Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth

by Bernie Fineman

  In the end it turned out brilliantly, but the amount of arguing over that one was unbelievable. You can see it in the film, but that was just a taste, there was so much arguing there wasn’t enough time in the programme to fit it all in! Dan Korn at Discovery definitely got his swearing quota on that episode. And that was without the biggest fall-out me and Leepu ever had.

  Tempers were fraying and Leepu was constantly going on at me, saying things like, ‘Your mechanical work is shit. Your mechanical work is holding me up. I don’t want your fucking engine, we’ll just push it instead.’

  Eventually I snapped and I lost my temper like I’ve never done before or since. I literally lost it, the red mist came down and I grabbed him by the throat, pinned him up against the wall and proceeded to choke the life out of him. I wanted to hurt him bad. In that moment I could’ve killed him, and he could see in my eyes that I meant it. The camera crew stopped filming and rushed over to pull me off him. It was so serious that they told me to go home immediately and report to the MD of the company the next morning, and they were genuinely worried that the series was over. After all, there was no way Leepu was going to work with me again after that and rightly so.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon and I was too ashamed to go home: Lisa would be there and I couldn’t face her, so halfway through my journey I pulled up by the side of the road and just sat there. My world had collapsed. All I could think was: ‘You fucking idiot, you’ve ruined it! They’re going to cancel the series. What will your friends and family think when you tell them what you’ve done?’

  Eventually I drove home, but I couldn’t tell Lisa what had happened, I was too ashamed. So I told her we’d been let off home early because we’d been working so hard recently and we’d got what had to be done that day anyway

  The next morning I left at my normal time, 6.30 am, so that Lisa wouldn’t suspect anything. I got in the car and drove to Sainsbury’s car park in Watford, killing time waiting for the call. Eventually they ring at me at 11.30 am. I’ve got a meeting with the production team. This is it, I think, they’re going to fire me. When I arrive Leepu’s there already with them all waiting for me. They look at me and ask what I have to say for myself.

  ‘What can I say?’ I admitted. ‘I’m deeply sorry. That wasn’t me yesterday, I’ve never lost my temper like that before and I never will again.’ I turn to Leepu, telling him, ‘I’m truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart I am truly sorry. Please forgive me.’

  Thank God, Leepu said he accepted my apology, we shook hands and it was never mentioned again, but it was never the same after that. We got on and everything but we never quite had the same bond, and to this day I regret that.

  We finished the series with no more dramas on that scale, and when it went out, by all accounts, it was even more popular than Bangla Bangers. This time it wasn’t such a surprise when Raw called to say they wanted to do another run of Chop Shop: London Garage, and again they wanted to up the ante. This time we would be making ‘cars for stars’ but we wouldn’t know who the stars were until the day before we were due to meet them.

  I thought this was a great idea and couldn’t wait to hear who the first celebrity was going to be. A couple of weeks later I get a call saying I’m to meet Martin Kemp in a bar in Bethnal Green the following afternoon. So I turn up and we chat and I ask him what sort of car he wants. He says he’s an East-End boy as I am, and he wants a proper ‘gangster car’. Well, even if he had played Reggie Kray in a film, I could tell he was no gangster, he was in Spandau Ballet for fuck’s sake!! And he had a handshake like a wet wank, but he said, ‘If your cars are as good as your chat, we’ll have a deal.’

  So we go back to the garage and discuss with the production team what we’re going to do, how we’re going to create this gangster thing on the budget we’ve got. We decide to base it on an old Saab, but all I was worried about was: we’ve got this nice 2-litre front-wheel-drive car, what the fuck is Leepu going to do with it?

  His mind is racing and he wants to do a mega design, which is fine, we can work with that, but he wants an ultra-powerful engine to go with it. Now what he wants and what’s in the budget are two different things. Again, it was just £4,000 for each build. There are very few engines that fit a Saab, we could’ve fitted the 2-litre Turbo version, but it was so rare and expensive that wasn’t possible.

