by Ben Collins
I finally dived into the pits. The crew leapt over the wall, dressed head to toe in Army DPM clothing. Vince slammed his hydraulic gun into the front left like a demented Kwik-Fit Fitter and sparks from the wheel nuts ricocheted off his goggles. His hand was raised first, I red-lined, seconds later the jack man dumped me onto the ground and I gassed it away. I emerged from the pits dead last.
With less than half the race left to run there was hardly time to overtake twenty-four cars. But rather than focus on what I couldn’t do, I had to adjust to the situation. The win was gone. I had to launch a clear-headed counter-attack.
My spotter, big Doug, was up in the clouds, at the highest point in the grandstands. He talked to me all the time, acting like radar to position me around other cars. A good spotter was worth his weight in gold, which made Doug more valuable than the national treasury.
‘Sorry about the screw-up, Ben. The boys are gutted.’
‘Don’t worry. Let’s see how many we can take down before the end.’
I was itching for the green flag to drop. With just over twenty laps to run, the signal was given.
I was still cornering at the tail end of the snake when the leaders passed the start gantry on the pit straight. I flat-footed the throttle in second gear, the V8 squirmed as the power raged through the rear tyres and I clunked the enormous shift across to third, instantly pulling alongside my first victim. We drag-raced to the first corner; I took that flat and raced the next guy into Three. I was coming through no matter what.
I kept the pressure on and went inside, outside and underneath one car after another, loving the stability of my machine more with every pass. Doug was on overdrive. ‘Car inside, car outside, he’s on your rear quarter, hold your line, you’re clear, he’s having a look, c-c-clear.’
Coming up on a pack was like running through a crowded street; their movements were unpredictable and you had to read their body language. These cars were so unstable at high speeds that a slight knock could put everyone in the wall, so it was a delicate exercise of positioning, slip-streaming and cutting through. In the end we placed fourth.
I started the second race in fourth position, took the lead and lost it again in the pits. For some reason we lost eight places during the tyre change. I couldn’t catch the leader and finished second, which was enough to leave the first weekend as the championship leader. In spite of the performance, racing economics reared their ugly head. I was told there wasn’t enough funding to continue the season. Just as well I had a full-time part-time occupation.
Chapter 11
Hard Routine
As we moved off the muddy track it began raining. With an hour of light left, we made camp under our ponchos in a steep copse on the outskirts of the base. One of our comrades was struggling to undo the top flap of his bergen. When he succeeded, food, compass, dry kit and no end of other junk flew out across the wet ground. I tried to help organise the poor bugger before anyone saw.
‘Don’t waste your time on that waste of space,’ someone growled from over my shoulder.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The guy’s hopeless. You’re really better off leaving him to it. You’ll have enough to worry about.’ The wrinkles in his forehead creased as he smiled.
Geoff had been a regular soldier in the Eighties and served in the Regiment for several years. Now he was going through the system a second time. My Boy Scout instinct to help others at all times was too firmly entrenched to follow his cold advice. I finished sorting the guy out and returned to my poncho, which had sprung a leak in my absence.
The oilskin coat spread out to form a simple shelter. Geoff deftly inverted the hood, bent it back on itself, hooked the para-cord around the neck and tied it off to the nearest tree, instantly making it taut and waterproof. I thanked him and he retreated to his spot. We both watched the continuing difficulty my hapless comrade was having with his wash kit.
Geoff didn’t really strike me as a seasoned soldier. He was tall and lean, but seemed more like a geography teacher. He had floppy dark hair, a refined posture and spoke thoughtfully. He accepted his surroundings and they accepted him. The contrast with me couldn’t have been greater. I pictured a Drill Sergeant behind every bush, poised to leap out and hold a knife to my throat for having shit admin.
There were over a hundred of us out there that night, and I doubt anyone slept too well in his wank chariot, as the sleeping bags were known. We had no idea what to expect or when to expect it.
