020 GMT

Mr Motivator: from homeless to household name

BBC World Service - Outlook, Mr Motivator: from homeless to household name

TV star and fitness instructor Derrick Evans wants to help people keep fit in lockdown

Fitness instructor Derrick Evans became famous in the 1990s for his TV appearances in the UK. He tells Emily Webb why he’s come back to help people keep fit while in lockdown.

Jamaican-born Derrick Evans also known as Mr Motivator is a fitness instructor who became famous in the 1990s for his TV appearances in the UK. But his journey to fame wasn’t easy. He was given up for adoption at just three months old, and when he moved to the UK in 1958 he faced bullying and racism. He only stumbled into fitness in his mid 20s, when he was struggling to find a job as a single dad in London – and he admits he has learnt everything he knows from a book on aerobics. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he made an extraordinary comeback to help people work out while in lockdown.
 
Paola Agnelli and Michele D’Alpaos live in Verona, Italy, the city of Romeo and Juliet, where people have been in lockdown since February 2020. But Paola and Michele managed to fall in love from a distance, and like in Shakespeare's play, their love story also involves a balcony.
 
On June 3rd, 2017, free solo climber Alex Honnold accomplished what many climbers have called the greatest athletic achievement of all times: he climbed the iconic face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without any ropes. Later that year, he scaled it again - this time with his mum Dierdre Wolownick Honnold. She accomplished her own world record that day, becoming the oldest woman - at age 66 - to scale the rock formation. In her new book, “The Sharp End of Life: A Mother’s Story”, she writes about the challenges she faced raising a dare-devil son.
 
Picture: Derrick Evans a.k.a. Mr Motivator. 
Credit: BBC.

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