  All the time the crew said just make it look as good as possible. I took the engine out, changed the seals on it, cleaned it all up, made it look beautiful, tuned it, and blinged all the hoses by using those bright blue ones. Basically did what I could to make it look good, while spending as little money as I possibly could on it.

  Then Leepu got his hands on it and, between you and me, it was a total fucking abortion. I was ashamed of that car. The way he did the back, fine, it was practical for putting dead bodies in, but it wasn’t practical on the road. Mechanically I was very proud of what we did, I got as much power out of that engine as humanly possible on no budget, but nothing fitted on the body. Every time Leepu changed something we had to reinforce the body, so we ended up with doors not fitting properly, all sorts of problems like that. It was another one of those where Leepu’s ideas went beyond the practicalities of reality.

  Then there was the problem of Martin Kemp. He rubbed us all up the wrong way when he first came down to the garage to meet the team. After shaking us all by the hand he insisted on going to wash his hands, which came across as incredibly disrespectful. Then when he spoke to us he had an air about him that I didn’t like. In my opinion it seemed like he felt as if he was talking down to us. We just did not get on.

  After a couple of weeks the production team say they want some ‘jeopardy’ in the programme, so they arrange a track day to road test the car. What we had to do was cut the top spring turret to make the car unsafe. When we turned up on the day we made sure the spring slipped as we took the car off the back of the trailer, at which point I said it wasn’t safe to drive.

  To be fair to Martin, I don’t think he knew this was going to happen, as he’d brought his son along with him for the test drive. But of course he absolutely went off on one, saying we were wasting his time and that his son could’ve been killed. Once he’d finished and stormed off we took the car back to the garage and proceeded to make another modification to make it look good for the camera and made it safe.

  But the production team still weren’t happy – they didn’t think Martin came across strong enough on camera, that he wasn’t gangster enough – so they asked if there was anything I could do. So I made a few calls and got in touch with Frankie Fraser. I explained to him that we hadn’t spoken for twenty-five years but that I used to do his cars and told him about the TV show. I said they wanted him to meet Martin Kemp. Of course, Frankie knew who he was – Martin and his brother Gary had played the Kray twins in the feature film – and referred to him as ‘that fucking plastic gangster!’

  I asked Frankie if he would mind being on the programme if we met him in the Blind Beggar for an interview and, if so, how much he would charge. He thought for a second and said, ‘Bernie, for you, buy me a couple of pints and a bit of lunch, there’s no charge.’

  The crew were over the moon, I’d got Gangster Royalty to be on the programme and in lieu of payment they gave a cheque to one of his charities. Not that it really makes up for his crimes, but Frankie was a big supporter of several charities.

  We meet up a few days later at the Blind Beggar. Although I had a lot more hair the last time I saw him, Frankie recognised me immediately and chatted as if it was only yesterday, then we take a walk around the East End. Even after all these years, and Frankie must’ve been about eighty years old at the time, people were still coming up to him in the street wanting to shake his hand and show their respect.

  He came into the garage and shook hands with all the mechanics. He was so polite and warm with everyone. What a lovely, lovely guy. And he loved the car; he took one look at Leepu’s boot and said, ‘I c
ould get four bodies in there, good work son.’

  Later he was chatting about some of the things he’d done in his past, and this was on camera. He told a story about a job to rob some tomfoolery (jewellery) when the getaway car broke down. He suddenly shot me a look. ‘You didn’t fix that one, did you Bernie?’ he asked. Fuck me, he might’ve been old and frail, but that look he gave me I’ll never forget, I totally shat myself! It was a sharp intake of breath and a large exhale out the arse. He was the sweetest guy, but it reminded me why you should never get on the wrong side of him.

  The next show featured Jools Holland. When I got that call I couldn’t have been more delighted because I was a fan. I reckon he’s the most fantastic jazz and blues pianist. We went down to his studio in Greenwich and he couldn’t have been more charming and welcoming, an absolutely wonderful bloke.

