by Ben Collins
‘Rolling.’
Steve shouted, ‘Stand by. Action.’
The engines began to rumble. A 12-tonne Fullers beer truck driven by Milesy charged into view and ‘commuters’ dived out of its way. There was no way the truck could stop in time for the traffic lights and a postal van was already turning across the intersection.
The clash of metal and glass made the ground shake; it was the kind of shunt people didn’t walk away from.
The truck hit the van so hard amidships that they momentarily became one. It then slid into the traffic island, flattened a bollard and creased the light gantry. The driver pulled the steering hard left. There was no room for manoeuvre in the ‘traffic’ but it didn’t stop him. Milesy knew that five cameras were recording his every move and this was a one-take wonder. He ploughed through a Vauxhall Vectra as it backed away and tore down Prince’s Street towards Threadneedle, grazing the Georgian brickwork of some Spanish bank.
‘CUT. Reset!’
I craned my head around the street corner and watched the show. I was ten years old again. Our immediate concern was for second-generation stunt veteran Franky Henson, the driver of the postal van. Franky climbed out grinning like a space cadet but otherwise unscathed. The first a.d. went into overtime clearing the area. Within three minutes the only sign of the crash was the broken traffic light, which wasn’t in the script.
We moved on to St Paul’s Cathedral, an unlikely location for a street chase and a showcase in precision driving. Fifty ‘stunt priests’ were roped into the act, which involved handbrake-turning the Mercedes on to the cobbled entrance, then sliding it through the bustling crowd of Bible bashers.
Mr Cage made his way over to the pod and eyed me warily as we were introduced. I tried to act like it was an everyday occurrence to sit on the roof of a car and race through a bunch of monks. He was much slimmer than I expected, delicate even, which explained why my tan suit had pinched my gusset somewhat. The actors climbed aboard, along with the movie’s director. It seemed their fate rested in my hands.
The priests packed together into an area the size of a living room. Steve actioned me through my radio earpiece, and I accelerated the pod into the cobbled square. The priests were thronging around the car, waving their umbrellas and shaking their fists at me in protest. Some of the furious faces were so convincing that on the third take I thought I’d run someone down and abandoned the shot to stop and check. The next take Cage started improvising and I heard him yelling ‘Stop, Stop,’ so I did. The director shouted, ‘They’re just acting; keep going!’
The pod was scheduled to work all the way through the chase, but in the end it only came out a few times. There was a scene where Cage was being shot at by the baddies in the Range Rover. The Merc drifted through a right-hander to get away and slammed sideways into a double-decker bus. As it straightened out, it got rammed from behind by the Rangie.
Rob had perfected the transition slide on the airfield before doing it for real in front of Nelson’s Column and it was on the nail. Then it was my turn to do it with the actors on board the pod. I sat on a throne of a zillion battery boxes with $2 million worth of cameras rigged to the right and front of the Merc beneath me. I didn’t care about the kit, but I was a little apprehensive.
‘We just want a tap,’ came my instruction, ‘to give the actors a feel for what’s going on. Nothing heavy, but it’s got to look real. There’s money in that car, so don’t screw this up!’
No pressure then.
I lined up on a side street at a right angle to the bus’s line of travel. The pod was a pig to turn sharply. As I ran through the ‘what ifs’ in my head, the director turned helpfully to Cage. ‘It’s OK, the driver really knows what he’s doing.’
The stunties were rubbing their hands together; everyone’s ass was on the line.
‘ACTION …’
We set off towards the T-junction and the double-decker barrelled straight at us. It got very big very fast. Every instinct screamed to brake and avoid it. I pitched into the corner and aimed just behind the front wheels. There was a little knock as we hit it and the sound of panels crumpling before I downshifted and accelerated away. I pulled up near the director to confirm everyone was OK and kept my job a little longer.
Some of the most intense scenes were filmed at Southwark Bridge, with little or no margin for error. Cage holds a precious artefact out of the window before throwing it into the Thames in an effort to distract the villains. Duly distracted, the Range Rover skids to a halt, followed by the pursuing beer truck. Rowley moistened his lips uneasily as the rescue divers climbed into their inflatable boats, in case he overcooked his mark. Sure enough, the bridge never looked so narrow as when his truck, laden with phoney beer barrels, handbrake-turned and skidded across four lanes of carriageway to stop with just a couple of feet to spare.
