by Guy Martin
Another two weeks later, in mid-February, I caught up with some of the restoration at Judd Power, the company restoring the car’s Cosworth DFV engine. John Judd founded the company in 1971. He worked for the racing driver Sir Jack Brabham, spannering for him, and Judd and Brabham started the company together. Now it’s a company of 25 people, and they’ve worked with Lotus, Honda, Yamaha, Mazda, Toyota and Nissan. They used to build Formula One engines. In the 1980s and 1990s, loads of teams, including Lotus, Tyrrell and Arrows, used Judd engines, and Williams got a couple of podiums with them when Nigel Mansell was driving for them. They’ve developed LMP1 and LMP2 Endurance racing engines, too.
Judd were given the job of rebuilding the engine for this car. Williams have always just been chassis specialists, a constructor in F1 jargon, who worked with engine manufacturers like Cosworth, Honda, Renault and Mercedes.
Dan, a young bloke who works for Judd, stripped the engine in October 2017 and it took nearly four months to check everything, to make sure there weren’t any weaknesses. The Cosworth has lightweight magnesium engine cases and they can deteriorate over time. If it chucked a con-rod it would wreck the whole engine. It turned out pretty much everything was in good nick, but they didn’t know that. I helped put the top end on and set the timing, working with Dan. It was interesting.
Judd Power have a good reputation and some real oddball stuff is brought to them. They had a V12 Ferrari with radial valves in the cylinder heads when I visited.
With a programme like this I’m spending a day here and a day there while things are happening, then going back to work in between. But as far as filming for this went, everything was put on hold because I was being sent to Russia for three and a half weeks.
CHAPTER 11
‘It was me who came up with the idea of Russia’
IT WAS THE back end of March 2018 when I had to drive to London to get a Russian work visa for a big filming job we were doing out there. I wasn’t mad about going to London. I never really am. As usual, I’d been flat out at work, and I was supposed to have gone to Manchester to sort the visa out, but that didn’t happen for some reason to do with the Russian Embassy.
If March 2018 doesn’t ring any bells, it was the same month the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury. From what I’ve heard and read, it sounds like Skripal had been a double agent in the 1990s and when the Russians found out, in 2006, they sentenced him to 13 years for high treason. He didn’t get close to serving all that because he was traded in a spy swap with the West in 2010. His daughter was visiting him from Russia when they were poisoned. Everything pointed to the Russian government ordering the poisoning, and it didn’t take long for the shit to hit the fan. The Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t take kindly to the thought of the Russian government attempting to murder a foreign spy in Wiltshire and started expelling Russian diplomats, like governments used to during the Cold War years.
All this would have been interesting enough, but we were supposed to be flying out to Russia for three weeks of filming on 21 March, just over two weeks after the poisoning.
The day before going to the Russian Embassy I’d been on a CPC (Certificate of Professional Competence) course in Yorkshire. I’ve had a truck licence since 2009, and I’ve taken trucks on MOTs, but I’m not allowed to drive a truck with a paying load in it without a CPC. You can drive a farm tractor on the road with a 40-ton load on a provisional licence, but if you’re a truck driver you’ve got to do 35 hours of classroom-based lessons over the space of five years. I’ve never done it, so I’ve got to do the training before they let me drive. There was no need to have this training when I was at Moody’s because I was only delivering the tractor units or trucks with an empty trailer. At the new place I’m working I have to take trucks for MOTs with a load on, so they can test them with the correct axle weight.
Anyway, I got home from that and heard the news that it was either the Kremlin that had ordered the attack, or the Russians had lost control of the nerve agent and it got into someone else’s hands to be used. Theresa May said if she didn’t get an answer within 24 hours, things were going to get serious. It sounded like she half meant business. The 24 hours she was waiting for an answer in was the same 24 hours I had an appointment to get my visa.
