The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [127]
My view of the action through the Touareg’s windscreen was partly obscured by a ten-foot-tall steel frame extending from the bumper for elevating the camera. Its operator sat behind me whilst the second unit director viewed the action through his monitor. The camera itself was very much in harm’s way. Even though the beer barrels were made of rubber rather than steel, they were spinning towards us at 60mph.
With fake beer spurting high into the air and cars smashing into each other a few metres away, I did my best to steer a course through the beer barrel asteroid field. After five takes one of the barrels bounced curiously from the tarmac and smacked the camera head on. The director loved it, so the shot ended up in the final cut.
Thirty cars were destroyed in the course of the production, including eight police cars in a roadblock that turned into a demolition orgy.
The film was a box-office hit and my broken bones benefited from the ‘time off’, but the secrecy of my other life, my Top Gear life, was gradually being eroded. I did an interview with my local paper about the London car chase and the first question was, ‘Are you The Stig?’
The rest of the interview centred on the movie, but not one word of that made it into the three-page feature they published, which was entirely about me being the man in the white suit. Thankfully the story didn’t go national, that time.
There were other own goals. I’d sometimes arrive on jobs in person to discover that the people I was meeting were expecting The Stig. The all-seeing eye of the Internet and ‘free press’ collated rumours and every scrap of information they could get hold of, adding fuel to the flames.
I relied on the fact that there was no evidence that I had ever worked for Top Gear, and the white helmet was my shield. Then, one day, I was walking across London in character to promote Top Gear magazine when a piercing camera flash went off ahead of me. It defeated the dark visor and snapped a clear image of part of my face.
Georgie joked that it looked like Damon Hill …
Chapter 29
Pedal on the Right
There was an unwritten rule for The Stig that I strived continuously to overturn. He was never allowed to compete in a race in the ‘real world’; his air of invincibility could never be put at risk. The frustration for me was that The Stig could have landed the kind of plum racing drives that Ben Collins had always dreamed of – and my bid to have him compete in NASCAR and Le Mans fell on deaf ears.
Then, in 2007, the rules were bent.
‘We’re doing the twenty-four-hour Britcar race with you and the presenters. We need you to go to Silverstone and train them.’
My only issue was that the race coincided with the date Georgie was due to give birth. I suggested staying at home but, bless her, Georgie said she would rather watch paint dry than have me hovering at home with an egg timer. I kept my phone with someone I trusted whenever I was on track, in case I had to do a runner.
Britcar was an amateur-friendly format hosting a mishmash of different GT racing categories. The bottom category was more or less for road cars. Top Gear got themselves a diesel 3 Series BMW. It was sporty enough – perhaps – to raise the pulse of a Tibetan monk, but on a Grand Prix circuit it was a pretty tame ride. Nonetheless, we were going racing.
First order of business was to get the boys their race licences. I called Jeremy ahead of the first session and he seemed to be taking it seriously.
‘You’d better give me some proper lessons, because Silverstone is a circuit which has permanently mystified me. I did millions of laps there once and never had a clue what I was doing.’
Buoyed by his sincerity, I looked forward to the training session. After all, I knew Silverstone