Biography

Hi- I am John Kirkham and this is my website! Hopefully you have looked around the site a bit and found out what you were looking for... Here I would like to talk a little about my roller skate love affair which has spanned two decades and covered some serious mileage!

I first started skating on rollerskates at around the age of 12 after being inspired by all the “older kids” on my street during the real rollerskating boom of the early 90’s. After purchasing my first pair of second-hand rollerskates for £25 (that was a LOT to me back then) I was soon very much addicted to skating and haven’t been off skates pretty much a single day since. After a few years I made the move over to Inline skates where I got into speed skating, slalom skating and generally just using my skates to get from A to B to C to D.... I skated EVERYWHERE. An ankle injury at the age of 18 almost put an end to my skating career before it really got started. However, in a flash of inspiration one day I decided to turn a pair of trainers into quad skates and, to my absolute delight, I discovered I could skate quite happily again.

Back on Roller-skates, I re-discovered my love for having a wheel at each corner again. On a fateful trip down to London I was skating in Hyde Park (home of the London skate scene) and saw a group of “Quaddies” (Quad-skaters) dancing around a stereo and busting some serious moves. From that moment I was absolutley hooked on rollerdance and spent every minute god sent teaching myself a few steps at a time. I got a job flyering for a local nightclub in Nottingham where I worked for four hours a night, five nights a week on skates. The vast majority of this time was dedicated to practising my rollerdance moves, at least when I wasn’t dodging drunkards trying to rugby tackle me anyway.

I moved to Leeds in September 2004 and found a job for a nightclub here within a day of my arrival doing much the same. Then in November 2006 I approached Tiger Tiger (for whom I had done a fair bit of roller skate flyering already) and asked if I could run a rollerdance class one night a week. To my amazement, I was told that I could! The managers at Tiger Tiger were really supportive of the idea and really helped out in those early days with free room hire and helping to publicise the rollerdance class. Soon after setting up the rollerdance class I went down to London for a weekend and completed my ICP Inline Skate Instructors certification. This was a real challenge as I had to get back into inline skates after many years back on Quads. It was also immense fun and hugely beneficial to my ability as a skate instructor.

The Tuesday evening rollerdance class soon became a huge success and I shifted my thoughts to running a roller disco too. What use is a city full of roller dancers without a roller disco to strut their stuff?! I set about finding a venue to run a weekly roller disco- a process which was significantly more challenging than getting the room at Tiger Tiger! I would find the “perfect venue” to be told, quite simply, that I could not go ahead with it. Eventually I approached Jongleurs where, once again I received a fantastic opportunity and really enthusiastic management team that would allow me the chance to fulfil my dream of bringing roller disco to Leeds. I started Skate Fever on a Wednesday night in September 2007 and have not looked back since!

As well as teaching roller dance at Tiger Tiger and running the roller disco at Jongleurs, I am involved in a few other projects in Leeds which bring my great joy. I am the coach for the newly formed Leeds Roller Dolls and voluntarily teach a room full of Derby Girls once or twice a week. I also do the occasional private lesson in Leeds and recently started a rollerdance class on a Friday evening at the Esporta Health Club in Leeds City Centre. If you would like any more information about the Leeds Roller Dolls, Private Lessons, Rollerdance at Esporta or anything else that comes to mind, please drop me a line here.

I am absolutely passionate about Rollerskating and feel very fortunate to know that I can share my passion with so many people. I love skating and seeing new people getting into it and improving each week is just amazing. I have met some truly amazing people through rollerskating over the years and made some real good friends. If you are even just thinking about giving rollerskating a try, I urge you to hesitate no longer and come for a roll sometime!