by Ben Collins
‘Has anyone seen Ben? BEN, you’re ON for f …!’
I peeled my sweaty bones off my cardboard floor mat and tried to remember where I was. I pulled focus on cargo containers full of gear-boxes, a gazebo covering an Apache gunship with wheels and a Ninja dressed top to toe in white silk. Ninja was doing a standing splits and whirling a double-ended sword through the air with phenomenal co-ordination. My watch alarm went off and it all came back to me: drive time, third show of the day.
I ran past Ninja, a freakishly talented young girl called Chloe. Her slender arms and legs fired through a sequence of graceful kicks and swipes, with a final thrust of two fingers towards her eyes and a single point at me. I returned her salute and slipped on a black balaclava.
Backstage was blacked out but it didn’t silence the thrum of my V8. I inspected the climbing handles on the rear deck of the jet-black Vauxhall Monaro ‘Ute’, then double-checked each individual tyre by hand for signs of blistering or bare canvas. I pumped the flyaway handbrake, disarmed the TCS and armed the smoke box. The familiar green LED dials all read true, and I pulled forward with my heart running a million beats a minute. I always dreaded this sequence, in a good way.
We lined up silently on the stage, hidden from the audience in a sea of darkness. A crashing drum roll introduced Chloe under a strobing white light, then the spotlight hit me. I unleashed 450bhp, nipped some left-foot brake to exaggerate the wheelspin and slewed off my mark. Chloe stepped aside at the last moment, allowing the fender to brush her sword as I yanked the wand and rotated the bonnet around her legs.
The Monaro began its circle fully sideways as I powered the rear wheels and took my hands off the steering. The wheel spun itself through 720 degrees in the blink of an eye until it found the appropriate degree of opposite lock, a peculiar technique I had picked up in the course of the tour. I caught the wheel one-handed and began the perilous triple lap around Chloe as her right leg darted skywards and she balanced precariously on the left. With the bumper inches from her shins, I could see nothing below her waist between intermittent bursts of blinding spotlight. The largely male audience saw rather more of Chloe’s nubile figure as she spread her sinewy legs in a standing splits. The aisles were regularly swept clean of fallen chewing gum.
An irregular note in the music coming through my earphones informed me I was running a second too fast into the routine, so I eased on some left-foot brake to slow the rate of turn and increased the throttle by a gnat’s whisker. My Ute had a few special modifications, including a solid welded rear differential that allowed the rear wheels to turn at the same speed and spin consistently every time.
I separated from Chloe and drifted around a lap of the arena whilst she threw Ninja grenades at me with coinciding pyrotechnics going off around the stage. The finale involved a rolling burn-out: the Monaro crept forward with the rears spinning at 70mph, burning more rubber than a Durex factory. Chloe jumped on to the car, ‘killed’ it with her sword and walked off. Or so she thought.
The V8 sprang back to life and into a smoking doughnut, with a little help from the machine belching out the pyro. The Ninja searched the cloud in vain for her prey, whilst I circled around to come at her from behind and tap her calf with the bumper. That concluded our business and we bowed out.
There were so many occasions during the sequence when I could easily have run her down that I welcomed the relief after each run.
The producers had their work cut out too. Cars had to be out of the door on time, routines memorised and logistics executed to the second. Machinery could and would always break down, and Top Gear’s technology record was notoriously ‘ambitious but crap’. They worked all hours to keep wounded vehicles operational, but if the Stig Buggy died for any reason, I was under orders to stop one of my pursuers, punch the driver and commandeer his vehicle.
My favourite variable was the sedan, an ancient Alfa Romeo 75 that split apart when I shot it. If the driver hit the gas a fraction of a second too late when I drove towards him we would have a severe T-bone. I trusted him, but I couldn’t say the same about his motor. The Alfa’s designers never imagined it would be deployed in a pitched street battle twenty years after leaving the factory.
Frenchie had become the live show’s executive producer. He even wore a pressed, collared shirt these days. He’d kept a completely straight face when he described the stunt during the concept stage.
‘Basically, the two halves of the Alfa are held together by magnets … Why are you laughing?’
