The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (40 page)

After the short flight to Luton airport, the effect of the mysterious painkil ers in glass vials had worn off. I clicked on my mobile to cal my old man and it rang within seconds. I heard the quiet, apologetic voice of an old family friend, and knew immediately that my dad was dead.

I wanted to rip the advertising boards off the wal of the airport, pul up the paving slabs and tear down the sky. In my pathetic state al I could do was crumple to the floor and sob.

The man who had given me every opportunity to live the life I wanted was gone. I’d never thanked him enough and there was so much more I needed to say to him.

I later discovered that in the confusion of trying to reach me to break the news, Mum had phoned Georgie. Mum struggled to find the words, and Georgie fel to the floor thinking I was a goner.

Dad had the last word. When I got down to sorting out his affairs I found two sets of papers lying open in his spartan apartment. A printout of my Romanian qualifying sheet rested under his magnifying glass, alongside reviews of over a hundred prams.

The Stiglet was due in just over three months. I needed to pul myself together for the sake of Georgie and the baby. Inside I was broken.

W
ith four knackered ribs I was no use to anybody for some time. But two days after getting home I was contacted by
Top Gear
to film a race across London. I was desperate for a distraction and, since The Stig had no known bone structure, I heard myself agreeing.

The purpose of the race was to determine, in a total y scientific manner, the fastest means of travel between Kew Gardens and London City Airport.

The Stig would be taking public transport whilst the presenters proceeded by boat, car and bicycle. I duly appeared at Kew, swal owed some painkil ers and eased into my white overal s and helmet in the urinals of a nearby pub. Superman, eat your heart out. Pushing my left arm through the tight sleeve of the suit made my eyes water. I final y squeezed myself in and headed across to the ‘start line’ for the presenters’

opening piece to camera.

For the purpose of the film I was being ‘delivered’ to the set on a sack truck by
Top Gear’
s ‘men in white coats’. Realising that the low metal frame would apply al the weight to my ribcage, Andy Wilman, in a touching moment of compassion, fitted a broom handle to extend its load-bearing structure to neck height.

Uncharacteristical y, it took the presenters five takes to wheel me into the shot. Final y, we were off.

We split into four mini crews and went our different directions. Whilst Jezza, Hammo and May had scripts pretty much in hand for how their journeys would appear on camera, mine would be entirely spontaneous. As the presenters voiced their opinions on road traffic and the Thames speed limits for the benefit of the camera, I fronted up with the public.

First up was a queue of school kids at the bus stop. ‘Take your helmet off,’ they pleaded.

‘Yeeeaaaahhhhh!’

Oyster card in hand, I surfed the bus system, with Wilman directing the cameraman to pick up anything that caught his eye. As we headed into the Underground I remembered the scene in
Crocodile
Dundee
where bushmaster Mick fights shy of the escalator, so I stopped, teetered on the edge and did an about face.

On the tube I picked up a newspaper with a feature on Lewis Hamilton during his F1 race-winning prime. Even anonymous robot racing drivers were entitled to a little professional rivalry, so I chucked the paper away in disgust, fuel ing rumours that Hamilton’s rival Fernando Alonso was The Stig.

Londoners didn’t give a monkey’s about a man in a white suit walking amongst them, with the exception of one guy who spat his pasty on the floor. Mostly it was like I wasn’t there. After a few more changes I emerged from the Docklands Light Railway just ahead of James. Hammond had arrived first on the bike, fol owed by Jeremy, who had howled up the Thames aboard a supercharged racing boat at the head of a six-foot wake. James’s appal ing sense of direction sealed the car’s fate. It wasn’t the result
Top
Gear
was looking for.

I fel asleep on the train home and woke up slightly out of it. I absent-mindedly started texting my father about what I’d been up to. We hadn’t seen each other much recently, but always kept in touch. Then a wave of sadness brought me to my senses. Dad was
gone
.

Before I had too much time for reflection, providence intervened again. A blockbusting movie stunt co-ordinator cal ed Steve Dent rang and asked me to meet him at Pinewood Studios.

I’d always been fascinated by the movie industry. Hol ywood had the budgets to do things we could only dream about on TV. I’d studied the credits of my favourite movies like
Vanishing Point
,
Ronin
and the Bond series, looking for a way in.