Reveille was at 0430, with breakfast in bed followed by ‘PT’. I surgically removed the roots of a tree from my back and broke into a carton of army issue compo rations to whistle up some culinary delights over a hexamine stove. After a lengthy cooking process, I succeeded in turning my aluminium pan black and a bag of Lancashire hotpot lukewarm. I eyed Geoff’s roaring mini gas stove enviously and he handed me some boiled dregs for my brew. Some people made pigs of themselves and gorged on food, which seemed short-sighted. I hurriedly stowed my kit into the limited space inside my bergen and reported for parade.
We formed up on the track and were notified of the course’s first casualty. The recruit was led away to receive stitches to his hand following a vicious attack by a tin of mystery meat. A few guys started warming up, for what I had no idea. My stomach churned. The tension was too much for one boy, who doubled over and spewed his breakfast across the Land Rover tracks, prompting a chorus of jeers.
‘Fucking crap hat,’ spat one, an insult that covered the whole of the armed forces bar the Paras.
The DS breezed past the steaming puke and handed out two sets of scales for weighing our packs. Each bergen had to weigh exactly 40 pounds. We opened our water bottles to prove they were full. A nondescript man in plain clothes appeared beside me.
‘Have you been on the course before?’
‘No sir, this is my first time.’
‘What is your profession?’
‘I’m in marketing.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
He nodded and walked away.
The DS barked, ‘Three ranks.’
We lined up accordingly.
‘When we get to camp we’ll march through in formation, not like we’re on some countryside bimble. Keep your traps shut and your shit in order. Let’s see if you ladies can at least look like soldiers.’
We slowed through camp and marched along the frosty tarmac road in an orderly fashion. As we reached the exit gate a young girl jogged up to ask in a thick Welsh accent who we were and where we were going. God knows what on earth she was doing hanging around an army barracks at five o’clock in the morning.
Someone muttered something about orienteering.
‘Well, watch out there, lads,’ she chirruped. ‘’Cos them boys at the front aren’t from this base and they’re ’ard as fuck.’
The DS marched us briskly out of the gate then back into double time.
The hundred or so trainees came from different stations from around the country. Mine was from London and boasted an eclectic mix of tinkers, tailors, former soldiers and sailors as well as a few bankers and other forms of ‘rank civvie’ like me. Most had some former military experience. A few had failed the course once already and were taking it again.
One chap boasted that he had been a member of Portuguese Special Forces, another the Foreign Legion. The experienced guys were the least interested in the rest of the ‘gangfuck’, as one recruit called Bernie referred to our collective. Bernie had dark hair, legs like tree trunks and a boring day job judging by the way he tore off his suit before every training night.
The shared frustrations, fatigue and pain of PT made it an aggressive form of group therapy. It instilled a selfish kind of camaraderie. This phase was primarily about survival. As much as you coaxed your comrades along, you could only help those that helped themselves or you risked sharing their fate.
As the run wore on, sweat poured down my face and back. My shirt bunched benea
th my bergen and rubbed the skin off my spine. The blisters forming on the heel of my right foot were a welcome distraction.
The formation broke ranks as we darted up a dirt track leading on to a range. The DS rounded on us and screamed, ‘Sprint up that fuckin’ hill, every one of you.’
We scrambled across deep gullies where heavy rainfall had washed away the soil. Many fell back and some closed to the front. I opted for the latter, falling over, pumping burning thighs until the lead in them prevented any more bravado.
We endured another forty minutes of hacking, grunting and moaning. We’d been running for nearly one and a half hours with no sign of looping back to where we had started. The DS turned us on to another tarmac road. A line of green trucks appeared to hover in the distance.
A few guys pulled out their water bottles as we reached the edge of the parking area. But the DS didn’t stop. He went straight up another hill. It was a sickener, a test of character to see who would quit and who would keep running on empty.
