Is it a bird, is it a plane?

It’s almost inconceivable to think that it took until the latter half of the twentieth century for someone to improve upon the design of the basic single-line Chinese kite. It’s almost as inconceivable to think that the only change anyone could think of was to stick another line on it, so that it could be controlled with two hands instead of just the one. But there you have it – the “invention” of the stunt kite, the aerial trapeze artist that filled the ‘Seventies skies with darting, diving, loop-the-loop diamonds of brightly coloured nylon.

It was Britain’s own Peter Powell¹ who popularised the dual-line stunt kite, a Cheltenham-based entrepreneur with a knack for knowing a good bit of PR when it fluttered by. Initially gaining fame winning awards at a Geneva exhibition of inventions (and then the British Toy Of The Year in 1976), Powell never turned down the chance to appear on TV flying one of his own durable plastic kites with its distinctive tubular tail². Always dressed in a suit, he could often be seen running along blustery hilltops with an airborne triple stacker, or hoisting his granny off the ground with pure kite power before steering her back down to a soft landing (we assume). Such showboating attracted the attention of a Japanese investor and sure enough, within months, Powell’s cottage factory was churning out millions of pounds worth of kite.

The craze literally flew around the world, for some reason appealing to adults as much as kids. John Noakes crashed a Barnstormer kite onto Shep’s nose on Blue Peter (although in truth each looked as nonplussed with the whole stunting obsession as the other). Powell received endorsements from the likes of Jimmy Stewart and Mohammed Ali, even appearing on the front page of the New York Times at the height of his fame. Then, as quickly as it had taken off, the kite fad came back down to earth with a bump.

Despite the fact that Benjamin Franklin had plainly documented one of the major drawbacks of kite flying with his storm-powered discovery of electricity in 1752, the powers-that-be deemed it necessary to issue a special public information film. This terrifying warning of the dangers of running your kite or Frisbee into overhead power cables (and then stupidly clambering up a pylon to free it), ran on children’s television in 1979 as part of a government-sponsored Play Safe campaign. Whether it was down to this or the persistent rumours of “a bloke” who ran off the edge of the cliffs at Beachy Head whilst trying to keep his kite aloft, the wind was well and truly taken out of the kite industry’s sales.

When Powell’s business collapsed, he burned all evidence of it ever having existed - scrapbooks, cuttings, stock, the lot went up on a bonfire. Powell himself was the biggest casualty, however, declared bankrupt and becoming a virtual recluse ever since.