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SPRING IN HIS STEP
Inside incredible story of real life Del Boy who found NATURAL SPRING in his garden like Only Fools and Horses episode
A DAD discovered a natural spring in his back garden and turned it into a bottled-water business backed by Steven Gerrard.
Mark Doyle bought a house in the countryside and was chatting to a local farmer who told him about a historic spring at the bottom of his garden in Mawdsley, West Lancashire.
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Mark was determined to find the source of the water, and brought in an excavator to find the source.
Eventually the businessman found a slab of hard stone bubbling with water.
An angel like emblem was shaped into the stone, which inspired the name of the business, Angel Revive.
Mark, already a successful businessman, invested around £1m in setting up a production system to extract the water and then bottle it.
The tale has a striking similiarity to the plot of a famous episode of Only Fools of Horses.
In the 1992 Christmas special, Del Trotter creates a fake spring in his grandad's allotment.
He and brother Rodney then set up a production line in their Peckham London flat, top, filling bottles from the tap.
They then pass off the contents as mineral water from the mysterious Peckham Spring on their late grandad’s allotment — in reality, a leaking tap.
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Mark, a Liverpool fan approached former club captain Steven Gerrard to come on board his mineral water business, and the footballing legend agreed.
Steven found the time to promote the product while also managing Rangers FC, and granted the water business a loan worth £371,524.
Mark was also a big boxing fan and took group of colleagues and friends to New York to watch Liverpool fighter Rocky Fielding take on Mexican sensation Canelo Alvaraz in December
2018.
The company posted a good luck message to Rocky moments before he took on Alvaraz at Madison Square Garden.
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The message read: "Wishing the best of luck to @rocky_fielding tonight, the whole of the world needs to get behind him.
He is up against one of the best fighters in the world tonight."
The company also posted a good luck message to Liverpool fighter Tony Bellew ahead of his fight with Alexander Usyk.
The message read : "Good luck to @tonybellew in his fight against Alexander Usyk to become the undisputed cruiser weight
World Champion next week."
Other big names such as Eddie Hearn and Derek Chisora also posed for photographs endorsing Angel Revive.
Steven's former team mate Jamie Carragher also helped plug the drink, said to be high in alkaline.
In October 2019 Angel Revive won an award at a glittering event at Liverpool's Hilton hotel.
Alex Gerrard accepted the award on behalf of her husband Steven, who sent a video message to the audience.
After he bought the house in Mawdsley, West Lancashire, Mark spent a fortune transforming the detached property into a dream seven-bedroom mansion with a leisure complex with a swimming pool.
A former visitor to the home said to The Sun Online: "The pool is an absolute whopper. It just goes on and on."
The complex features a sauna cabin, steam room, rain shower, gym and games room.
Inside the main house sits a vast open plan kitchen, seven bedrooms and a formal dining room for those special occasions. There is a home cinema room on the third floor.
The home is set in nine acres , with a private lake, pond, lawns, stables and a paddock.
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The man who knows the house said: "At one point Mark had all these toy elephants, giraffes and alligators on the lawn. It was a very unusual feature."
The sprawling property has now been put up for sale at £3.5m.
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