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The rollercoaster king: the man behind the UK's fastest thrill-ride

The long read: John Burton was just 27 when he was put in charge of creating Thorpe Park’s biggest-ever project. Once too scared to go on rides himself, how did he become the architect of so many daredevils’ dreams?

Photograph: Joe Giddens/PABurton – not old, not grey, not yet – was gearing up to spend the years from 2020 to 2024 as a broker between engineers and architects, marketeers and money people, builders and operators, thrill-ride enthusiasts and those more casual ticket-holders who would one day ride and judge whatever rollercoaster he dreamed up. He held up an inch-thick book of international safety standards: “And that’s just for the design side, not even construction.” At least since Schwarzkopf started turning passengers on their heads, rollercoaster creators have known that the appeal of what they offer is the near-dangerous, the danger-adjacent; a succession of danger-flavoured sensations, undertaken in conditions of guaranteed non-danger. It was for the level fours that he included a kink in the track of Hyperia, just outside the station, that would momentarily roll passengers on to their left sides even as the train beneath them curved slowly to the right: the nearest thing you might see to a joke delivered in cross-beamed steel.

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