DESPITE ALL THE momentum that was building around my strongman career at that time, there was something else that occurred in 2010 that was to have an even more lasting effect in my life. The most important thing to happen to me during this period, apart from meeting Mark Felix and spending a Sunday afternoon in Teesside, was meeting my wife, Alex.
Anybody who knows me, or who has seen my documentary, Eddie: Strongman, will have some idea of what this woman means to me and how important she is to my very existence, but I’d like to expand on that slightly and at the same time explain how she helps me day to day. Don’t worry, there’s no need to get your violins out, but at the risk of sounding like a cliché I believe it’s true when they say that behind every great man there is, more often than not, a much greater woman. Mark my words, they don’t come much greater than mine. Some of you still might be wondering what this has got to do with being a strongman and once you’ve finished this chapter I hope you’ll realise that it had everything to do with it.
Being a strongman, as I’ve already intimated, can be a very solitary existence. Some of that’s self-imposed, of course, and some of it isn’t. But every time you emerge from that isolation – whether it be returning from a competition, recovering from an injury or just coming back from the gym – having somebody there who will always be ‘pro-you’ no matter what is as important as any amount of dedication or endeavour. In fact, to a certain extent you rely on that person to even exist; partly because they often inspire you to succeed – which Alex does, together with our kids – and partly because you can’t be dedicated or enterprising without having a solid home life. For me, that’s the platform from which I achieve greatness and Alex both creates and maintains that. I’ve often said to people, either in person or on social media, that they should never, ever underestimate me or what I can achieve, and the person who gives me the power to say that – and mean it – is my wife.
I first met Alex at the beginning of 2010. I was obviously still working the doors and as well as being a bachelor with his own house I also had a hot tub. In fact, I was probably the closest thing to a playboy Newcastle had ever seen and some weeks I’d hold hot tub parties in the garden. George Clooney in Saint-Tropez I was not, but after having a few in town, my mates and I would invite a load of girls back and we’d all have a bloody good time. Would I like to elaborate on that? Absolutely not. Suffice to say these parties could often go on for a very long time and more often than not I’d wake up to find mates asleep on the lawn and all kinds of everything in the bloody hot tub.
Then one night a mate of mine rang up and asked me what I was doing. ‘There’s a few of us getting pissed in the hot tub,’ I said to him. ‘Why not come over, and while you’re there, bring a couple of girls with you? The more the merrier.’
Although these hot tub parties only lasted a few months (in total, not individually!), they represented the closest thing I’d ever had to a regular social life and looking back they were absolutely tremendous. Seriously, if you’re a young lad who wants to know why you should work your arse off, there’s your fucking answer! Get yourself a good job – or two, if you can manage it – then buy a house and invest in a hot tub. You won’t regret it.
Anyway, when this mate of mine eventually arrived, he had two girls with him and one of these was Alex. Although she was local to the area I’d never met her before and although she knew who I was it was only by reputation. I’ve never asked Alex if that was a good or a bad thing and I don’t think I want to know.
This may sound like a line but honestly, Alex was very different to any girl I’d ever met before and we hit it off immediately. Usually, and forgive me if this sounds conceited, which it does, but nine times out of ten it was the girls who came on to me and so historically I’d never had to put much effort in. With Alex, it was a bit of an about-change and because I really fancied her I decided to turn on the charm. I’m not sure if she noticed but I definitely gave it my all. She’s a big girl, about six foot tall, and that’s one of the things that really attracted me to her. That, and her sparkling personality, of course! In all seriousness, she really did, and does, float my boat massively in that department and I remember being amazed at how caring she seemed. The initial attraction, though, for both of us, was our height and build and by the time she got out of Mr Lover’s hot tub we’d arranged our first date.
Over the following weeks Alex and I went all over the place and it’s fair to say we became inseparable. She must have thought all her Christmasses had come at once when I suggested we go jet skiing one day.
‘Where to?’ she asked, probably expecting me to say Majorca or somewhere.
‘Colwyn Bay,’ I replied.
I must say that Alex managed to hide her disappointment very well and she even managed to say, ‘Ooh, that sounds nice.’
My dad had a jet ski at the time that he used at Colwyn Bay and before I started working my arse off for a living I used to use it quite a bit. We actually had a really good day up there and because it was a jet ski I thought would be in keeping with my playboy image. Hot tubs in Staffordshire and jet skis in North Wales. It was pretty serious stuff.
Within a year of meeting Alex I’d already decided that she was going to marry me. She didn’t know it yet, but she was, and so all I had to do was tell her. Having never proposed to anybody before, and being an incurable romantic, I knew that it had to be something special – and, if I was going to stick to my ‘all-or-nothing’ rule, something truly spectacular. Getting on one knee in Paris was never going to be good enough for me so I had to start thinking.
