The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (23 page)

Ran was only dimly aware of me shouting in the background.

‘Ranulph, back off a bit
…’

‘RAN?’

No response.

‘RRAAANNNN
…
’

I was a passenger in every conceivable sense.

I don’t know what he would have done next without my intervention, but I didn’t want to find out. It was time to get a grip. I rapped hard on the side of his helmet with my knuckles and yel ed, ‘RANULPH, LOOK … AT … ME …’

Suddenly I was back in the room.

I was determined to keep his attention. I summoned as much authority as I could manage and ordered the legend around the circuit.

His weathered features told me we could have been anywhere – up the side of Everest or running across the Gobi desert. No quarter was asked for or given with the controls of that little car. He wrang its neck and kicked its guts.

Ran’s spirit was contagious, and I spent countless additional laps with him in an effort to get him the result he so deserved.

It was sheer bloody-mindedness that drove him. Thirty years of wrestling polar bears meant he couldn’t quite acquire the finesse to caress the car towards the ultimate lap time.

I climbed out for his solo runs and watched in awe. Smoke bil owed off al four wheels as he screeched through the final corners like no guest we had ever seen. He was every bit the adventurer I had read about, a wel -spoken bul fighter, with bal s of steel.

As my second series with
TG
came to a close, I was beginning to feel I had more of a role to play, and on surer foundations. Things brightened up elsewhere as wel . Georgie moved in and transformed my pigsty into a glowing home.

‘What do you
do
with al these boxes?’

‘It’s where I keep my … stuff.’

‘
Storage
.’

With that, my entire col ection of … things … was gone. It turned out my place even had wooden floorboards. Having Georgie back made my heart whole again. After al of life’s twists and turns, we had found each other again. I couldn’t quite believe my luck.

D
uring eight years of
Top Gear
I was privileged to hitch a ride with some of the most renowned personalities from the worlds of movies, TV, music and sports, from tough guys like Christian Slater, Mark Wahlberg and Ewan McGregor to the gorgeous Sienna Mil er and Denise Van Outen. Their goal: to become the fastest ‘star in a reasonably priced car’.

The front-wheel-drive Suzuki Liana catapulted them al from A-list splendour to Z-list economy travel.

Most had never driven a car fast, let alone bal s-out around a racing track. Fame is no al y for overcoming fear of the unknown, and there was only so much we could achieve in one and a half hours, but it was my job to tap undiscovered reserves of high-octane talent …

The first two corners were trials of patience, waiting for front grip in the long gradual turns.

Hammerhead tested the discipline to wait for the whites of the cameramen’s eyes before braking and not cheat by cutting the corner. The Fol ow Through was al about faith, keeping your foot to the floor. You had to be a bit crazy in the final two bends. For a good time, al four wheels needed to be drifting at nearly a ton whilst cutting a section of broken tarmac, nearly spinning over the green bit and then running across the finish so fast that the car hit a grass knol and flew through the air.

When their instincts told them to back off, I urged them to floor it. When the car ran wide on to the grass and they pul ed at the steering to regain the tarmac, I told them to straighten up. I saw more clenched teeth and cold sweat in the driving seat than a Harley Street dentist.

Jordan, aka glamour model Katie Price, turned up in a tinted limo. I was expecting an afternoon of crying over broken fingernails. My day hadn’t started wel . It was belting hot and I’d forgotten to whip my Alpinestars suit out of the tumble drier that morning. The office spare, a manky old cheddar, was three sizes too smal , so everything was creaking as I limped over and greeted her. Jordan was dressed top-to-toe in pink, and was good enough not to notice the camel toe arrangement between my legs, so I didn’t breathe a word about the white bits under her arms where the spray tan had missed its target.

My first task was Herculean: to strap on her shoulder belts. They ran out of length over the top of her embonpoints, and looked dangerously uncomfortable going round the side. The safest solution was to use the standard seat belt slung underneath, since airbags were already included.

Jordan didn’t ask too many questions. I took that as a good sign. After a few practice laps I let her drive solo.

