Jonny Kennedy

Who was Jonny Kennedy?

Jonny Kennedy was the subject of the documentary The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, which documented the final months of his life as he suffered from the rare inherited condition known as dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. He was born with no skin on his left leg. Kennedy ultimately died of skin cancer caused by EB.

In the film, which also featured interviews with his friends and family, Kennedy was extremely candid about his feelings concerning his impending death. When the film was first broadcast in March 2004 on Channel 4 in the UK, it attracted around 5 million viewers and helped to raise £500,000 for the EB charity DebRA. The documentary was voted the sixth most popular film in the Channel 4 programme, The 50 Greatest Documentaries of all time, in 2005.

At the time Kennedy was born, there was no prenatal test for EB. Kennedy was a Spiritualist who saw death as "a freedom and an escape." The film saw him fulfill his lifelong aim of flying in a glider, which led him to think of life beyond death - "I think I'll be bored if the angels sit about on clouds plucking their harps all day. I'll be up there, getting them off their clouds, doing drops of 1,000 feet and then pulling up. I think you need to spice things up a bit."