Top Gear
gave me a cracking CV; the only problem was I could never show it to anyone. I’d put too much effort into keeping The Stig undercover to use him as currency. After numerous blind al eys and dead ends, the legendary Gary Powel had recommended me for a job on Nicolas Cage’s new movie
.
It featured a massive car chase through the City of London.

Just driving through the stone arch of the studio’s Double Lodge entrance, you felt the history of the place. Pinewood had been one of the most prolific film and television production facilities in the world since the Thirties, with a raft of blockbusters from
The Great Gatsby
to
Superman
. It remains the long-term home of the greatest of action heroes, 007.

The body of professionals producing the stunts for the movie business was a closed shop. To join them required years of training in numerous specialist skil s such as fire, gymnastics, horse riding and martial arts. To be al owed to join them as a driving expert would be a rare privilege.

I was required for driving a ‘pod car’. The pod was a metal cage with a set of driving controls that sat on the roof of a normal road car, in this case a Mercedes C Class. Cage and the other actors sat inside, whilst the man in the pod worked the steering, brakes and accelerator.

I met Ian, the vehicle’s engineer, aka the ‘big black bloke’ I had been told to look for in Shed 42. His eyes lit up over his smal rectangular glasses. ‘Go on, climb up and ’ave a look!’

I climbed up the side of the Merc, clambered into the thick tube frame then slid into the chair like an invalid. Ian and his crew watched this palaver, then looked at each other as if to say, ‘Couldn’t Steve find one that’s not broken?’

‘Don’t worry. I’l be fine in a few weeks.’

Sitting on the roofrack wasn’t something I was accustomed to, but it was cool. When you turned the wheel of most road cars it would unwind and self-centre if you let go. This one didn’t, because the hydraulic steering was so bloody heavy, but I could just about haul it round with my good arm. The pedals were neatly transplanted from the Merc, with the automatic gearshifter mounted alongside the seat. It was excel ently appointed, ideal for VIPs who preferred not to see their chauffeur.

Next on the agenda was to check out one of the standard Mercs with Rob Inch, another legendary stuntman who starred as the headless horseman in
Sleepy Hol ow
. At over six feet tal Rob didn’t look much like a cowboy. This was his first major foray into a different kind of horsepower. We drove to one of the outdoor stages, a yard of gravel with a narrow stretch of tarmac bordered by a row of fake shopfronts. Before I could say spare ribs, Rob floored it down the tarmac al ey and chucked the car right into a handbrake turn.

I could tel he had the touch straight away, if a little rough around the edges, but I wasn’t about to encourage the son of a bitch. I was in agony. He powered out of the asphalt on to the loose gravel, pul ed the wand again and as we slid back on to the tarmac the Merc dug in, gripped and rocked. I tensed up, held on to the door handle and bit my lip hard. The veins in Rob’s arms flared as he gripped the steering and kicked the throttle to try and skid the Merc down the street.

After a number of unsuccessful runs, I explained why it was tricky to drift an automatic without a clutch to pop the tail out. The C Class was super-planted because of its stiff suspension and low centre of gravity, so it required some manipulation to set it free. He offered to trade seats. ‘But you’d better not jump straight in and stick it sideways down this al ey.’

It dawned on me then that this was a test. I drove quietly down the al ey until I reached the gravel, then lifted off the gas, turned right and buried the throttle to produce a single powerslide at a higher speed than if I’d gone in using the handbrake. As I came back round towards the tarmac I made sure it was ful y sideways and, as it hit the sticky stuff, chucked the steering the other way and used the momentum to transition slide down the al ey. My ribs were kil ing me, but I figured it was hurting Rob’s pride more, so I kept on it. I managed the whole exercise one-handed. Rob just said: ‘Bastard.’ Thank God for that.

With as much nonchalance as I could muster with bal s of sweat dripping off my face, I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a good car.’

So began my life as a stunt driver for a Hol ywood film. I met the rest of the fifty-strong team for rehearsals at Bovingdon outside London. Another day, another airfield. Some of the guys wore old crew shirts from mega movies like
The Bourne Ultimatum
,
Casino Royale
and
Saving Private Ryan
. These were the men who’d fal en off every horse, down every set of stairs and burnt in every inferno I’d seen on the big screen during the previous decade. The scripts were etched on their faces, bodies and X-ray charts.