Capturing the essence of speed was essential for a film featuring cars powering through London at 100mph. To keep up with the pace we needed a camera car with serious grunt. The Volkswagen Touareg with its 5-litre V10 Twin Turbo motor manned up to the task and I drew the long straw to drive it.
Gunshots rained down on the fleeing Mercedes and some stray rounds struck the beer truck, so the beer barrels started exploding. The pursuit ran through a police blockade and all hell broke loose. The cars weaved through four lanes of oncoming traffic, a taxi toppled on to its roof and sixty beer barrels rocketed up into the air as the stuntmen exchanged fire.
My view of the action through the Touareg’s windscreen was partly obscured by a ten-foot-tall steel frame extending from the bumper for elevating the camera. Its operator sat behind me whilst the second unit director viewed the action through his monitor. The camera itself was very much in harm’s way. Even though the beer barrels were made of rubber rather than steel, they were spinning towards us at 60mph.
With fake beer spurting high into the air and cars smashing into each other a few metres away, I did my best to steer a course through the beer barrel asteroid field. After five takes one of the barrels bounced curiously from the tarmac and smacked the camera head on. The director loved it, so the shot ended up in the final cut.
Thirty cars were destroyed in the course of the production, including eight police cars in a roadblock that turned into a demolition orgy.
The film was a box-office hit and my broken bones benefited from the ‘time off’, but the secrecy of my other life, my Top Gear life, was gradually being eroded. I did an interview with my local paper about the London car chase and the first question was, ‘Are you The Stig?’
The rest of the interview centred on the movie, but not one word of that made it into the three-page feature they published, which was entirely about me being the man in the white suit. Thankfully the story didn’t go national, that time.
There were other own goals. I’d sometimes arrive on jobs in person to discover that the people I was meeting were expecting The Stig. The all-seeing eye of the Internet and ‘free press’ collated rumours and every scrap of information they could get hold of, adding fuel to the flames.
I relied on the fact that there was no evidence that I had ever worked for Top Gear, and the white helmet was my shield. Then, one day, I was walking across London in character to promote Top Gear magazine when a piercing camera flash went off ahead of me. It defeated the dark visor and snapped a clear image of part of my face.
Georgie joked that it looked like Damon Hill …
Chapter 29
Pedal on the Right
There was an unwritten rule for The Stig that I strived continuously to overturn. He was never allowed to compete in a race in the ‘real world’; his air of invincibility could never be put at risk. The frustration for me was that The Stig could have landed the kind of plum racing drives that Ben Collins had always dreamed of – and my bid to have him compete in NASCAR and Le Mans fell on deaf ears.
Then, in 2007, the rules were bent.
‘We’re doing the twenty-four-hour Britcar race with
you and the presenters. We need you to go to Silverstone and train them.’
My only issue was that the race coincided with the date Georgie was due to give birth. I suggested staying at home but, bless her, Georgie said she would rather watch paint dry than have me hovering at home with an egg timer. I kept my phone with someone I trusted whenever I was on track, in case I had to do a runner.
Britcar was an amateur-friendly format hosting a mishmash of different GT racing categories. The bottom category was more or less for road cars. Top Gear got themselves a diesel 3 Series BMW. It was sporty enough – perhaps – to raise the pulse of a Tibetan monk, but on a Grand Prix circuit it was a pretty tame ride. Nonetheless, we were going racing.
First order of business was to get the boys their race licences. I called Jeremy ahead of the first session and he seemed to be taking it seriously.
‘You’d better give me some proper lessons, because Silverstone is a circuit which has permanently mystified me. I did millions of laps there once and never had a clue what I was doing.’
Buoyed by his sincerity, I looked forward to the training session. After all, I knew Silverstone backwards.
I met Jeremy outside the pits and he was exuding confidence.