I forget where the idea came to me exactly but it was pretty convoluted and involved an aeroplane, some very large signage, my dad, my mum, my future wife (I hoped), my future in-laws, one of her grandparents, and me. It had more elements to it than you could wave a stick at but providing my dad remembered how to fly the plane, and providing my mum had put the signage out and had reminded Alex’s dad and nan to stand outside and wave at the right time, then nothing could go wrong. Oh yes, and Alex had to be looking in the right direction at exactly the right time – AND, she had to say yes. Piece of piss.
The idea was that my dad, who’d had his pilot’s licence a few years, would take Alex and I out for a nice romantic flight together from an airfield about an hour away from where we lived, which, as the crow flies, was just a few minutes or so from Alex’s parents’ house. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said to Alex. ‘Why don’t we fly over your parents’ house?’ to which she replied, ‘Yeah, OK.’
While all this was going on my mum was on Alex’s parents’ lawn laying out a huge canopy that read:
ALEX
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
X
All we had to do now was get my dad to fly over the house, which would be easy, and then get Alex to look down at her parents’ lawn, which wouldn’t be so easy.
Because Alex had been really busy at work (she works for a recruitment company) she hadn’t seen either her dad or her nan in ages and so as an extra touch I asked them if they’d mind standing on the lawn and waving when we flew past. I’d already asked her dad’s permission to marry Alex, which he’d given me, and I was so glad that he agreed to be involved. He and Alex’s nan did wave, bless them. And then they waved again. I don’t know how many times I had to ask my dad to fly over Alex’s parents’ house but it must have been three or four. ‘Oh, look down there, Alex,’ I kept saying. ‘Isn’t that your parents’ house?’ She just wasn’t interested.
When Alex eventually did look down and saw the proposal, and her dad and nan, she was in tears. So before she could say no, I slid the ring onto her finger, gave her a kiss and told her that I loved her. Funnily enough, she never did give me a formal ‘yes’ to the proposal but I’m pretty sure she’d have said something by now.
We got married about a year later and so within two years of first meeting me over a steamy hot tub in Newcastle, Alex had become my wife. By the time we tied the knot she was already about eight months pregnant with our son Max so there was very nearly an extra guest.
When it came to the stag do I decided to keep it quite low-key and although we all had plenty to drink we had a few days to recuperate before the big day. There’s nothing worse than people turning up to their own wedding pissed. Isn’t that right, Eddie Hall! Unfortunately, I made the almost fatal error of going out for ‘just a few beers’ the night before the wedding and ended up forgetting concepts like ‘bed’ and ‘sleep’ and went straight to the church still pissed. This, as you can imagine, went down like an atlas stone at a basketball game and neither Alex nor any of her family or friends – nor any of mine, come to think of it – were in the slightest bit impressed. God knows what I must have smelt like, but it can’t have been very nice.
Because I don’t drink very often I tend to go a bit mad sometimes and my tolerance level has actually increased since my whisky drinking days. Because I’m so big it takes about ten pints to even have an effect on me, and at least twenty to send me on my way, plus four or five shots. This isn’t some macho brag, by the way. I weigh over thirty stone, remember, and consume about 80,000 calories a week. Getting me pissed is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it.
Because of my faux pas I hadn’t even written my speech, if you can believe it. Being this disorganised was a completely new experience to me. Fancy leaving it till your wedding day to find out what it’s like – what a tit! It went OK in the end but it was the first and last time I’ve blagged something so important. Funnily enough, the reception was held in a marquee on Alex’s parents’ lawn and I think returning to the scene of the crime helped to improve matters. We all ended up having a fantastic day, no thanks to me.
Alex has been by my side since I first won England’s Strongest Man and her role, with regards to strongman, is multi-dimensional and it takes in every aspect of what I do: the training, the recovery, the diet. Alex makes all my meals, and there’s a lot more to that than just shoving some ingredients into a pan. There’s a real science to it and Alex has bossed that on my behalf. She still works, by the way, so it’s time she has to make for herself. Actually, it’s time she makes for me. But by far the most vital contribution Alex makes to my career is all the emotional support she gives me, and believe me, my emotions match my frame. They’re not small! I can go from nought to sixty in about a second and a half and when I lose it, I fucking lose it. Before meeting Alex the only person who could tame me and talk sense into me was Nan, so the fact that somebody has replaced her makes me a very lucky man. It doesn’t matter how bad the problem seems or how insurmountable the challenge, Alex helps me see through all the crap and helps me to focus again. It’s fair to say that if I didn’t have her fighting my corner I wouldn’t be where I am today.
There are a great many sayings and mottos that have become lost in the land of clichés over the years, and sadly this renders them almost stale and meaningless. There is one saying in particular though that I would like to liberate from this verbal scrapheap because it sums up exactly how I feel about Alex and offers a true and accurate description of the effect she has had on my life. That saying is ‘She is the best thing that has ever happened to me’, and if nobody else wants it, I’m happy to keep it for her. For Alex.