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‘Sod that.’

The car chase we were due to rehearse over the course of a month was being billed as the biggest in London’s history. A treasure hunter played by Nicolas Cage sets out on a global quest to unearth hidden treasures and discover clues that lead him into the narrow confines of London’s square mile. The hero finds himself in the cross hairs of the villain (Ed Harris) and puts the pedal to the metal to escape in a high-octane pursuit.

Blocking off central London to shoot a movie was as complicated as it sounds. The stunt team had to perfect a diverse number of driving sequences on the airfield in order to hit the ground running on locations with restricted access, such as Buckingham Palace, Whitehall and St James’s. Everything had to run like clockwork in order for us to race through the streets, shoot a scene in five minutes, and return the ‘set’ to its rightful owners. Many of the scenes left no margin for second takes because the carnage left nothing to film with.

We were also due to film in London’s financial centre. If we made a mistake and trashed the Bank of England, things would turn ugly.

They used animated storyboards called ‘previsuals’ to bring the story of the car chase to life and develop a clear understanding of the director’s vision. It also allowed them to determine what was actually achievable before the production started burning millions of pounds on location.

London’s routes and intersections were painstakingly re-created at the airfield, using cones, tyres and tape. Twenty drivers took to cars, bikes and trucks, with the remainder of the stuntmen and women acting as passers-by. This was pre credit crunch, so we weren’t allowed to run over real bankers.

During one rehearsal on the airfield we deployed every vehicle to simulate a scene where the Mercedes swerved in and out of oncoming traffic, whilst being chased by a supercharged Range Rover. Rob was working as Nick Cage’s double in the standard Merc, so I took it in turns with him to drive the route or ride along as a passenger so that the pod could be deployed in any scene.

We tore straight into it. We overtook everything in our path at 70mph before bouncing across a pedestrian crossing, skidding past a police car and escaping down the pavement with people jumping left and right.

Of the seventy-odd vehicles we had on site about twenty were police cars, mostly Omegas. We were standing around drinking espressos from the catering wagon, the holy grail of snacking, when some chavs barrelled on to the airfield and pulled a handbrake turn in their Citroën. Our stuntmen didn’t even flinch. Two of them skidded across the bonnet of their vehicles and shot off in pursuit, blues and twos blaring, cutting the Citroën off with a spectacular pincer movement. The chavs nervously produced their licences and tootled off as reformed drivers.

I seriously admired these guys and found we had a lot in common, except that I preferred not to be run over by a car or in any way set fire to or shot off a horse at 50mph. But that’s just me.

We were nailing the car chase and getting to grips with the pod car. At first it felt like it would topple over every time I turned into a corner, so we built up gradually to full speed. My distance from the car’s centre of gravity added a pendulum effect that clouded the normal sensation of driving and made my caged office feel like an out of body experience. I gained confidence with each run, but in the end it took a leap of faith to determine whether it actually had a tipping point.

‘Can I give it the big one, Ian?’

‘Oh, go on then,’ he said. ‘Start on those damp bits of track before you try dry land.’

The wet surface made it less likely that the car would dig in and roll over. Even inside a steel frame, if it did flip I was a long way from bullet-proof.

I blasted up the runway and yanked the handbrake. Ooooh, shiiit. As the suspension took the strain my metal cage wobbled and gyrated. The Merc swung through 90 degrees, I rocked around in my seat and it