I went through the process of going to London because I didn’t want to get to the eleventh hour and think, Shit, it is happening, and not have the paperwork sorted. Still, at the time I was driving down the A1 I was pretty sure the Russia trip wasn’t happening. I didn’t doubt we’d get a visa, but when we landed in Russia would they turn us, a British television film crew, around and send us back on the first flight out?
I read the book Red Notice by Bill Browder, an American businessman who is now a British citizen, a few years ago and it gave me a different view of Russia. In the 1990s, as Russia ditched Communism to become the capitalist dictatorship that it is today, the government gave shares of the nationalised utilities and services, like gas, the bus service, train service and telecoms, to the masses in the form of tokens. The oligarchs got millions’ worth, but every adult in Russia owned a fraction of a percentage of Gazprom, or whatever. Browder ran his own investment company, moved to Russia, got half wise to this, started buying these tokens from Russians, and over the years he ended up owning 51 per cent of Gazprom or summat. It was legal, but the Russian powers that be didn’t like it so they made life very difficult for him and in 2005 deported him. The Red Notice of the book’s title is the Interpol extradition request the Russians put on Browder to bring him back to Moscow to stand trial for fraud and tax evasion. The court case went ahead without Browder and he was given a sentence of nine years, to be served if they ever get hold of him. So Browder knew all about this side of Russia and how it all worked, when he heard about a lawyer, a young bloke called Sergei Magnitsky. The lawyer discovered that Russian officials were involved in a fraud of $230 million. When he wouldn’t back down and keep quiet, the officials pulled strings for Magnitsky to be put in prison. According to Red Notice, Magnitsky was tortured over months before being beaten to death by eight secret police.
This all adds to my fascination with Russia. No one’s ever beaten the Russians at their own game. I really enjoy making the travel programmes. We’ve done Latvia, India and China and it was me who came up with the idea of Russia when Channel 4 said they wanted more of them. Because it’s such a big place, with so many interesting stories, the time away was a lot longer than I hoped it would be. It was supposed to be three weeks, then somehow it grew to four, but then back to three weeks and three days. I’d prefer three weeks or less, but there was no way to fit in everything the director wanted to film, so that was that.
We had a fair-sized crew ready to head out to Moscow and we all had our visas, but the flights still hadn’t even been booked and we were due to leave in less than a week. I didn’t know the plan of what we were going to do out there. I knew we were going to Siberia and Chernobyl, but I never ask. I just go for a look and take it as it comes. If they let us in.
CHAPTER 12
‘Terminal 4, that said a lot. Usually you only fly to wanky places from Terminal 4’
IN BETWEEN BEING given our work visas and the day we were supposed to be flying to Moscow there had been plenty of talk between North One and Channel 4 about if we were going to get into Russia or not. North One are the production company. They make programmes for Channel 4, BT, Sky, the BBC or whoever. Nearly all my programmes have been made for Channel 4, but North One are independent; they work for whoever wants the programme idea they’re coming up with. It just so happens that Channel 4 wants the kind of stuff they make with me.
North One told Channel 4 that they didn’t want to risk sending us out, paying for all that travel, just for us to be sent home on the next plane. We all felt it was touch and go. North One’s top bods were talking to Channel 4, who had commissioned the programmes, explaini
ng that they felt nervous about the whole job. From what I picked up, it sounded like North One were all ready for selecting reverse and they put the decision in Channel 4’s hands.
Channel 4 did their research and told North One to risk it, buy the tickets, book the hotels and if it all went wrong they’d cover it so that North One were not out of pocket. So that was it. Only a few days before we were due to fly, it was decided we really were going, but I still didn’t know how long we would be in Russia before we were deported.
I’d told them, ‘Well this isn’t happening, is it?’ James, the director who’d be working on all the Russia stuff, said the same. We’ll get to Heathrow and get turned away. Or we’ll get to Moscow and get turned away, or we’ll start filming on day one and be deported. That’s how we felt it would be as the ten of us met at Heathrow Terminal 4. Terminal 4, that said a lot. When was the last time you flew from Terminal 4? Usually you only fly to wanky places from Terminal 4.