  He told us that when he was a kid his mum and dad used to take him to the Science Museum where he fell in love with the ‘Jet 1’ that’s on display there. It had always been his dream to own one, and that’s what he asked us to make. The problem was that Leepu doesn’t do copies.

  When I got back to the garage and explained what Jools wanted Leepu threw his toys out of the pram, saying, ‘I am Leepu, I am the world’s greatest designer! I do not copy other people’s work.’

  Eventually the production team took him aside and said he had to do it, it’s what Jools wants, that’s the deal, but he wasn’t happy. It was only when we took him up to the Science Museum to see it that Leepu began to come round, when he saw that he could copy it but make subtle changes (improvements, in his mind!) while staying true to the original spirit.

  My problem was that the original was based on a Rover 75 P4, a four-door cut down to two, no roof, and had a jet engine that could do 160 miles per hour. So for four grand I’ve got to make something that’s as close to that as we are able to, and I need to make every penny stretch as far as I can.

  We found an old Rover to base it on and after a few days Jools came down to have a look at what we were doing. Straight away he said it looked great, but we’d got the wrong car. We went and got a picture of the Jet 1 and, sure enough, he was right, we’d bought the wrong car! We’d bought a slightly earlier 75 and the Jet 1 was a later one, so around the headlights it was totally different.

  So off we go again to find another car and dig deeper into our budget. When we find it the first thing Leepu wants to do is take the roof off, but he had been warned that if you take the roof off a four-door car it loses all its strength and bends in the middle. But with his mantra, ‘I am Leepu!’ off he goes and does it anyway, and sure enough it bends in the centre, so we had to strengthen the entire car, meaning more work and more delays.

  The original engine was like a hairdryer, it wouldn’t blow the skin off a fucking rice pudding, and somehow I’ve got to turn this into a supercar. I’m racking my brains trying to think of what British-made engine could give us that sort of power without being too expensive.

  Then in the middle of the night, the time when all the best ideas come to you, I got it. I went in the next day and told the production team I needed an old Daimler, 6-cylinder, 4.2 litre engine. So that’s what we went out and found an old Daimler – that’s basically a Jag with a bit of trim. I took out the engine, gearbox and back end, all the wiring loom, suspension and front beam, threw the body away and transplanted what was left into a chassis that was fifty years older.

  You can imagine the amount of engineering required to make it all fit. I stripped and built the engine, changed all the carburation to Webber carburettors, up-ratioed the gearbox, remade all the wiring loom, exhaust and everything. Then we go to put the body back on the chassis.

  And it don’t fit!

  We’re about two inches out, so we do a bit more cutting and chopping and eventually it fits. We put everything together, started her up, and it turned over like a dream and looked the spitting image of the Jet 1, with just a slight modification on the wing.

  Next we have to road test it. We’d taken Jools to meet the original designer and he told us it wouldn’t work, it would be totally unstable. Our car was only tack-welded, which means that instead of continuous welding along the joints it was done about every inch. We took it up to Bovingdon Airfield and drove it at 148 miles an hour! It had no windscreen and so muggins here had to put on his Biggles flying goggles and drive this thing at twice the national speed limit, knowing that it was only tack-welded together – and I only had a lap belt on! Thankfully it was completely stable, so much so I could take my hands off the steering wheel. It went like shit off a shovel.

  The Angry Frog is one I’m very proud of, but Jet 1 is the one I am absolutely over the moon with. It was one of my proudest moments as a mechanic. I think we almost doubled the budget on that car but it was worth it for the result. We went to the Albert Hall where Jools was performing that evening to hand over the keys and you could’ve literally knocked him down with a feather. We’d sourced dials and gauges from an old Spitfire to use in the dashboard, sprayed it racing green and done all the interior out in red leather. It looked stunning and you could see there was a tear in Jools’ eye: we’d realised his dream.

  The other stars we made cars for in the series were England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio, French footballer David Ginola and comedian Johnny Vegas. I just have to mention Johnny because I don’t think I’ve met anyone who made me laugh as much as that guy. He was exactly as you see him on TV: always laughing, always joking, drunk as a bloody skunk, but he had us in hysterics the whole time.