I kept a firm eye on the stars as they wrestled their way around the circuit and could pretty much predict their time before they crossed the line. As Jordan turned through the flat-out right-hander, a concrete hut blocked my line of sight. She should have reappeared less than a second later, but she didn’t. Instead there was a shriek of rubber.

She’d spun at the fastest section and was backing towards the building. I felt my stomach lurch. She remembered to mash the brake pedal in an emergency and stopped just in time. Wiseman was biting his fingernails.

‘It’s al right,’ Casper cal ed from his camera position. ‘She’s heading back to you now.’

‘OK,’ Jim answered. ‘Tel me you got that?’

‘Yeah,’ Casper replied. As if it was ever in doubt.

Jordan’s smile hadn’t slipped an inch; she was completely unfazed. We asked if she was OK.

‘Yeah. I spun out at that corner. Why was that then?’

‘I think you turned the steering too fast,’ I said. ‘Just remember to be as smooth as possible, like you’re lifting a cup of tea.’

I didn’t want her spinning there again, it was too dangerous, so I jumped back in the Liana to make sure she took the right line.

She immediately produced her fastest time of the day, a gritty effort fol owing a 100mph near miss.

We also hosted former Spice Girl Geri Hal iwel . She was a nervous wreck when she arrived, with an entourage that included her own film crew and a private racing coach.

I knew it wasn’t easy. Most of them arrived at Dunsfold knowing only that their PR people had booked them on to some car programme to have a chat and do a bit of driving. One minute they were sipping cappuccinos and basking in the glow of their bestsel ing book or hit movie, the next they were on a cold, windswept airfield getting intimate with a spaceman in a white suit.

Geri put enormous pressure on herself from the outset to go number one on the board. As always, I wanted to convert her enthusiasm into performance.

The dangers of track driving only dawned on Geri once we started lapping. She hung on my every word, her big eyes looking up at me from inside a helmet that engulfed her. Geri’s heart was in the right place, but she was so intense that she over-anticipated everything and kept getting into a muddle. In the course of our conversation I discovered that she had been in a number of car accidents in a short space of time.

The damp track was punishing the smal est mistakes and I had to make sure she stayed on the black stuff. We were on a fast lap; Geri was hitting ninety towards the gap between the tyre barriers at the Fol ow Through. With a hundred feet to go, I said, ‘Just steer left a bit. I don’t want you to clip the tyres.’

Eighty feet out she replied, ‘If I hit the tyres, will I hit my face?’

Sixty …

‘You might but—’

Forty …

‘I can’t hit my face.’

Twenty …

‘Fine. Just steer left.
NOW!
’

I pushed the wheel an extra inch and we wobbled through. A slave to the schedule, there was only so much extra guidance I could give Geri. During the final safety briefing, her hands were shaking. She was so over-psyched that she set quite an average lap time, but she did manage an unusual pirouette past the crowd on the start line. I knew she was desperate for some sign that she’d done OK.

‘You did
real y
wel ,’ I said. ‘Especial y in the quick corners; you were very … brave.’ There’s a limit to what a chap can do from behind a heavily tinted visor.

My words seemed to fal like daggers. She fought back the tears, thanked us and disappeared off into her motor home.

‘You heartless bastard,’ Wiseman whispered.

I often forgot that being my passenger could get quite extreme. Eddie Izzard, the transvestite comedian, arrived during a monsoon. He was a stel ar bloke; definitely one of the boys.

I took him round the lap and aquaplaned on a puddle. Eddie shouted so loud I thought he was having a heart attack. ‘Oh my God,
oh my GOD
… Ooooooohhhh, fuuuuuuuuuuck …’ It was an uncanny impression of my mother.

We rattled through a 90-degree slide for about 200 metres, then I gathered it up and carried on. It was no biggy, but it brought on Eddie’s motion sickness. He had to climb out of the car after each run to stop himself throwing up, but he never stopped smiling and never gave up. He might dress up in women’s clothes, but he was hard as nails.

Some comedians were plain scary. Jimmy Carr arrived by UFO and fluttered down from Outer Space, ready to unleash Armageddon on mankind. Lovely bloke; complete nutter. Don’t be fooled by the baby face. Once you looked closer into those counter-sunk chestnut eyes you saw the beast within.