Most of the crew were people I’ve worked with for years. James, the director, he runs the show really. Nat and Max, the cameramen, and Andy, the soundman. There was Amy and Jess, the producer and assistant producer, who do loads of jobs between them, logging the filming details, noting everything for future reference, sorting it all out on the day, dealing with the paperwork, keeping everyone happy and running as smoothly as possible. Then there was Aldo and Stu. Stu is the medic and Aldo is the minder, the security. They’re both ex-Royal Marines.
The only person I hadn’t worked with before was Matt, another soundman, but he turned out to be shit hot, too.
The ructions caused by the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning were still the main news on every radio station. They weren’t talking about much else. Twenty-three Russian diplomats had been kicked out of Britain, and 20 other countries expelled a load of other Russian diplomats in solidarity with the British government. The Kremlin wasn’t happy.
We were booked on a morning flight, four hours straight to Moscow. I was so sure I was going to be back in London that night, I was already making plans. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t go back to work, but I’d use the time I was supposed to be away working on my classic race bike, getting the Ford P1000 pickup project started. I’d get this done, get that done: I was looking forward to getting caught up.
The first thing that made me think I was right, and, yes, we would be sent back, was seeing four UK Border Force guards stood at the entrance to the bridge to the plane as we handed our passes in to board. I’d never seen that before.
We landed in Moscow, showed our passports and walked straight through. We were all nervously looking at each other, trying to play it cool, but we didn’t need to because the passport control officer didn’t bat an eyelid at us. We had to wait, as normal, about half an hour for the 30 extra bags that a camera crew travel with, and have all the carnets certified. The carnets are the temporary import licences for all their kit, so they don’t have to pay import tax on them. There were no problems there either.
In the arrivals hall we met Mikhail Smetnik, the fixer. He told us to call him Misha. I’d say he was in his late fifties, early sixties and dressed like you’d imagine a professional 60-year-old Muscovite would. He blended in, like a typical grey Russian who wants to go about his business. In all the years we’ve done these things, he was probably the most efficient fixer we’ve ever had. He was on the money. All the other places we’ve been we’ve used a couple of fixers, but not this time. Misha knew everyone.
A fixer lines up all the jobs. If we want to film on the Moscow Metro, the underground train system, you can’t just walk in and start filming; it’s the fixer’s job to organise all the permits in advance. Not an easy job, especially in Russia. Misha was a really knowledgeable bloke, spoke very good English, was really clever, witty, understood the British sense of humour. He stayed with us for the whole job in Russia.
Almost as soon as we met Misha we were asking how things were looking and he said it was all pretty good. There were a couple of things he had problems with – getting a flight in a MiG fighter jet was looking doubtful, because of the military associations and the whole diplomatic situation was affecting that – but everything else seemed business as normal.
Looking out of the window as we drove into the middle of the city, Moscow felt very Western, industrial, with snow piled up 20 feet high at the side of the roads and very square buildings. It was minus four or five degrees when we landed, nothing too stupid. I was warm enough in my truck driver’s trousers with the reflective strips around the bottom, John Deere coat and Five Ten shoes. I was still wondering when we were going to get turned away.
We stayed at a Marriott right in the middle of Moscow. The hotel could have been anywhere in the world. That was the first of four nights in the Russian capital, before we flew to another town. Looking out of the window I’d see a constant flow of people, going to and from work. It didn’t feel like England, but it didn’t feel as foreign as, say, Japan. It felt like Russia. I liked the fact that I couldn’t recognise any of the words on signs, because they’re all written in the Cyrillic alphabet. A lot of women would be dressed in big coats, but short skirts. Russians like their short skirts, even in the middle of winter.
