A musician and model from Woodside Park who carried the Olympic flame to Hyde Park is appearing in a new television advert for Coca-Cola on ITV and Channel 4.
Tyler Rix, 20, is one of those featured in the two-minute advert, entitled Coming Together, which promotes calorie counting in weight management. It was first shown last night and will be repeated tonight at 10pm.
Tyler, a former pupil at Dame Alice Owen’s School in Potters Bar, is shown in his role as the last of the 8,000 relay Olympic torchbearers, carrying the flame into a packed Hyde Park and lighting the cauldron on the stage.
“That was the best day of my life by far,” Tyler said of his experience on July 26 last year.
“Standing up there with Boris Johnson giving his speech after I’d given mine, there was a very special buzz in the air, you could just feel it.
“All the other relay torchbearers ran with the torch, but they didn’t get to say anything, so for me it was really nice because I got to make a speech on behalf of all of us – in front of 60,000 people.
“When I looked out to see all the people standing there, all I could see was people and sky. I can’t explain it, I’ll never get that again.
“I was so emotional when I came off the stage, and I ended up trending on Twitter that day.
“I’ll get to relive a bit of that again with this advert.”
Tyler lives with his family in Woodside Park. He is a singer and saxophone player in the Tyler Rix Quartet, which he founded when he was 14 and whose album, Ascent, reached Number One on the Classical Charts.
He has performed in the London Jazz Festival and as a soloist with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Tyler was also a schoolboy footballer for West Ham Academy from the ages of seven to 14.
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