by Martin Roach
In January 2009 some newspapers had legitimately obtained company documents from Ben Collins’ business files at Companies House, which showed he had provided ‘driving services’ to the BBC and some cited this as evidence of his Stiginess. The timing of this original invoicing documentation – just a month after the first sighting of the white Stig on the show – was further evidence, it was claimed. The Telegraph claimed he was said to earn between £5,000 and £10,000 per show. However, the BBC freely admitted that Ben Collins often supplied himself as well as other drivers for both the programme and Top Gear Live shows. The Daily Mail later mentioned him in an interview with James May in the summer of 2009, but he laughed it off, saying it was in fact himself.
When news of the failed injunction bid broke, the BBC issued the following press statement: ‘The Top Gear audience has always made it clear that they enjoy the mystery surrounding the identity of The Stig and the BBC felt it important to do all it could to protect that anonymity. The BBC brought this action as we believe it is vital to protect the character of The Stig which ultimately belongs to the licence fee payer.’ It was in direct contrast to HarperCollins, who also highlighted the same funding issue by saying it was ‘disappointed that the BBC has chosen to spend licence fee payers’ money to suppress this book.’
While I respect HarperCollins’ decision to publish his memoir as a choice he has made, as a fan of Top Gear, I have to admit to being slightly saddened that I now know the identity of The Stig. I’d heard so much about him over the many series that I actually started to believe that he was indeed made of metal, his heart ticked like a clock, that he was terrified of ducks and Lorraine Kelly has a restraining order out against him. Standing back from the furore for a moment, it’s a striking indication of the success of Top Gear and The Stig’s character that a side-part in a BBC2 show about cars could become headline news in every household across Britain.
For their part, in the aftermath of losing the application for a court injunction, the Top Gear presenters reacted with a mix of dismissive comedy and outright anger. Shortly after the news broke, James May appeared on Richard Bacon’s Radio 5 Live show and was inevitably asked about the court case. He appeared to stumble and stutter before he finally revealed that he had in fact been The Stig from 2005 to only four weeks ago, before lambasting HarperCollins’ book as therefore containing about four weeks of material alone: ‘Obviously I’m now going to have to take some legal action of my own because I have been The Stig for the past seven years and I don’t know who this bloke is, who’s mincing around in the High Court, pretending it’s him.’
The publishers’ victory was not met with any humour by Jeremy Clarkson, however: quoting his words in a later Sun newspaper column, he said public school had taught him that, ‘you never rat’ – an attitude to life that his close friends say makes him an immensely loyal friend.
A reflection of the sheer size of The Stig scandal can be ascertained by the way in which Jeremy reacted and the subsequent series of events thereafter. As a famous local resident, he was attending a charity auction in Chipping Norton lido shortly after the court case, where he gave an interview to the west Oxfordshire local community station, Witney TV. A regular viewer, Clarkson was happy to talk to them about the recent legal wrangle. In the resulting video, he lambasts Ben Collins for being greedy, saying, ‘You may remember a film called Wall Street, in which Gordon Gekko said greed was good and greed works. It doesn’t: if you’re watching this children, greed is bad, he’s just decided he’d rather be … put it this way, he’s history as far as we’re concerned!’ He went on to say that the programme has ‘thousands of people queuing up to be whatever it is we create. I’ve spent the last three weeks doing nothing but trying to work out what to do instead.’ He went on to insist: ‘We’ll get somebody, don’t you worry! Top Gear is damaged, but not out.’
The direct interview was quickly picked up by a media anxious to get the scoop on Clarkson’s views on The Stig case and via the internet and word-of-mouth on fan sites, the piece went global in a matter of hours. Within a day, news sites as far afield as Australia were reporting on Witney TV’s scoop. According to one source, Witney TV is, ‘pulled together on Apple Macs, without a wealthy backer’; their news is released via a website, on YouTube, as downloads, and is also available on iPhones.
