The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (36 page)

He knew our routines backwards. We meticulously choreographed every move to chime with the music and pyrotechnics. With so many near misses in a tight space, timing was everything.

Doing it live meant we had to be prepared to improvise within a split second, and with up to five shows a day it created some tension backstage. I slept as much as I could between performances to maintain my focus. We spent most of our time at the arena, but did manage to slip into Jo’burg once or twice.

Outside the dome I passed out under the African sun with a tumorous hangover from a dinner party the night before. Just two bottles of Wind-hoek beer had reduced my brain to a pulsating bag of snot after a third day of breathing exhaust fumes inside the closed arena.

Hammond had swal owed his own vomit on stage during the show and Jeremy was moving around like someone was operating his limbs remotely with strings. James’s whereabouts were stil unknown.

The dry heat roasted my limp carcass and I shaded my eye sockets with some light reading,
The
End of Oil
. The impending fuel crisis had been of great concern to me, until I read the bit about the dawn of hydrogen fuel cel s and the very fast, very powerful electric vehicles of the future. Then I slept like a baby.

‘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 pul ed focus on cargo containers ful of gearboxes, 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 al came back to me: drive time, third show of the day.

I ran past Ninja, a freakishly talented young girl cal ed 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 Vauxhal 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 al read true, and I pul ed forward with my heart running a mil ion 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 rol 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, al owing the fender to brush her sword as I yanked the wand and rotated the bonnet around her legs.

The Monaro began its circle ful y 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 fal en 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 al owed 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 rol ing 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, ‘kil ed’ 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 al 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, col ared shirt these days. He’d kept a completely straight face when he described the stunt during the concept stage.

‘Basical y, 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 mil ion 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 Apol o 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 fal 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 real y enjoyed the chal enge.

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 al 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. Al we know is, he’s cal ed The Stig

…’

The presenters watched in bemusement from behind the curtain as bikes jumped over buggies, cars fel 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 rol ing 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 bal s a little too close to the fol icle 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 footbal was such a popular feature from the TV show that we had to incorporate it into the theatre. After thirty-odd matches al the drivers were so adept at flicking the bal around that the damage inflicted to the cars was relatively minor. But occasional y we would get a tad carried away and accidental y enjoy ourselves.

Frenchie rushed down from his ivory tower after one show and pul ed us al together. ‘Lads, that was a fucking bloodbath out there tonight. The guys from Suzuki have basical y told me that if we break another front suspension arm in one of these games, they’l pul the cars.’

We clasped our hands together and looked skywards like errant schoolboys. Personal y, I was stil 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 bol ocking 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 footbal was no time for added distractions.

There was nothing more alarming than dribbling the bal towards the goal, only to look out of the side window and see Richard Hammond bearing down for the kil . 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, al 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 rol ing 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 tal 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.

Eventual y 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 fel 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 tel 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 bel s, 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 footbal 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 al he could do was squeak.