The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (14 page)

‘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 accidental y 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
real y
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 wel 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 wil be spent on the hil s 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 bil 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 stem 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 accidental y 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 bul shit anomaly with his eyesight. His outrage was evident. Such was the delicate balance we al hung on by.

A young medical officer hopped along the line. ‘Col ins, 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.

I
t pays to be a winner today, lads,’ the corporal smirked.

Up until this point our training had consisted of tabbing long distances across the Welsh mountains within a designated timeframe. For one of the longer, harder routes, involving a double traverse of a kil er peak, candidates were required to double their speed across the hil s in a test of wil power, aggression and bloody-mindedness. It was pass or fail. The march was led by the staff, so assuming they didn’t get lost, al you had to do was run.

Bernie was relishing the bleak forecast he’d seen on TV. ‘Gonna be fucking epic. Weather warning says there’s a force 8 gale this weekend.’

We enjoyed the rare pleasure of a night in a bed inside Barracks. It was a welcome indulgence, even though my pil ow smel ed like a group of piss-heads had wiped their asses with it. Even better, the fol owing morning we had a cooked breakfast fol owed by the briefing.

‘This is a basic test to see whether you have the physical stamina to pass this course. Anyone wearing a wristwatch wil be sacked; you won’t know the magic cut-off time, so you fucking push it al the way. If you notice that your legs are spinning and your bergen has overtaken you, that means you are fal ing over. Try not to let your bergen pass your body when you’re running downhil . No doubt there wil be a mass urination, so get your kit squared away and be ready to move at 0900.’

We stripped down to the bare basics: DPM trousers and Hel y Hansen T-shirt under a Gore-Tex outer liner. Staying warm wouldn’t be a problem.

Kojak was a bald regular Army veteran with a mysterious past, who met every chal enge by ripping its face off. He had opted for a black knee-brace contraption that was fresh out of
Mad Max
. He dropped his trousers in front of everyone to reveal his retro Y-front skivvies before diving in with a fistful of Vaseline. He swal owed some super-sized Ibuprofens, clapped his hands together and yel ed, ‘Come on then, ladies, let’s fuckin’ do this.’

We were issued mini flares and lined up alphabetical y, which meant I started near the front.

The training OC was a ginger whippet and led off like someone had just set off the hare from the starting gate. He must have been forty-odd, but was a mosquito on the hil s. Dirck, the uber-keen South African, was glued to his shoulder, as always, but the furious pace was too much for me. My chest was wheezing and rattling ‘like a whale giving birth to triplets’ according to Ninja, our resident martial arts guru, as he sauntered past me. Next to overtake was Flash who puffed, ‘Stick with the pack.’

I couldn’t, and sank further back.

A DS with an unusual y large head saw I needed some encouragement. ‘Bloody hel , mate, this is just the start. In through yer nose, out through yer mouth. Not exactly match fit, are yer?’

I’d always struggled running uphil . It was utterly demoralising being unable to summon the energy to keep up. The Lord of War, a guy I disliked intensely, was the next to catch me up. He thought he was some kind of military genius, had a grade one haircut, frowned on those outside the club and blew his nose repeatedly into his sleeve.

Our speeds were matched the way trucks are when they block motorways by overtaking each other with an infinitesimal y smal speed differential.

I went to pass him on his right and he blocked me. I ushered him aside with my rifle and we traded a few blows, swapping places another five times on the way up the mountain. A bit of venom went a long way to helping us get within 40 metres of the lead group as fog descended on to the open ground.

The wind kicked up, driving the cold rain hard and sideways. Fog clagged in like pea soup, engulfing the leaders and the mass of blokes behind, which meant we had no clue where we were going. The Lord of War turned right to fol ow the fence-line. I went straight over.

I checked my map on the run and fel through a bog right up to my tits. Bernie came to my rescue and dragged me out. We exchanged the same look. It said, ‘Where the hel are we?’ The DS at the last checkpoint had said to fol ow the fence-line, but we’d crossed two of the bastards since and lost sign of the footprints in the long grass.

We ran off in what turned out to be the right direction. Not everyone would be so lucky.

My beanie hat had swol en to the size of a turban, so I ditched it and jogged after Bernie, stuffing frozen chocolate into my mouth. The weather pounded in, the rain slashing so hard you had to make slits of your eyes to peer through. At the top of the hil we found a tent.

Laughing Corporal popped out with his arms outstretched like the messiah. ‘Al right there, lads, give us your numbers … crack on, boys, there’s a brew at the bottom, get your skates on.’