‘Magnets?’ I snorted. ‘You, we, Top Gear have a car that’s held together by magnets and plan to use it in a live show? That’s hysterical.’
‘Yes. So anyway, the car is held together by magnets and we can use one of the rockets on your buggy to blow it up. You’ve got two buggies, two bikes and the ‘Swampy’ tanker, which has to die at the end. Have a word with the drivers and see what kind of sequence you can come up with …’
There were a million diverging opinions on how to turn our secondhand car lot into an action sequence. Everyone contributed. We made drawings of the best suggestions, pushed matchbox cars through the moves, then rehearsed them on foot in the arena, before driving them, slowly at first, then flat out.
Top Gear’s version of NASA, aka the Euphoria Race Team, had busied themselves preparing the magnetic Alfa and were ready to put a driver in it to do a systems check. Neil Cunningham, who’d spent much of his early life being chased by the New Zealand police around country roads, slipped on his brain bucket and warily climbed aboard our equivalent of Apollo 13. A muffled Kiwi voice came from inside: ‘How d’ya turn this thing on?’
The technicians remained unsympathetic. ‘Turn the bloody master switch, you nugget.’
‘I’ve done that.’
‘Oh.’
The launch was stood down. The Alfa went away for further development and reappeared ten minutes later.
Neil gunned the engine, which ticked over like a basket of choleric cobras. The plan was to drive it in one piece around the stage before moving on to the next stage: detachment. The Alfa accelerated away reluctantly and shed its rear section almost immediately, as the crew gave a round of mock applause.
The technicians worked their nuts off with the limited resources available, and in true MacGyver style they managed to get the magnets to hold the car together and to detach on demand about 50 per cent of the time. The rest of the time I took evasive action.
I drove flat out towards it, waiting until the last moment to fire my rocket and activate the car splitting in two. Firing at close range was essential, because it looked more realistic and it gave me a better chance of hitting Neil in the head with the flaming projectile.
The downside was that if the car didn’t fall apart, there was a very real chance of slamming into the side of it. If it split early I nearly hit the front end as it sped up; if it split late it was a case of waiting to shoot through the middle or near missing the back half. Doing a three-way ‘elk test’ time and again was counterintuitive, as common sense urged you to slow down, but I really enjoyed the challenge.
The presenters always watched the grand finale of the Stig battle, and Jeremy never tired of announcing it: ‘And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Some say that he’s terrified of ducks and that his penis has a chicane in it. And a four-mile straight. And a hairpin. All we know is, he’s called The Stig …’
The presenters watched in bemusement from behind the curtain as bikes jumped over buggies, cars fell apart and spurted oil everywhere and we slithered around to keep the sequence going.
The preparation area that supported these efforts resembled 007’s ‘Q’ branch, with pyro engineers, mechanics and stunts going off in every direction. Flame-throwers and detonators were tested in one corner; in another a milk float was being fitted with a rolling lead weight so it could do a wheelie, and the whine of a jet engine suggested that Clarkson’s bicycle was operational. Front of stage, Frenchie was getting to grips with
a new precision biker who had shaved Hammond’s balls a little too close to the follicle during one of the stunts.
Frenchie lay on the floor face up, to give the offending rider a human dummy to practise with. The biker rode towards his head, and his mount lurched clumsily into the air. I winced as it clattered down between Frenchie’s legs and the rear wheel horse-nipped the inside of his thigh. He was the boss, so this was no time for laughter. I buried my face in my hands.
Car football was such a popular feature from the TV show that we had to incorporate it into the theatre. After thirty-odd matches all the drivers were so adept at flicking the ball around that the damage inflicted to the cars was relatively minor. But occasionally we would get a tad carried away and accidentally enjoy ourselves.
Frenchie rushed down from his ivory tower after one show and pulled us all together. ‘Lads, that was a fucking bloodbath out there tonight. The guys from Suzuki have basically told me that if we break another front suspension arm in one of these games, they’ll pull the cars.’
We clasped our hands together and looked skywards like errant schoolboys. Personally, I was still glad that I’d stopped Paul Swift from scoring a goal by reversing into his front radiator at 30mph. Secretly, he was content to have repaid the favour moments later by clouting my front right wheel and breaking my steering arm so that I could only turn left.