The original impetus for the station was that in their opinion the mainstream multi-billion pound news corporations do not offer local coverage of any quality (and frequently not at all, as in the case for the Abingdon area where Witney operates) and so the grass-roots model was designed to meet niche demand. Their usual stories are upbeat, with a strategic decision made to cover only ‘positive’ news, so horrific disasters are never featured. The formula proved highly attractive and with over 100,000 hits, the station was now paving the way for alternative news, not least with the global Stig scoop, the biggest entertainment story of the week.
Ben Collins’ book reveals many fascinating insights into his life as The Stig. He never parked in the same place twice, he didn’t talk about his role to anyone other than the small inner circle who already knew his identity, he always left any identifying documents, phones or credit cars, etc. locked in his car in case someone invaded his dressing room, he wore a balaclava on his face when driving home from the Top Gear test track (often as far away as eight miles, in case prying paparazzi lenses were following him) and he would never, ever appear in his white suit without the helmet on.
However, the subterfuge became increasingly difficult to keep up and Collins later revealed that he would often chat to people he’d met when dressed as The Stig but forget that he was not supposed to have met them before. He revealed that Mark Webber knew he was The Stig because of the way he stands, having raced against him many times in Formula 3. Also, Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Theo Paphitis walked past him in his civvies and said, ‘Hello, Stig’, something that still baffles him. How did he know?
Jeremy Clarkson placed an ‘advertisement’ for a new Stig via an article in the Sun, which included such requirements for the successful candidate as ‘hating Boy Scouts, being able to punch a horse to the ground and having eyes that blink sideways.’
So, how exactly had The Stig been unmasked as early as Series 4 then? For years, there had been rumours about his true identity but a long time before he was finally revealed, Ben Collins actually made an appearance, both in a challenge and subsequently in the Top Gear studio without any helmet or form of disguise. This came in Series 4, when the team wanted to attempt a tricky and dangerous stunt: getting a parachutist to land from a plane and into the back of a convertible, speeding at 50mph.
The feature is set at the Top Gear track and we are first introduced to Tim, a parachutist expert. Then the camera pans to his side and we are told this is Ben, ‘his racing driver mate’. It was in fact The Stig, unbeknown to everyone watching at the time.
Once the stunt began, it became obvious why Ben needed to wear no helmet. Time after time, the parachutist descended from the skies and attempted to land in the back of the Mercedes soft-top. Meanwhile, Ben was driving along at 50mph, with a microphone and headpiece so that he could be in constant contact with the parachutist. Furthermore, he was always looking up to the skies to see exactly where the human bird was. Of course, neither task could have been achieved wearing a full-face helmet.
The stunt proved to be extremely difficult and it was only after many attempts and with the light fading and the wind picking up that they finally managed to land in the passenger seat. Cue James May skipping across the runway and Ben Collins – aka The Stig – doing doughnuts on the track. We even hear The Stig/Ben talk, as he said ‘Good effort, my son, well done!’ to his parachutist ‘friend’. The feature then flicks to the studio, where both Tim and Ben (again, with no helmet on) are introduced to an admiring crowd. The Stig was among them and they didn’t even know it. Collins was also visible in Series 10, driving a Honda Civic Type R against Clarkson, and raced alongsid
e various British Touring Car drivers in a five-a-side car/football sequence.
Perhaps not entirely surprisingly, Ben Collins no longer works for Top Gear and has instead signed up for the rival show, Fifth Gear. On his first episode of that show, Vicki Butler-Henderson introduced him as, ‘A world famous driver who’s recently found himself out of a job and his name rhymes with The Twig.’ Ben was then seen on camera, unmasked and says, ‘Yes, I can speak and it’s a massive pleasure to do so. I’ve spent too long trapped inside a stormtrooper’s outfit for my liking.’
Whatever the aftermath of the court case (still pending at the time of this book’s publication), the fact remains that everyone now knows the identity of The Stig. Indeed, it’s a shame because it wasn’t just the BBC who enjoyed all the pretence: the media and the viewers did so, too.