The next morning we got straight into the filming, and all 11 of us first travelled in two people carriers to Red Square, arriving there at ten. I could see Lenin’s Tomb, with the Kremlin, a collection of buildings that includes President Putin’s official residence, and St Basil’s Cathedral in the background, with its famous brightly coloured domes. The camera turns on and James, the director, asks, ‘What are you thinking?’ I say summat like, ‘Well, we’re here.’ I was still dead surprised. This was it. We were filming in Russia, and the idea of that took a little bit of getting used to.
I talked to James, while I was being filmed, like I’d talk to any of you. I explained that we’re getting all this gobbledegook back home, propaganda, if you want to call it that, Theresa May is saying we aren’t taking it lightly. The nerve agent that was used on the Skripals was Russian. Boris Johnson is giving it all the spiel about Porton Down, where the Ministry of Defence has their Science and Technology Lab, who have confirmed there’s no doubt the poison was Russian and that the British government is sending diplomats back to Russia. It sounded serious, and I honestly thought we wouldn’t get to film, but there we were, right at the heart of the beast. You can’t get more Russian than Red Square. When soldiers appeared and asked for our permits to film, Misha sorted all that out.
I looked around and could see what I was sure were FSB men. The FSB, the Federal Security Service, are the secret service that took over from the KGB. They all wore earpieces, the grey men, in the background, watching. They also came up and said something to Misha, who gave them the right paperwork, and it was a case of, OK, go about your day.
After all that worry about being sent home, turns out Russia really do not give a fuck about Britain or what we do. We’re insignificant. It’s like the Isle of Anglesey declaring war on England. All right, mate, what are you going to do about it? That’s what we are like to Russia.
The Russians have got a history of this, so I didn’t have any doubt it was them that tried to kill the double agent, but, in a way, I think that’s good. You know not to fuck with them. Fuck about with England and what do you get? At the worst a strongly worded letter or six months in a well-furnished prison cell?
By now we realised that we were back to Plan A: make a telly programme and fly home in three and a half weeks. Now it was a relief to get started filming. It had been my idea to go to Russia in the first place, thanks to my fascination with the place, so we were only doing what I’d asked.
Across Red Square I could see people queuing in minus five to see Lenin’s Tomb. The leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, that overthrew the tsars and turned Russia Marxist, and the first leader of the Communist Soviet Union, Lenin was a doer and his body has been on show, except for during the Second World War when they hid him so
mewhere else, since he died in 1924. And still folk are queuing up to see him.
Stalin used to be on show there, too, until the Communist Party started to distance themselves from him. You could say Stalin ran a tight ship. Under his leadership the USSR sent nearly two million people to the gulags, the brutal labour camps folk who weren’t in line were sent to; many of them were political prisoners, some were teachers and lecturers, basically anyone Stalin didn’t like the look of. Of those two million he ordered the execution of over 600,000. After Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came to power and started letting some people out of the gulags, and slightly improving conditions. They didn’t exactly turn into holiday camps, but he’d let the prisoners get clothes and letters sent from their relatives. Khrushchev’s thinking was he didn’t want the Communist Party linked with Stalin and the abuses of the people, and what he called ‘the cult of personality’ that allowed Stalin to get away with what he did when he ruled the country by fear. Again, Russia hardly transformed itself into Butlins under Khrushchev, but it was nowhere near as bad. They call what Khrushchev started the process of de-Stalinisation. So Lenin stayed in the tomb, but Stalin was moved out of the Kremlin to a spot in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
We were in Red Square for a couple of hours, watched the changing of the guards, then went to the Federation Towers, two skyscrapers, one 97 storeys tall, the other 63, to meet a bloke called Kirill Vselensky. In his late twenties, he is what’s known as a rooftopper. His hobby is climbing the highest buildings he can find, anywhere in Russia; when he reaches the highest, most awkward bit, he takes a photo of himself. He’s not the only one who does it; it’s a thing in Russia. We met on the top of the roof, but I didn’t do anything daft.
