The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me (22 page)

‘Prepare to double … DOUBLE!’

The opening stretch was downhil , on tarmac. I kept movement in my right leg to a minimum by swinging it like a golf club. We crossed a stone bridge over a brook and began to climb.

The sweat started to work its way through our clothing, and by the time we reached the first peak our tightly packed unit was a steam-pumping locomotive in the morning air. Earlier in the course you might have relished another recruit biting the dust, but not now. Everyone had been through hel to get this far. Tunnel vision had caused guys to break up with their girlfriends or lose their jobs. Al that mattered was getting to the end.

My Achil es started to burn and I struggled with the pace. I focused on the others, the rhythm of the march, the distance to the guy in front, and dug deep to keep up.

We crashed along a dirt track and up a steep field. A few stray rocks tested our balance but not Jones, whose robotic legs churned it up at the front. His head and shoulders barely moved.

We took a road that led across an infinite patchwork of fields and I drew deep breaths, but started to slip back.

‘C’mon, Benny,’ Ninja puffed. ‘C’mon, mate.’ Everyone was hanging out of their arses.

The road kinked and curved and I pictured the ideal racing line to carry speed and power up the hil .

It was a monster climb, clobbering the group down to a fast, thrusting walk.

In a lay-by up ahead a DS climbed from his Land Rover. The pressure was on. Forget tea and biscuits – it was Ken. He spotted my sorry carcass a mile away and started licking his lips.

I, dumb beast of burden; he, master.

‘It hurts, yeah?
YEAH?
’ he shouted.

‘
Yes, Staff
.’

‘You ain’t got al fackin’ day!’ He jogged alongside. ‘Right, you’re gonna fackin’ sprint and catch that group in front. NOW –
GO!Fackin’ move, you cunt
.’

Bol ocks to my leg – anything to get him off my back. After a gutbusting 250-metre sprint I caught the tail end of the main posse, but I couldn’t live with them. I fought a lonely battle to complete the march without crippling myself in the process.

A decade or so later a radiant sight appeared on the horizon, more beautiful than what might lie at the end of any rainbow: a wagon.

Ken breathed, ‘Fackin’ good maan,’ as I hobbled past. I swear he might even have smiled.

I was total y bal -bagged and almost the last man in, but crucial y within the cut-off time.

We stil had to complete a minefield of tests and acquire skil s that were integral to the Unit to prove ourselves worthy of being counted among them. Simulations of life at the front – and behind the lines – were as hardcore as the DSs could make them. Once they had seen enough, we settled into the final stages of the exercise.

Afterwards, we sat on a muddy grass bank and re-assembled the utter shambles of our kit. My trousers were torn through the knees, my boots had been cut off, my big toe had a section missing and something green was growing out of my hands. Our own mothers wouldn’t have recognised us for the fur and grime on our faces. My bergen stank of shit. It was the best of times.

‘Wel done, fel as,’ said the training officer. ‘Transport wil be here to col ect you in forty-five minutes.

Get some packed lunches over by the wagons.’

Then he tossed our berets at us like Frisbees. It was the proudest moment of my life.

A few minutes later my neglected mobile phone connected me to the world with a mixed bag of messages. During my absence the race organisers had banned me from the next race meeting, then reduced my ‘suspended sentence’ to starting the next event from the back of the grid.

I
n spite of my exotic nightlife, I hadn’t missed a single episode of
Top Gear
and they had green-lit one of my mad ideas. A friend of mine was a shit-hot freestyle parachutist who reckoned he could land in a car if I held it steady at 50mph. We al gathered in one of those glass meeting rooms at the BBC. I made caveman drawings on a flip chart to storyboard the sequence we had in mind.

Andy, not unreasonably, wanted to know that we could actual y pul this off before shel ing out for a crew to capture footage of a man fal ing to his death, then being run over and kil ed al over again. He asked if we had been practising.

‘Yes.’

It was only a white lie. Tim had thousands of drops under his belt, and I could drive in a straight line at 50mph, no problemo.

‘We ran through it last week. We didn’t actual y land Tim in the car, but we matched speeds with him alongside it. We know it wil work.’

