Eddie the Eagle Edwards at Stamford Endowed Schools’ lecture series

Bubbly and optimistic, Eddie the Eagle Edwards brought his delightful account of qualifying for the Winter Olympics to the Stamford stage.

The former ski-jumper, who found international fame at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada, is a still-spritely 59-year-old who admits his new favourite activity is modern jive dancing.

The older Eddie is also a dab hand at motivation, and the theme of his talk that kicked off Stamford Endowed Schools’ new lecture series on Thursday (May 4) was resilience.

Arriving on the raised stage with a quip about heights, Eddie - real name Michael Edwards - glided straight into sharing how his love of skiing had developed from a school trip, aged 13.

The audience of pupils, parents and public heard that the Gloucester-born boy became a plasterer like his dad, but used his spare time and scant money to go skiing, and worked hard to make the GB alpine team.

On failing to qualify for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, he switched to ski jumping, realising that as the only British representative in the discipline he stood a good chance of making it to Calgary.

Recounting that period, Eddie painted a laugh-out-loud picture of a man in his early 20s with terrible eyesight and badly equipped due to a lack of sponsorship.

But despite gently poking fun at his younger self - something he also did openly at the height of his Olympic fame - he also conveyed the steely determination that lay behind the smiling and joking.

Several times, Eddie referred to having been told to give up, or that he wouldn’t succeed in his sport. But this, he said, made him even more determined.

He also shared the feeling of waiting on the bench at the top of a 90m ski slope before ski jumping in front of the watching world, describing it as the most exhilarating of his life.

Eddie’s cheery manner when talking of his broken bones (most of them), the support of Europe’s ski teams (except the English), and staying in a Finnish psychiatric hospital (to save on hotel costs) was a breath of fresh air to hear, compared with some of the overly earnest and humourless ‘heroes’ of sport who may have won medals but never won fans.

And he seemed genuinely hopeful that those listening might take on some of his ‘can-do’ spirit.