Julian Spears died after he dived into a cold pool. Photo / 123RF (File)
Julian Spears died after he dived into a cold pool. Photo / 123RF (File)
The husband of a television stalwart and new Coronation St star died after making a fatal miscalculation about a swimming pool, his grieving family has revealed.
Music industry figure Julian Spears, husband of Carol Royle, was going for a swim at a leisure centre near his West London home on Sunday and saw that steam was rising from the pool on the cold December morning.
Assuming it to be heated, as it usually was, Spears dived in - but the pool at the David Lloyd health club in Hampton was “freezing cold”.
The sudden exposure to the cold water triggered a massive brain haemorrhage, the Daily Mail reports.
While 74-year-old Spears was able to drive back to his Twickeham home, he soon starting feeling unwell.
He collapsed and cried out to his wife for help, who called an ambulance.
Spears was rushed to hospital but died the following day after doctors found internal bleeding in an inoperable part of his brain.
‘He completed me’
Carol Royle, a mainstay of British television who recently joined the cast of Coronation St as Anthea Deering, paid tribute to Spears, a PR boss for the Phonogram record label who helped break stars like the Boom Town Rats, Elvis Costello and The Stranglers.
“We met as teenagers. We went our separate ways for a time, but reunited and were married in 1977 and have been together since then,” she told the Mail.
Royle said Spears was healthy and took regular exercise, saying he had “such positivity in life and a passion for all he did”.
“His nature was to be a provider,” she said. “Nothing was ever a problem.”
Carol Royle shared this photo of her husband (right) and their family on social media.
“He had gone to the leisure centre just to use the outdoor pool,” she said of the fateful morning.
“He had gone swimming there three of four times a week for the last four years.
“The pool was always heated. It was never cold on any of the other occasions he’d used it.
“And on Sunday he recalled seeing steam rising from the water so assumed it was heated as normal.”
She said the water was “freezing cold” and the shock initially left her husband shaken before he headed home.
“I heard him shout for me and I found him collapsed in the downstairs cloakroom.
“He complained of feeling poorly and that he’d lost his balance. He said that the room was spinning so much he didn’t want to open his eyes,” she told the Mail.
He died the following day, leaving Royle mourning the man who “completed” her.
“He was kind, genuine, generous and lived life to the full,” she said.
A David Lloyd spokesperson told the Mail: “We are sorry to hear of the passing of Julian Spears who was a member at our Hampton Club.
“Our thoughts and condolences are with his family and friends.”
‘The diving reflex’
Exposure to cold water has been previously associated with ischemic stroke, but not conclusively with intracerebral haemorrhage, according to a paper published in the medical journal Neurohospitalist in 2015.
Citing a case of a 67-year-old woman who suffered a brain haemorrhage after taking part in the viral Ice Bucket Challenge, the paper found that the shock of the cold most likely exacerbated her existing hypertension and led to the brain bleed.
Former US President George W Bush takes the ice bucket challenge in 2014.
The paper said the cold promoted the “diving reflex” an instinctual mammalian response to the exposure of the face to cold water and that that reflex leads to “cardiovascular changes including bradycardia (slow heart rate) and peripheral arteriolar vasoconstriction (narrowing of the blood vessels) leading to hypertension (high blood pressure).
Lee Hill, an exercise scientist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre in Quebec, told American Heart Association News in 2022 that anyone swimming in cold water should start slowly.
“Get your lungs exposed to the cold air,” he said. “Put cold water on the back of your neck. Prime your neurological system that a cold shock is coming.”
“Never, ever do a cold water swim on your own,” he added. “That is a recipe for disaster.”