Tim stared at the carpet, determined not to catch my eye.

Top Gear
sourced a convertible Mercedes CLK55. It had great acceleration and al the windows folded flat, making it ideal for the job of dropping a man into the back seat from 4,000 feet. Back in those days there was no speculation about me being The Stig, so it seemed logical to do the stunt as Ben Col ins. I would be hiding in plain sight.

The location was RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, home to the RAF’s Bomber Command during the Second World War, then used by the American Air Force for keeping an eye on the Russians. The concrete runways were a little ancient but smooth enough to drive on.

I negotiated a day for rehearsals, fol owed by a day for filming. That way we could figure out if this thing was remotely possible before humiliating ourselves on national television.

Within half an hour of arriving at Bentwaters, my eyebal s were drying in their sockets from the continuous crosswind, and Tim’s expression was even darker than usual.

His parachute was a ‘Swoop’ canopy which could soar like a paraglider. As he approached the ground he would dive to build up speed, turn and slingshot forwards. It would be a bit like fal ing out of a swing – except he’d be travel ing at 130mph just a few feet from the deck.

‘What about this wind?’ I asked. ‘Can you jump in this?’ ‘If the plane can take off, I can jump. Landing could be tricky, but we won’t know until we try.’

Fordy the cameraman, Tim’s partner in the sky, reminded me of Captain Scarlet, right down to the dimpled chin. He chewed gum and smiled at us as if he was escorting a pair of loonies on a day out from the Cuckoo’s Nest.

We pinged a section of airfield where the main runway was met by another we used for parking the emergency vehicles. It gave me a wider run-up and the converging strips marked a clear X that provided a visible reference at high altitude.

In theory, the grass on either side of it would offer a marginal y softer bounce if things went wrong, but realistical y, splatting the grass at 130mph wouldn’t change the texture of the human jam Tim would be spreading.

We loaded him up with his harness and padded his arms and knees. I softened the landing zone with thick blankets and foam and wound the passenger seat ful y forward to give him space. For my own protection, I donned the obligatory Ray Bans.

Tim and Fordy joshed around as they climbed into the Cessna. I cranked up the air con as they took off and backed the car into position. After a few minutes I spotted the ruffled profile of a yel ow parachute. It was the first time I’d seen one of these chutes deploying, and for a horrible moment it looked like it might not open.
Time to switch on
. The countdown began. Tim tacked back and forth until he hit 800 feet. He’d rotate at that point and head for the ground like a Kamikaze pilot on his last hurrah, then swoop alongside the car for a couple of hundred feet before touching down.

At least, that was the plan.

Without warning, Tim spiral ed into a turn in front of me. I planted the throttle as he roared overhead at an incredible rate of knots. His speed dropped off within seconds and he landed as I drove past him.

‘We’l have to do better than that, Benny boy,’ he laughed.

I decided I’d have to start in front of him; there was no other way I could match his speed.

Tim stowed his chute. ‘Let’s try the next one for real; we might as wel get a feel for it.’

I craned my neck around the headrest as Tim dived into his turn and flew towards me in a blur of speed. As our paths col ided I fought the urge to veer out of his way.

‘Gotta keep it straight, Ben,’ he said when he’d kissed the concrete.

‘I know,’ I said sheepishly. ‘It just feels like I’m trying to kil you.’

‘Sod it, that’s my problem. Just stick the wagon under me whatever.’

We managed three more jumps and sorted the positioning of the Merc relative to Tim’s swoop. The big problem was the crosswind. Its strength and direction were changing constantly, which played havoc with his landing distance and speed.

The closest we got was when a gust blew him sideways and his feet nearly caught the inside of the windscreen.

I cal ed Wiseman before the close of play to cal off the shoot.

‘Don’t worry. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it. The crew’s already left. We might as wel film whatever you guys get up to tomorrow.’

Another mate of ours arrived to take some photos and found the whole scenario highly entertaining.

After a few beers we consoled ourselves that at least Tim’s death would be celebrated on global TV. His primary concern, as we rol ed out our sleeping bags under the stars, was that he’d forgotten to bring his sponsor’s branded T-shirt.