Although that bollocking was deserved, most of the damage inflicted on us came courtesy of the presenters. They drove around talking into microphones that transmitted every moment live to the baying audience. I don’t have a problem with people that can talk on a mobile phone and drive at the same time, but car football was no time for added distractions.
There was nothing more alarming than dribbling the ball towards the goal, only to look out of the side window and see Richard Hammond bearing down for the kill. He talked a running commentary as he hit me in the side so hard that I went up on to two wheels and bounced across the floor like a hockey puck. As we came to a rest, all I could see was a mop of hair, a set of sparkling teeth and a pair of laughing tonsils. In those moments neither of us could honestly say we were working. Hammond is a very physical kind of guy and he didn’t miss a trick.
I drew a short straw for the job of rolling over in an old BMW M5 converted into an abominable wheel-clamping machine. Heavily reinforced with sheet metal, a sealed fuel tank and a completely flat side so that it could flip off a ramp and skid along on its flank, it looked like a mating of Mad Max’s interceptor with a door wedge.
I could see just enough through the scratched polymer and wire mesh windscreen to manoeuvre around the arena and harass the other cars before meeting my ‘death’. I disappeared behind the stage, peering out in search of the five foot tall launch ramp. I had to hit it in a dead straight line. The engine misfired from the hammering it had taken, so sometimes it would dribble off the end of the ramp, but at other times I could drive on two wheels for a while and then slam into the deck. Being banged in the side of the head every time it clanged into the concrete was a touch monotonous, but someone had to do it.
Eventually the engine conked out part way up the ramp. I teetered on the edge and plopped off the side next to the stage. I unbuckled my harness and fell out of the inverted seat to stand on the passenger door, which was resting on the ground. I smelt the usual whiffs of pyro and oil but no fuel leaks, so I scanned through the windscreen to make eye contact with the mechanics and give them a thumbs up. As I did so, I noticed a gigantic box of pyrotechnics with coloured wires coming out of it, less than a metre away from the windscreen. It looked nuclear and was due to go off at the end of the sequence to send a percussion wave towards the audience.
I had no radio to contact the producer, so I tried using telepathy: ‘Frenchie, please tell me you’ve disarmed the pyro—’
‘BOOOOOOMMMMM …’
The shock wave rang through my metal cage and a cymbal-clashing monkey was let loose in my brain. Ears ringing like church bells, I kicked my way out of the armoured door and leapt down on to the arena as the three presenters ambled past. I ripped my helmet off and took a deep, quivering breath.
Hammond had obviously seen the whole thing. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Was that nice?’
‘Outstanding.’
Jeremy was also in his element. He proudly announced our arrival in the former colonies with the line: ‘Britain used to be a Kingdom, ruled by a King; then it was an Empire, ruled by an Empress; and now we’re just a Country.’ He leapt around the floor as referee for the football games and narrowly missed having his feet flattened on numerous occasions. He waxed lyrical about the hotbed of supercars we had on display with undimmed enthusiasm throughout the tour. He even kept going when his voice went, and all he could do was squeak.
I spied Jeremy screaming around the arena on a jet-powered bicycle with a riotous grin on his face, run across stage to introduce another act and head behind the curtain for a short break. The Red Bull was on ice for him, so I handed him one as he lit up. He stubbed out the fag after four deep drags, wiped the sweat from his brow and went back on stage.
We were allowed right off the leash to create a pure driving spectacle. We even tried to make the commercials (which live performance allowed) unforgettable.
With the ‘Navman’ we unquestionably succeeded in that – but not necessarily in a good way. It was unique to the Sydney shows and it was horrible. It started with a man and wife driving on to the stage arguing about directions. Eight thousand confused Australian punters looked on from the packed grandstands of the Olympic stadium. Then Navman galloped to the rescue.