It was Jimmy’s second visit to
Top Gear
and he had beaten Simon Cowel to top of the leader board on his first, so we were expecting great things.

He kept jumping on the accelerator too early in the corner, a cardinal sin in my book, and it made the front wheels skid. He wound fifty turns of steering to compensate and eventual y I’d had enough. I yanked the Wand of Plenty and spun him off the track.

Jimmy’s eyes widened. ‘Whoaa, what happened then?’

Hmm. Human after al .

Jimmy drove the hel out of the car and was wildly inconsistent, either super fast or you needed a calendar.

We lost count of the number of times he spun. When we played back his in-car footage he looked total y impassive, even when the thing was flying backwards off the circuit at 100mph. And he never braked when he did that; he total y lacked any sense of self-preservation.

Each time he pul ed up to the line for another assault I did my best to get a grip on the situation.

‘Are you looking for the braking markers I showed you into that corner on the back straight? You haven’t made it round there once yet …’

‘Yes, yes. I think so.’ He paused, eyes glinting. ‘Hmm. Which ones?’

‘Brake at the fifty but don’t steer left until you reach the arrow board. If you can do that, you should stop spinning on to the grass. Can you give it a go?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

I urged the crew to stand wel back.

Jimmy made several more wild passes. Unfortunately for him, the rules for that particular episode were that we only counted the time recorded on the sixth lap, rather than the best lap-time overal . Jimmy’s sixth included a 300-metre detour across the grass, so his time was over two minutes. His best time would have put him fastest.

As he walked back to his UFO, the mud-caked Liana gave a sigh of relief. A plume of smoke rose from its blown gasket. Pigeons fel dead from the sky and flowers wilted as he ambled by. Jimmy was great sport.

The problem with comedians was you never knew when to take them seriously. Within minutes of meeting me, straight-faced Jack Dee said he wanted to go home.

He was noticeably reserved when we shook hands, so I didn’t shoot off with screeching tyres. I showed him where the track went at a gentle pace. After a few hundred metres I turned into the first corner.

We were doing no more than 40mph.

‘Stop the car, stop. I’ve gotta get out of here.’

Good old Jack, I thought. He’s taking the piss. But he wasn’t. He was deadly serious.

I had a feeling that if I let him get out it would be impossible to get him back in it. I didn’t fancy explaining to the producer why we had no footage of Jack’s lap for his interview with Jeremy. And I was foolish enough to think I could help him.

I slowed down to about 15mph, just too fast for him to open the door and jump out without breaking his legs.

‘It’s OK, Jack, I’m slowing down. What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t do this.’ He was turning green right in front of me. ‘I’m getting flashbacks from an accident I had when I was eighteen.’

It was time for Stigmund Freud to look into Jack’s psyche and rediscover his lost driver. I asked him what had happened, whether he’d hit another vehicle. It turned out he was a passenger when his friend lost control and flipped his car over.

I peppered him with questions; I needed to understand his phobia, and I needed to keep him talking.

By the time we completed the first lap I had it sussed. His friend had lost the back end through a tightening corner, over-corrected and the ensuing tank-slapper, where the car rocks violently from one side of the suspension to the other, was enough to barrel-rol them into the hedge. Not nice.

I explained how he could control that situation by steering gently into the slide or simply by steering straight, rather than fighting the wheel and making things worse.

After a few more laps Jack had settled down and turned a slightly more gentle shade of yel ow. It seemed safe to stop and swap seats without him running for the hil s.

He built up speed and confidence with each lap. Even at the Fol ow Through, where he nearly fainted when I drove it at 50mph, he ended up belting through at 75.

By the time he finished I was more than a little proud of him. He overcame his fear. Jack looked as disgruntled as usual, when he climbed out and Wiseman asked him, ‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘No, not at al .’

I think he was happy to be heading for the relative comfort of Jeremy’s leather sofa.

David Wal iams was another kettle of fish. As a
Little Britain
fan I thought, wrongly, that I knew al about him. First off, he is a big lad. Just getting a helmet to fit and curling him into the Liana wasn’t easy.