We climbed into a hired Lexus. Jezza coiled himself into the passenger seat with the top of his helmet jammed into the ceiling. The seat motor strained as it wound him rearwards for several minutes.
As I explained the basics of steering position and trail braking he started twitching and nodding his head as though the world might end if I didn’t shut up and drive. He was staring longingly at the pit lane exit. I rolled my eyes and drove off.
I hauled the Lexus in and out of the fast sweepers and casually explained why, when and how the car would understeer or oversteer moments before it did, so that he could anticipate and feel the dynamics. This held his attention for, oh, almost a lap. Then he started talking.
‘You turn in far too early there,’ into the tight left at Brooklands. ‘Why are you steering so much into that corner?’ at super fast Copse. ‘I don’t use that line there,’ through the quick left right at Becketts. Like an Olympic fencer he timed his quips exquisitely to parry my every instruction, preventing me from actually teaching him anything. Jeremy loved being told what to do the way cats love swimming.
I headed back to the pits and put Mr Smarty Pants in the driver’s seat.
Whirrrrrrrrrr, went the chair.
We had our first argument before leaving the pit.
‘Slow down for that hidden entrance in case a car comes out.’
He wobbled his noggin at me. ‘I think you’ll find I can make it out of the pits.’
Cantankerous old bugger. I tried not to smile but I couldn’t help it. Jeremy was one of those rare people that never came unstuck, even when he was out of his depth. He had the luck of the devil.
Off we went, Clarkson style. He didn’t hang around, but this was no pro. We moved from one corner to the next without sparing the horses. Jezza adopted a stiff upper lip and a straight arm as he pointed the car into Stowe corner, too early for my liking. Then we disagreed on the line for Vale.
‘See, you slid wide because you turned in early.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. OK,’ I pointed through the long fast right in case we ran wide into the gravel trap, ‘watch it on the power here and let it run out gradually.’
‘Yes, yes, yes …’
‘Bridge Corner will be flat once you’re comfortable. The trick is to make it back to the right side before you turn left, so slow down a bit.’
He disobeyed, stayed left and we ran some gravel on the way out. ‘Hmm, tyres aren’t up to temperature …’, he muttered, mistaking our road car for a McLaren.
I was determined to teach him a safe route if nothing else, and not to repeat his legendary North Pole experience. A former sergeant from the SBS gave Jeremy a lesson on dispatching polar bears with a shotgun. He’d kicked down more doors with that particular weapon than Jezza had eaten hot breakfasts. But that didn’t stop Jeremy telling the sergeant he was wrong, and taking over the lesson. They pushed Jeremy into a frozen lake later that week, but I’m sure there was no connection.
Jeremy took his late line into Brooklands.
‘You won’t even make the corner like that when you brake later.’
‘Mmmm …’ Deep concentration.
In his own way, Jeremy was doing well. All his experience of playing on circuits and airfields was paying dividends, until a sudden change of direction at Maggots sent us sideways. Instructor mode kicked in and I grabbed the steering off him, reduced our rate of turn and made horse-whispering sounds.
‘Pah,’ Clarkson spat, shrugging off my help. ‘This is what we do.’
Maybe I was being a sissy. The car rudely snapped one way then the other, but he kept a grip of it and made the next corner with some determined car control. I cried with laughter at his obstinacy, mostly because I saw through it. Deep down, Jeremy was a sensitive soul. Really.
I force-fed him some instruction he did his best to ignore. He started braking very late for Stowe at 100mph and I needed his full attention following a disagreement on the straight. I wagged a finger at him. ‘Stop talking, stop talking, get ready, BRAKE, and … off and turn.’ Jeremy dragged the Lexus through by the bit.
He reluctantly tried my early line at Brooklands. ‘You might be right about that one …’ Bloody hell, progress.
I dropped Jeremy at the racing school, into the hands of the very instructors who first taught me over a decade earlier. Nothing had changed: the same short-sleeve sun-tans, Ray Bans and one-liners.
‘What’s he like?’ asked Steve Warburton, twice the size of when I first met him, but no slower.
‘Difficult.’
‘Oh, we like those. Makes the smell of fear so much sweeter.’