With the extensive powers of modern-day investigative journalism, which exposes corrupt politicians and drug-runners every week, it’s highly likely that Fleet Street might have discovered the true identity of The Stig, had they wanted to. In fact, it has been suggested that many journalists already knew him, but chose to keep quiet. Like a TV motoring show version of Santa Claus, the real fun was to be had joining in the ruse.
CHAPTER 21
Nothing Changes, Nothing Stays the Same
As the first edition of this book was going to press, the court case between Ben Collins and Top Gear was quite literally still being decided and daily TV headlines and newspaper front pages chronicled the story being played out. Since that time, however, the high profile of the whole controversy feels rather odd. After the headlines subsided, Collins moved on to work for Fifth Gear on a single series and later, among other things, as a stunt driver for the new James Bond film Skyfall (2012). His former colleagues at Top Gear had long since moved on, too. In fact, the manner in which the Top Gear team dealt with the whole Stig/book controversy enabled them to effectively nullify any negative impact Collins’ unmasking might otherwise have had.
At first, some media spectators questioned how Top Gear would cope – if at all – without the bête noir of The Stig, who as we have seen had become such an integral part of the show’s massive global appeal. Initially, James May did his best to continue his ruse of claiming to be The Stig and regularly repeated this deliberate misinformation in his column for the Daily Telegraph. He also ‘revealed’ that when he finally decided to stand down from the role, his replacement would be none other than another Mr Collins, albeit the Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins.
There were dozens of different internet rumours about The Stig being written out of the show altogether but the BBC steadfastly maintained that no decision had been made as to The Stig’s survival. One fact was clear: the public’s thirst for the character remained strong. Back in 2008, one online poll claimed the search entry ‘Who is The Stig?’ was the most frequently asked question on the entire web. In the immediate aftermath of the Collins’ court case, there seemed to be no real dilution of this interest; although that incarnation of The Stig had been exposed, the character still seemed to hold an affectionate place in the nation’s hearts. Another online poll by the Guardian found that 64 per cent of respondents to the question ‘Do we need a Stig?’ replied in the affirmative. More practical speculation began to wonder who would play the new Stig if his character was continued, with highly qualified names such as F1 drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Anthony Davidson being early favourites. Meanwhile, the BBC entered the fray in refusing to rule out a female replacement.
Then ahead of the forthcoming Top Gear Live tour and with a canny sense of fun, clips were posted on the show’s official website showing footage of a ‘Stig farm’ somewhere in the remote English countryside, including several multi-coloured Stigs. The Stig farm was apparently free range and GM-free and located in a secret (what else?) rural part of Britain near the B4073 (for the record, that runs through Painswick, near Gloucester). The suggestion was that Top Gear was simply going to grow a new Stig.
Previously, Clarkson had been particularly scathing of Collins and when he opened one of the Top Gear Live shows that autumn, he wasn’t about to let go. Pointing out that some observers saw ‘Stig-gate’ as the end of Top Gear, he insisted, ‘Not so, barely a blip’, before showing a longer video of the Stig farm. Set to funky music, a rainbow of Stigs was seen wandering aimlessly about a mucky farm, at one point herded by a farmer in wellies. The comic video was all good fun but in fact cleverly diluted the impact of the loss of ‘white’ Stig by showing so many new multi-coloured Stigs, which also served to remind the viewers that this mysterious racing driver was in reality a fictitious character. There was one more dig, too when Clarkson said, ‘Some Stigs decide to write books, but that’s never a good idea.’ After the video of the Stig farm had ended, Clarkson introduced the ‘new Stig’ to a rapturous crowd as a Ferrari 430 Spider skidded into the arena, driven by a conventional white Stig, identical to the one portrayed by Collins.