  Once we’d finished the series, that seemed to be it; the Chop Shop closed its doors for the final time. I think we’d achieved all we could and also, with that final series, the celebrities were very well known in this country but I’m not sure how many people in Finland or Turkey cared whether Martin Kemp got the car of his dreams or not, so perhaps it didn’t rate as well as the others. But man – what an experience. Two years of my life that I will never forget, and I couldn’t have done it without that mad, fat Bangladeshi bastard Leepu.

  Off set, away from work, Leepu was a really dedicated family man and a great laugh, he would always have me in stitches. But above all else he’s a metal freak. He is never happier than when he is working with metal, shaping it or crafting it in some way. Where my wife is a Shopaholic, Leepu is a Chopaholic. However, he likes to cut corners in every sense. He was always so eager to get things done, it could never be done quick enough for him. The problem was – though it made great TV – Leepu would always be so focused on what he wanted to do, he never took advice or considered the consequences of his actions. He’s not a mechanic, he’s a designer, so all he was concerned about was what a car looked like and how he would achieve it.

  When he got a project, he would go into this strange meditation mode, sometimes helped along by four or five large whiskies, and the design would slowly form in his mind. Once it had, he would be like a Whirling Dervish; he’d be like, ‘Right, I want to chop the body.’

  Trouble is, you can’t just chop a car because you’ve got all the flammables in it – you’ve got the battery containing sulphuric acid, you’ve got oils in the engine, and fuel pipes. So before he starts chopping it, what we had to do was prepare the car properly.

  Sometimes he’d come in very early in the morning without telling anyone. He was so eager to get going, that he’d start chopping without draining any of the flammables. I mean, that’s just suicidal – he could go up in a fireball, or blow himself to pieces! Once he got the design in his head he would never waver. Nothing to do with the safety of the car or anything else mattered to him, it was just the lines that he cared about. He would never use rulers, all the sketching was freehand on paper and then he just cut the metal with an angle grinder. In his own mad way he was a genius. The only problem was that he drove everyone else mad too.

  He wants to be the world’s greatest designer and to him everyone else was just there to interfere with what he was doing. And
yes, at times I was interfering, because the car needed to be safe, but Leepu didn’t see it that way. As far as he is concerned, if it looks right it is right.

  The thing is, in the West, we are weighed down by health and safety – as a mechanic my first priority is the safety of the vehicle – but where Leepu comes from, health and safety is the least of people’s worries. Life there is often short anyway; no one has any money, so they can’t afford to be safety-conscious. They just need a car that gets them about, any which way they can do it. Any time you modify or change a car over here you have to pass a thing called the SVA, the Single Vehicle Approval, whereas over in Bangladesh you can start off with a bus and end up with a tricycle. No one cares as long as it goes. All I would ever get from him is, ‘This is bullshit! I am Leepu, I am the world’s greatest designer, this is what we must do.’

  I suppose in a way we were two sides of the same coin. While I didn’t always agree with Leepu’s methods, I saw in him the same focus, dedication and unwavering determination to get the job done that I hope others see in me. For that reason there was a very deep respect between us, so despite the arguments, we saw how the other’s work improved upon what we had done and that, in the end, is what made us a great team.

  Nowadays we still email occasionally, but the longer we go without seeing each other the more I realise we are from different worlds. He’s now in America, so he’s living a very different life. I knew the TV stuff wasn’t going to last so I went back to my day job as soon as it was done.

  When I found out I was going to be doing another TV series, Classic Car Rescue, I emailed him to tell him my good news, but never heard back and that really hurt me.

  This hurt me because we used to be such friends. When he was in London and he brought his family over to an unfamiliar country, his wife and my Lisa would go out together, we looked after them. But I can’t say we are close now. Last I saw was a picture of him on Facebook working from what looked like a garage at the back of a house. I don’t know if life has been good to him or not recently.