James May joined us, dressed in a brown leather Belstaff jacket. Flight Lieutenant May did indeed look like the right stuff, rosy-cheeked and ready for action. ‘Morning, Squadron Leader, May reporting for duty.’
‘These guys will show you the ropes, Jimbo. Don’t be shy of pushing it so you can figure out the braking points around here.’
‘Steely-eyed speed warriors, aye. Right-oh, let the learning commence.’
I left them all standing outside the classroom puffing away at their cigarettes. Once they passed their race licences we could go and try out the BMW.
Hammond was busy filming elsewhere. The first time he would drive the track or car would be during qualifying.
Come the race weekend, maintaining my anonymity became tricky. I had to sign on officially for the race and my pseudonym didn’t cut the mustard. The organisers needed to know who was behind the helmet, and that he held a racing licence. I signed on to a separate driver sheet and made sure that I never appeared in person again for the rest of the weekend.
Jeremy had been practising in the BMW for a day before the other two turned up for the race. I stood in front of a large map of the circuit ready to explain gears, speeds and racing lines, but obviously couldn’t have managed without Jeremy’s help.
He soon lumbered towards me. ‘Right, I turn in here at Copse in third gear, but I think it could be fourth …’ and so on.
We’d be racing alongside GT2 spec machines capable of 200mph to our 120. My main concern was that if the presenters spun in front of a field of mixed-ability drivers, they could be hurt. I pinpointed the key areas on the track where they should expect faster traffic and explained where to overtake and where the loonies would try to out-brake them. Just crossing the straights in order to line up for the next corner was a major undertaking in a crowded race and it was easy to get turned around.
I turned my attention to our wheels. BBC guidelines prohibited us from having official sponsors, so we made some up. Larsen’s Biscuits and Peniston Oils logos were emblazoned across the side of the car. Coincidentally, when the door opened during driver changes, they shorten
ed to ‘Arse’ and ‘Penis’.
Euphoria Racing had prepared the car, led by engineer Steve Howard. Steve was forever coated in stubble, engine oil and fag ash, and kept his butt crack on display at all times. He and his crew, whom we nicknamed NASA, were absolutely tireless.
Steve swept away his scraggly blond hair and offered me a seat aboard his baby. The racing seat was protected by a tube roll cage, and was bolted into the bare metal floor. All semblance of road car finery was in the skip, bar the stereo.
It was clearly The Stig’s responsibility to post the fastest time in qualifying to position us as high up the sixty-strong grid as possible. We put the presenters out first to ensure they completed their minimum requirement of three laps. James forgot how many laps he’d done and had to make a second run, leaving me to carry the can at the end of the session.
I hopped in and got straight on it. The BMW was a wobbly old crate and the front end was numb as a brick, but she was excellent on the brakes. The constant understeer made her a safe school pony for the presenters, but without any grunt to balance it I found the experience over-bridled.
The track was packed with cars and I lost heaps of time driving around them. There was no time to find clear position, so my fastest lap put us one place from last. Worse still – piss-boilingly, catastrophically bad – was that my time was only one tenth faster than Clarkson’s.
I never saw Jeremy so happy to see me. Giddy as a schoolboy, with his overalls around his waist like a pro, he declared we were evenly matched. As his driver coach it was my duty to point out that the BMW could lap several seconds faster, that I’d simply caught terrible traffic.
‘So did I. Caught traffic at Priory on my best lap,’ he countered gleefully.
Behind the safety of my visor, I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘OK,’ I laughed. ‘Let’s see how we get on tonight.’
Night practice was another formal requirement for all drivers wishing to participate in a twenty-four-hour event. When the sun went down on the course, you lost all familiar visual references. No trees, no grass banks, no spectators, no sky. No track either; only the narrow yellow window twenty metres ahead provided by a set of notoriously unreliable headlights. One smash over a kerb, a bump with another racer or a flying stone could easily put an eye out, and then you played a high-speed memory game. Stir in a bunch of amateur drivers with a gutful of fear, sprinkle with gravel in the braking areas from their regular mishaps and add salt and lemon to your eyeballs for the perfect recipe du nuit.