Come the day, the director arrived with the crew. We filmed the Merc doing some sporty cornering to cut in with the stunt itself. Then the mini cameras were rigged to the car and Tim’s head.

We had open-mic radios to keep in constant contact, so Tim didn’t need to press a button to talk during his descent. He’d give me a cue when to hit the gas according to his airspeed.

The director was bricking his britches. We were talking crosswinds, high-speed swoops and trying not to flip Tim with the windscreen. For some reason he wasn’t happy about adding a snuff movie to his showreel.

Tim and Fordy went up for the first run of the day. I visualised and rehearsed the scenarios in my head. If I could get under him early enough and match his top speed, he could drop into the car, then I’d have to decelerate hard because his chute would stil be dragging through the air. Al this had to happen during a frantic three to five-second window at best.

Tim dropped from the sky, I thundered forward and our paths converged towards the end of his swoop. Tim lobbed across the bow and plopped down on the tarmac.

Jim Wiseman thought it looked ‘awesome’, which was encouraging news. James May, a man obsessed with anything that flies, arrived to present the stunt. He was always a very warm, genuine fel ow who put a spring in everyone’s step when he was on set. His eyes glistened with excitement as he met the pilot and our drop zone co-ordinator and checked out Tim’s rig. James understood the complexities of what we were trying to achieve. He bounced from one leg to the other as the boys sparked up the Cessna; I couldn’t be sure whether that was because of the cold, or from sheer, unbridled anticipation.

On the second jump Tim lined up directly behind the car from the outset. He was lower earlier and managed to bounce his feet off the boot.

The next swoop was slightly higher but a gust of wind caught him and blew him forwards. I had to swerve to avoid him stacking it into the windscreen and as he tugged artful y at the canopy toggles to steer himself through the air. It felt like threading the eye of a needle on a bucking bronco.

With only enough time and fuel left for two more jumps, the pressure was on. Tim came in very fast and bloody low. So low that he skimmed the roof of the ambulance parked in the staging area. His approach was so wild that even the main camera missed the action – and I can count the occasions that happened on one finger. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t cue me on that run.

On the final attempt I hit the gas and Tim came in hot. He plonked down as large as life into the rear seat. Just as we rehearsed, I shouted at him to ‘Cut away, cut away,’ until he came back with ‘Clear, I’m clear.’ That meant he’d detached his canopy and could no longer be wrenched out of the car by it. It was a perfect run.

The Merc was an auto, so I flicked it right then left and buried the throttle to do a smoking doughnut.

Tim bounced around in the back and James whooped with delight. None of us could quite believe it had worked. It was a huge achievement on Tim’s part and his habitual frown was replaced by an understated but satisfied smile.

The stunt also entrenched a growing sense of confidence I was gleaning from the Army. The discipline and rigours of military life had broken down my mental barriers by al but kil ing me and developed an inner reserve of strength that I never knew existed. It was life-changing. After that, there was no fatigue, hunger or mental low that could not be beaten.

Working with people who shared that ‘can do’ attitude made the impossible possible and it was liberating to view every obstacle as an opportunity.

Tim came along to be filmed with me and Jeremy in the studio, where the business of hiding in plain sight felt mighty uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait to get out of there as Jezza congratulated us in front of the live audience. I ran off to get changed into my white suit, straight past Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who I was coaching fifteen minutes later.

I couldn’t wait to meet the polar explorer who had sawn off the ends of his own frostbitten fingers rather than wait for surgery; the man who cheated on SAS Selection by hitching a lift in a taxi between checkpoints, and was subsequently booted out of the Regiment for blowing up a film set.

Now this man, who at first appeared more like a retired Geography teacher, was sitting next to me with a demonic expression on his face.

I belted Ranulph into the driver’s seat and dashed around to the passenger side when I heard him revving the engine and digging around for a gear. He set off like he was starting a Grand Prix before I had even fastened my belts.

His acute gaze was fixed 1,000 yards down the road. His hands crushed the Liana’s steering wheel and he tore through the gearbox.