‘i Lost My Memory After Surviving The London Bombings'

With the 15th anniversary of the devastating 7/7 terror attack next week, presenter and DJ Shanie Ryan recalls how she escaped with her life

- Christine Smit

Shanie Ryan, Capital Xtra DJ and QVC presenter, was caught up in one of London’s worst-ever terrorist attacks 15 years ago – the 7/7 bombings, which killed 56 people and injured nearly 800.

Shanie, who was 20 in July 2005, had been travelling to her dance graduation and in a split-second decision that was to potentially save her life, she got off the Underground train’s first carriage at King’s Cross to say goodbye to her flatmate, Leon, before jumping back into the second carriage.

One of the bombers stepped into that first carriage as she stepped off – and minutes later a bomb exploded.

“I thought there had been a terrible crash,” Shanie recalls. “I managed to escape from all the debris and get out of the Underground. I was met by medics who tried to put me in an ambulance, but all I wanted to do was escape so I did a runner. I’d perforated my eardrum and I had lung damage, but I just ran and ran to college.

“When I got there, everyone looked at me as if I’d crawled out of a war zone. I was covered head-to-toe in soot and I had charcoal in my eyes. It was then that someone broke the news that it was a terrorist attack. I was traumatised.”

Shanie eventually managed to get home and spent the next seven days glued to the TV screen.

“I was obsessed with watching the news to try to find out what had happened, to help clear my head, until my mum told me to stop because she could see it wasn’t doing me any good,” she says.

“In the weeks that followed, I tried to resume life as best as I could, but it was very much a blur.”