The bulk of the group carried on going before finally being ordered to stop and jog back to the transports. The ones that stopped short were never seen again.
One of the support staff bobbed up to me. ‘Collins, you need to see the OC next week about your medical. Looks like you failed your hearing test yesterday.’
That was bad news. I would have to come up with a plan. In the meantime, we all had jobs to get back to. We loaded our gear on to the wagons and braced ourselves, our battered knees bent at 90 degrees, for the five-hour journey back to London.
After a successful raid on Burger King we started looking forward to the week ahead. Flashman, one of the few officer recruits, was planning a speed-dating extravaganza with forty ‘hand-picked honeys’ in a Soho nightclub. His chiselled jaw, naturally manicured eyebrows, brown hair and blue eyes made him quite the Army pin-up.
I declined Flash’s opportunity of a lifetime because I already had plans, starting with a date with Georgie that night. I spruced up for the occasion, farmed the harvest of crud out of my ears and then we hit the town. Naturally I took the lucky lady out for dinner, went back to hers and – so she claims – kept her up all night.
Apparently I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow, snored like a congested rhino and played out every step of a recurring nightmare that my legs would seize up on the hills. Casanova, eat your heart out.
Chapter 12
Tortoise or the Hare
My next assignment with Top Gear involved turning my back on Le Mans in favour of what was probably the slowest motor race in the world – the Citroën 2CV 24-hour race at Snetterton.
Thirty horsepower gently encouraged the vehicle to a whopping top speed of 65mph, at which I drove for the entire lap. If you wanted to stop you posted a letter to the brakes and asked, politely, if they didn’t mind slowing the car down. I only lifted off the accelerator once, briefly, for the tight chicane on to the pit straight. Negotiating corners required a level of driver response you expected from a lemur during winter hibernation.
This unlikely event was billed as The Stig’s debut appearance in a motor race in June 2003. By the time I reached the circuit, the plan had changed. I had to muster another set of racing overalls to compete as Ben Collins.
I walked into the garage to find that ‘The Stig’ was emblazoned in vinyl on the side panel of the Deux Chevaux alongside the names of my team-mates. The first of these was Anthony, a ‘Racing Reverend’, who had earned his stripes by winning the ‘Top Gear challenge for the Fastest Faith’. The other co-driver was a Top Gear presenter called Richard.
‘Who are you then?’ the team manager asked me.
‘I’m Ben,’ I said. Then, before the penny dropped all the way, ‘I’m replacing The Stig. He can’t make it.’
Whilst the peace of the Loire valley was being broken by the crack and throb of V10s and V8s for Le Mans qualifying, I drowned my sorrows with a cup of tea. A fellow tea addict approached briskly in my direction, rubbing his hands together in expectation.
‘Ah, tea!’ he exclaimed.
‘PG’s finest.’ I passed him a polystyrene cup.
I guessed this was the presenter. He looked familiar, had a confident chirp and a clutch of hippie bracelets. Some abrasions on his otherwise perfectly formed hands suggested a rugged lifestyle. He was bubbling about his tea but was clearly even more excited about the race.
We shook hands and Richard nodded like a stag offering its horns before locking. His hair was short back then, before the days of the shaggy-dog bouffant that would snap the knicker-elastic of female audiences across the UK.
‘Have you done any racing before?’ I asked.
‘No, never. Well, I did an historic race in a Rover once.’
I grinned. ‘Well it all helps …’
I talked Richard through the basics, showed him the track and where he might expect to jostle with other competitors. I explained how he could slipstream other cars and dive down the inside to pass them. He assured me that he had no interest in overtaking but appreciated the advice. He was ‘just here to have a good time and soak up the experience’.
Within a few laps of his opening stint, Richard Hammond was dicing four abreast down the pit straight. He was clamped to this pack of racers like a junkyard dog for forty minutes until he stopped for a driver change. He emerged red-faced, beaming from ear to ear.
I raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Not interested in racing with anyone then, Richard? Just here for the craic, slow and sensible?’
‘Well, sort of, you know …’ he said a trifle sheepishly. ‘That guy in the green car cut me up, I had to do something!’
‘Of course. That must be why you scythed past three of them into the first corner and nearly ran into the turnip field.’
As for the Reverend, his Christian driving nearly resulted in a punch-up. A jumped-up, pumped-up little man with square shoulders appeared outside our garage and began remonstrating with him.
The Rev held out his palms as if he were delivering the Sunday sermon and politely explained that he’d only been trying to let him past, then apologised profusely if he had accidentally crossed him.
Mr Angry’s abuse continued unabated. I found myself drifting across the garage along with a few kindred spirits, including Hammond.
A few curt insults were exchanged and I may have suggested the other driver try cornering on his roof sometime, whilst Hammond’s stare became increasingly fixed and dilated. He looked like he was about to audition for a George Romero movie. ‘You really should leave,’ he rasped. ‘Right now.’
I liked Hammond; he was naughty.
Mr Angry scuttled off and I felt strangely proud to be included in his parting salvo, ‘Top Gear wankers …’
I had so far encountered two of the show’s presenters. The one with mad hair would have to wait. I had some pressing concerns of my own to deal with.
You know that your hearing test isn’t going well when you have to ask the doctor if it’s started yet. He looked up at me from his panel of buttons and switches and then threw in a few loud beeps as if to say, ‘Can you hear those, numbnuts?’
Some weeks later, I was facing the results with the officer in command of training.
The OC calmly laid down the law. ‘You failed the test quite considerably. I gather it’s something to do with your motor racing. The remainder of the course will be spent on the hills and we can’t have you being run over by a Land Rover because you didn’t hear it coming up behind you. You need to be signed off with a clean bill of health in order to continue.’
Driving noisy racing cars had damaged the hearing in my right ear at certain frequencies. There was no way I could pass the hearing test without cheating and I determined not to get binned unless I’d broken my neck. A hearing aid seemed like the best solution.
I procured a CIC (completely in canal) earpiece from a firm that supplied OAPs. It slipped deep inside my ear and avoided visible detection. The only trace was a tiny flesh-coloured ste
m that facilitated removal.
The drawback of the CIC model was that once the battery was engaged, it tended to emit a loud, high-pitched squawk as you inserted it into the ear. The kind of noise an Army doctor might notice.
I practised licking and quickly wedging it in with the battery door open so that I could keep my ear empty for inspection until the very last moment. I went for a medical at another, less suspecting regiment and duly passed.
The moment came to unveil my results before the official medical staff. I waited in line for my fate to be decided. I clung nervously to the hearing aid in case I was tested again, making sure not to drop the tiny battery. I accidentally closed the hatch.
‘BWOOEEEEPP’.
A few heads turned as I reached for the thigh pocket of my DPM trousers and pretended to adjust a prohibited mobile phone. Cold sweat spread across my face. I was rescued by a pair of double doors slamming open to our left and a red-eyed, red-faced, red-haired recruit bursting into view.
Mungo was one of the strongest guys on the course and had just been sacked for some bullshit anomaly with his eyesight. His outrage was evident. Such was the delicate balance we all hung on by.
A young medical officer hopped along the line. ‘Collins, you’re here for a hearing test, right?’
‘I passed it last week, sir. Here …’ I handed him my hooky papers. He glanced at them and moved on.
After an agonising wait, a clerk came out of another door and ordered me into a room to be tested. My heart sank and my clammy fingers cradled the earpiece. As I stepped forward the young doctor reappeared. ‘He’s fine, he’s already passed.’
He turned to walk away, then stopped and added, ‘Even if you fucking bluffed it.’
It was better than a lottery win. I stared blankly ahead and pretended simply to take this news in my stride. My reward was the Fan Dance.
Chapter 13
Chin Strap