We bounced off rocks, tripped over clumps of grass and shimmied in the wind under the weight of a bouncing bergen, jolting belt kit, tired legs struggling to control our trajectory. I slipped on the wet grass, my head snapped back against the top of my pack and I found myself sliding like an upended tortoise 25 metres down the hil .

We caught one of the DSs, an officer, and fol owed him down a steep slope to the top of a waterfal , whereupon he produced a map … Not a good sign. The turnaround checkpoint was just 200 metres below us. I could see it. But it was five times the distance on the conventional trail. The edge of the waterfal wasn’t quite vertical and the trees either side looked like a possible route down …

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Bernie rasped.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Fucking certain. We’l go back up the track.’

A grey-haired couple made their way past us, walking their dog. ‘Good morning, boys.’

‘Good morning,’ we replied in choirboy unison.

Fol owing Indiana Jones had cost us ten minutes we didn’t have. We reached the bottom and charged along the tarmac road towards the ‘twat wagon’ parked in the layby, arriving in the nick of time. I necked my milkshake and used the hot tea to help me gobble clumps of concrete chocolate. Four swigs later it was time to saddle up for the return leg.

We headed straight back up the minging slope we had just come down, before curling round the mountain, back into the weather. You could lean 45 degrees into the wind without fal ing over. As the slope neared the vertical I dragged myself up by pul ing on a barbed wire fence, leaning on my weapon, hands and knees, chin strap. I was flat dead. At long last the descent began, and I started to catch people again. I ran past Plissken’s basha. He flicked the ash off a cigarette and shouted, ‘Straight down the hil , son. Keep it up.’

For the first time, I felt I was going to make it. It made the back of my head tingle. We sprinted the last kilometre. My boot lost traction for one final spectacular face plant into the muddy track.

The finish was in sight and the lead group were cheering us in, with Kojak whipping up proceedings into a drag race with a guy who suddenly appeared behind me.

‘
He’s catchin’ ya. C’mon, lads, he’s catchin’ ya
!’

I was the seventh man in.

The DS stared at me over his clipboard, unable to identify the bog man standing before him.

‘It’s Col ins, Staff.’

His pencil ticked me off. A little over half our number made the cutoff point. Laughing Corporal described the cul as ‘carnage’.

We shuffled towards our transports like a gang of rubbery-legged John Waynes. The pain in our bodies was far more bearable than the anguish of the guys who didn’t make it; some were lost in the fog for hours, including my old chum and navigational genius the Lord of War.

I melted into my seat and turned on my mobile. A text from one of the
Top Gear
production assistants read, ‘Naughty naughty mr stig, heard you were tel ing people who you were in a restaurant last night …’

‘
What
?’ I said aloud. I must have missed the section of the Naafiwith white tablecloths.

I angrily texted my reply. ‘No I didn’t, no I wasn’t. Must be someone else.’

A couple of beeps heralded the reply. ‘Watch out. remember what happened to the last stig …’

The brutality of the march had reduced our group to a more manageable number. The survivors included a few surprises like Johnny, the silent but apparently deadly schoolteacher, Milo the IT technician and one born-again racing driver.

The RML team put their faith in me and kept my car on the track for the remainder of the Ascar season, in spite of the financial burden. It was a magical year. We led every race, winning most of them, with the help of soldiers from al regiments, some of them working on the pit wal . Colonel White, who was running the exercise, reckoned it was the most effective recruiting drive they’d ever employed.

We had a good lead going into the last race weekend of the season. The championship title was within our grasp, so it was time for a pep talk with Phil, the team manager.

‘Now, I’m sure you’re aware of this Texaco Trophy they’ve thrown into the mix for this weekend …’

I certainly was. It was a special award for the driver who scored the most points over the final weekend.

‘Wel , you can forget al about that bol ocks. You’re here to become a champion and that’s al you need to focus on. Al you need to do is finish tenth in both races to win it.’

He was absolutely right. Settle for tenth. No brainer.

I took the TA car on to the track for practise and realised we had a gift. I’d been driving the wheels off it al season, running on the edge to be faster than the other drivers. This time, we held the advantage.

And with Phil’s new, faster wheel-change guns it meant we could keep the lead during our pit stops.

I parked the car on pole position, which raised one of Phil’s eyebrows.

We absolutely romped both races. I knew that I was safer out of reach than stuck in the pack. The only time the others came close was during a safety car with a few of the real y fast boys on my tail.