One of the stuntmen was entertaining a couple of old sweats with his showreel. I watched through the cracks between my fingers as he leapt 200 metres from the top of a hyperbolic cooling tower at an electric power station, without a parachute, to land on a modest stack of cardboard boxes. The audience nodded with approval.

The range of talents amongst the ‘stunties’ was remarkable. Brian was a bareknuckle boxer, shining proof that the expression ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fal ’ was a dangerous lie. His muscles were terrifying; I certainly wasn’t going to tel him that his ‘Dark Advenger’ tattoo was misspelt. There were ex-military folk, motocross champions, sword fighters, silent types and so on.

Remnants of black hair dye from a recent movie were visible in a few. And al seemed to have a cappuccino or fruit smoothie on the go from the onsite catering van that transformed this barren strip of concrete into a charming place to hang out.

There was lashings of the kind of black humour you expect from a dangerous profession. One boy limped towards the rest of the group with legs covered in ghoulish lacerations and purple and yel ow bruising.

I’d already been introduced to the self-appointed mouthpiece of the group. Rowley had worked in film man and boy. He loved it. His ful lips quivered as he saw me clock the walking accident. ‘Car knockdown,’ he said.

‘What?’

Rowley laughed like a cockney drain. ‘Got hit by a car yesterday. How’s them legs, Bradders?’

Brad shot us a sheepish smile. An intense, muscular man to my left added quietly, ‘Not fast enough, eh, Bradders …’

‘You mean you’d rather be hit by a car going
faster
?’

‘’Course,’ continued Stuart, aka Russel Crowe’s double from
Gladiator
. ‘Only get hit once then, don’t ya?’ He was rol ing his fingers up in the air to il ustrate the higher trajectory.

‘Sod that.’

The car chase we were due to rehearse over the course of a month was being bil ed as the biggest in London’s history. A treasure hunter played by Nicolas Cage sets out on a global quest to unearth hidden treasures and discover clues that lead him into the narrow confines of London’s square mile. The hero finds himself in the cross hairs of the villain (Ed Harris) and puts the pedal to the metal to escape in a high-octane pursuit.

Blocking off central London to shoot a movie was as complicated as it sounds. The stunt team had to perfect a diverse number of driving sequences on the airfield in order to hit the ground running on locations with restricted access, such as Buckingham Palace, Whitehal and St James’s. Everything had to run like clockwork in order for us to race through the streets, shoot a scene in five minutes, and return the ‘set’ to its rightful owners. Many of the scenes left no margin for second takes because the carnage left nothing to film with.

We were also due to film in London’s financial centre. If we made a mistake and trashed the Bank of England, things would turn ugly.

They used animated storyboards cal ed ‘previsuals’ to bring the story of the car chase to life and develop a clear understanding of the director’s vision. It also al owed them to determine what was actual y achievable before the production started burning mil ions of pounds on location.

London’s routes and intersections were painstakingly recreated at the airfield, using cones, tyres and tape. Twenty drivers took to cars, bikes and trucks, with the remainder of the stuntmen and women acting as passers-by. This was pre credit crunch, so we weren’t al owed to run over real bankers.

During one rehearsal on the airfield we deployed every vehicle to simulate a scene where the Mercedes swerved in and out of oncoming traffic, whilst being chased by a supercharged Range Rover. Rob was working as Nick Cage’s double in the standard Merc, so I took it in turns with him to drive the route or ride along as a passenger so that the pod could be deployed in any scene.

We tore straight into it. We overtook everything in our path at 70mph before bouncing across a pedestrian crossing, skidding past a police car and escaping down the pavement with people jumping left and right.

Of the seventy-odd vehicles we had on site about twenty were police cars, mostly Omegas. We were standing around drinking espressos from the catering wagon, the holy grail of snacking, when some chavs barrel ed on to the airfield and pul ed a handbrake turn in their Citroën. Our stuntmen didn’t even flinch. Two of them skidded across the bonnet of their vehicles and shot off in pursuit, blues and twos blaring, cutting the Citroën off with a spectacular pincer movement. The chavs nervously produced their licences and tootled off as reformed drivers.