Top Gear never shied away from mentioning the controversy on the show itself either. In the ‘US Road Trip’ Special, December 2010, the trio branded The Stig a ‘Judas Iscariot’ and then proceeded to test out firearms against a dummy of the white-suited ‘traitor’ driver. Notably, in that episode, film director Danny Boyle became the only person not to be trained by The Stig for his lap, instead being coached by ‘Emergency Stig’, namely former racing driver Tiff Needell. The show must go on …
While the world was clearly enjoying the rumours of the ‘new’ Stig (and seemingly still unperturbed that his successor’s identity had been revealed), the very first Stig also revealed a surprising side. In a 2011 interview that was widely quoted by dozens of fascinated national publications and regional magazines, the original ‘black’ Stig, Perry McCarthy, stated what anyone inside of motor-racing knows is true: that despite the best efforts of Top Gear to vilify the humble caravan, those ridiculed vehicles are in fact an essential tool for many an aspiring race driver. ‘Caravanning played an important part when I was racing,’ he was quoted as saying in the Shropshire Star. ‘Actually I used motorhomes … the advantages of being on-site, at the edge of the race track are immeasurable.’ He also pointed out that all the top drivers use motorhomes. It’s a bit of a jump from the million pound motorhomes populating the F1 paddock to a lowly caravan, but McCarthy went further and revealed that in fact he was actually a card-carrying member of The Caravan Club – ‘Answer this truthfully, can you really get excited about a holiday which starts at either Gatwick or Luton Airport? There’s also a kind of pioneering spirit to it, too, and I like that.’ He went on to champion the ‘luxuries’ offered by modern caravans as against the anodyne anonymity of a hotel chain. McCarthy also told reporters that he could now look back and be proud of his time on the show: ‘I was part of the biggest motoring show on the planet and it was great fun to do.’ Clearly very happy with his role, he also quipped, ‘As Sinatra sang, “Regrets, I have too few to mention,” and none of them are becoming a racing driver or being The Stig.’
* * *
Fairly quickly after the court case, it became apparent that Top Gear was going to emerge from the Stig controversy with barely a scratch. Another clever piece of the Stig ‘revival’ came in the hilarious Christmas Special, which saw the trio replicating the journey of the Three Wise Men by driving from northern Iraq to Bethlehem – hardly the safest route to select. They made their trip even more dangerous by buying cheap, old convertibles for the journey, including a Mazda MX-5. In fact, the actual route taken by the Three Kings was simply too dangerous in the modern day, and so the intrepid trio had to opt for a more long-winded path but nonetheless one that was still filled with genuine danger. While they disguised one car as a Bedouin tent, tested out how to bullet-proof car doors and fitted Hammond’s Mazda with a stereo that constantly played Genesis and couldn’t be switched off, James May was in for a rougher ride when he fell backwards onto a rock and knocked himself unconscious, suffering a rather nasty and bloody gash to his head. W
hen the ‘Three Wise Men’ finally arrived at the ‘Nativity’ scene in Bethlehem, they clustered round the newborn son of the Lord only to find out that he was in fact a suited, helmet-wearing Stig baby. ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ said James May somewhat obviously (at least they had some decent gifts: a fake gold medallion, a bottle of hotel shampoo called Frankincense and a Nintendo DSi).
The first episode of Series 16 continued to confront the Stig issue head-on when James explained that Stigs grow very quickly, revealing the baby Jesus Stig was now fully formed and ready to drive any car they sat him in. So, within three months of the Stig controversy supposedly threatening to make Top Gear implode, the show was up and running as usual and all the fuss seemed a relic from the distant past. This was helped by the fact that out on the Top Gear track, the new Stig seemed to set very similar times to what the presenters took to calling ‘sacked Stig’.
And in keeping with the mythology surrounding the former Stig, the urban myths and cultural misinformation about the character continued. He was always introduced using exactly the same wording as their ‘tame racing driver’ with surreal facts about his personality or life; he appeared in the background of computer driving games; his helmet and overalls could be bought as add-ons for Gran Turismo 5 and Forza Motorsport 4 console games and Google Street View images picked him up at various locations in the background, such as the A82 by Loch Ness (for added mystery) and even three times inside Legoland in Berkshire. In Series 18, the deification of the character continued unabated, with The Stig being referred to as the show’s ‘Senior Cornering Solutions Consultant’.