Or rather sidled down the aisles dressed in a tuxedo, singing, ‘You’re too good to be true-hoo. Can’t take my eyes off of you-hoo. You’d be like h-heaven to touch. I want to hold you so-ho much …’
I was sitting in a fake Ferrari ready to do a three-car drifting display and unplugged my earpieces to cop a better take on just how out of tune he really was. The presenters were sitting close by, laughing and goading Frenchie via their closed loop radio mikes.
‘French,’ bellowed Clarkson, ‘get me a Glock 9mm. I’m going to shoot this man in the back of the fucking head. On stage. Back of head. Booofff, brains over the floor. Yes, I am. Because this is absolutely the worst thing I have ever seen.’
Frenchie cackled: ‘You would not believe what I’m hearing on my cans. If the guys on stage could hear Hammond and Jeremy right now …’ Then: ‘What’s that? The singer has ears on? Well, I fucking hope he can’t hear us; if he can, the guy must be a stallion to keep going …’
Navman finished off his dodgy solo by straining for a high note and dropping an octave, then handing out free satellite navigation devices to the crowd. The now happy couple finally pissed off in the right direction to a chorus of boos. There was a scuffle in the grandstands and a section of the crowd had to be removed by security. One Australian voice echoed the mood of the audience. ‘No more facking adverts, you c***s!’
Ouch. There were still four more to go before the show started …
I got my comeuppance for laughing at Navman when I starred in a luxury yacht commercial in Hong Kong. The build-up took place on screen. A champagne-quaffing mincer with orange skin dressed like James Bond carved up the waters in a mini action movie then switched from boat to car; as he exited the main screen, I appeared in a real live Aston Martin DB9.
Dressed from head to toe in black, I slid the DB9 across the stage on full opposite lock, threw it into a 360-degree spin, stopped, climbed out, drew my replica pistol and pulled the trigger. As giant bullet holes miraculously appeared on the screen, my heroics were greeted with a disconcerting amount of laughter from a predominantly male audience and whistles from a mixed crowd. Either way, I fought to hold a straight face as Colin whispered into my earpiece: ‘Ooooh, Big Boy … Big Boy with your Big Gun … Bang, Bang, oooohhhh yeeesss …’
After five performances we hit the town like inmates on a day break from Alcatraz. And suffice it to sa
y that until you’ve heard Hammond on bass, May on keys, Jezza on the drums and Tiff Needell giving everything to his Sex Pistols impression, you haven’t lived.
Wherever we went the public viewed the presenters as their mates. The show was averaging 6–8 million viewers in the UK, with a global audience of some 500 million; the goodwill was awesome. The great thing about the live event was that it gave foreign fans an opportunity to see the show up close. In the UK, the waiting list to attend the studio was twenty years long …
It was rather reassuring that three middle-aged men cocking around with stuff could become so popular. I struggled to see them as sex symbols, but there was a unique chemistry between the presenters that was lightning in a bottle. People greeted them like rock stars. Women covered their mouths in giddy excitement and blokes sidled up to ask what the best car was. They promptly disagreed with the answer, whatever it was, hoping perhaps to engage in the kind of spirited debate they had seen so often on screen. I relished my anonymity and happily stepped aside whenever someone cut past me for a moment of their time.
It wasn’t all cakes and ale, though. In one particular bar a throng of blokes in suits and open collars, photocopier salesmen all, gathered around Hammond in a distinctly unfriendly fashion. As I made my way over to him I noticed most of them were holding mobile phones behind their backs. The screens were lit and set on video, ready to capture some celebrity happy slapping.
I’d never seen Hammond snap, but it was obvious from the look in his eye that the countdown had begun. One idiot was trying to embrace him like an old pal. I managed to intervene, slid an arm around Hammo’s waist and tried to lead him off. His body was as rigid as a Rottweiler but he did come with me, mumbling curses all the way to the exit.
Clarkson was a force of nature, but the other two were pretty regular guys who happened to be superb at presenting information to camera. Hammond’s ability to consume a script and thoughtfully regurgitate it on to the screen was uncanny, whilst James had to, if anything, dampen his encyclopaedic mechanical knowledge to a level that befitted light entertainment. Me? I was having a ball. My responsibilities had expanded into choreography and co-ordination, so no two days were ever the same.