I messaged Luton’s Deadpool on his Instagram and told him about what I was doing and asked to meet. He agreed to meet me at 10am, at St George’s Square on the August bank holiday Monday.
The sun was out and Luton’s Deadpool was easy to locate, dressed in full Marvel superhero regalia, and crocs in the middle of the square.
We sat on the steps and I asked him about his origin story in coming out as LD.
He recounted how it all began during the first Covid lockdown. Friends of his roped him into participating as the Deadpool character within a pantheon of ‘Visiting Superheroes’ who cheered up people during lockdown while raising thousands of pounds for the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.
He found the experience to be deeply satisfying and so continued to regularly fundraise, do voluntary work and support local causes as Deadpool. He began getting noticed and has now become a Luton icon, appearing on BBC, Bedfordshire Live, Luton Today as well as TV and radio shows from Holland and Germany.
LD runs a podcast and he told me he’s currently working on a documentary about Luton and the Lutonians who are trying improve things in the local community.
He told me his true identity is Luton’s best kept local secret and that he’s gone through measures to conceal his identity, including: deleting all social media posts where he was named and identified together with LD in ‘Visiting Superheroes’ and setting up separate LD social media accounts. He even said he had changes of clothes hidden in strategic places for quick costume changes, just like Spiderman did.
He sent me to meet Kev at ABCD-in-Luton to participate in a litter pick the following day. He noted that there have been studies correlating street crime with rubbish and dirty streets. He said that there’s a push to make Luton look good ahead of the Friday home game against West Ham on Friday.
For an object he gave a limited edition LD pin to put on the montage. Only 100 have been/will be made, so it’s a collector’s item!
In exchange I gave LD a tin of homemade tingling sweets.
Pocket Number 25: Kev at ABCD-in-Luton, St George’s Square >>
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