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‘That put-put is your sort of bag, isn’t it, Mark?’

‘Piss off, you knob. I didn’t pick it.’ He cracked a smile as he loosened the handbrake. ‘Looking forward to seeing you turn that whale around the BHS lobby …’

We broke the circuit down into sections and Andy Harris placed fire points at appropriate intervals. There was no way of rehearsing a sequence in a place like this; practising posed as much of a danger to people and equipment as doing it for real. Mark and I decided to run the chase piecemeal. Phil rolled the cameras from the moment we set off, just in case there were no second chances.

‘ACTION …’

Mark and I dropped our respective clutches. The lightweight Ford shot past Ann Summers whilst I sat there spinning. Eventually I pulled forward, wagging the Vette’s tail at Abbey Bank, shifting to second at Clark’s, then slithering right between two plinths towards Burton’s. I slipped in behind Mark as he braked to stop under the escalator.

I followed suit, but somehow the ABS re-activated. Sensing an oil slick, the pedal crackled under my foot and refused to direct brake fluid to where it was most urgently needed. The Vette pulled up behind the Fiesta with no more than twelve inches to spare.

We reversed back to our starting point where Gavin, TG’s young Scottish researcher, was laughing insanely and pointing to the lines of bubbling rubber now marking the previously pristine floor. He knew full well these would become his brain-ache come Monday morning.

‘Er … Sorry about that …’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Nothing you can do about it. Sounds mega.’

We popped the bonnet and wrenched out the ABS fuse. 95 per cent of the time, ABS was great. We just happened to be operating in the 5 per cent window where it wasn’t. Pulse braking, modulating the brake pressure manually, was the only way to slow effectively on ice. You had to lock the tyres momentarily and release them in time to steer.

Throwing in a kiss and crotch dance for our benefit, Iain May repositioned his camera behind a hot plastic chick in the Ann Summers window. The next stage involved gliding around the escalator, entering BHS in single file, then pulling a sharp 180 and coming straight out again.

Mark and I recced the foyer with the BHS manager. It was the size of a living room and bordered by sharp-edged platforms loaded to the gunwales with rails of clothing, mannequins and toys. There was barely enough room for the Vette to park, let alone skid in sideways.

We set up a mannequin in some racy underwear for me to wipe out and prepared to shoot. I whacked the volume up on the radio wedged into the door pocket. Phil’s voice blared, ‘Stand by to film, all cameras. Cars, are you ready?’

Our beeping horns echoed around the ceilings.

‘ACTION, ACTION.’

Mark feathered the Fiesta, allowing me to keep up in the Corvette, then we nailed it side by side down the corridor past Iain and his plastic friend with less than a foot separating us from the kerbing of the shop-fronts and the marble edges of the central islands.

The Café Nero concession underneath the escalator loomed into view. Time to brake. Mark surged ahead. The Corvette nosed round a display of flapjacks just as the front wheel snagged from the force of braking. I released the middle pedal and carried the extra speed to avoid piling into the cash register.

Mark pulled a modest 180 inside BHS as I zigzagged towards the entrance. The foyer had seemed a lot bigger on foot. As I crossed the threshold the marble gave way to linoleum. I added a few mph and yanked the wand of plenty towards the roof.

The handbrake failed to lock the rear wheels and the car didn’t turnat all. I sped towards the Christmas ornaments and emergency stopped, thanking my lucky stars that lino was phenomenally grippy stuff. Mark accelerated away, leaving me to make an Austin Powers three-point turn without the benefit of front-wheel drive.

I could see the skimpily dressed mannequin pointing at me and laughing in the rear-view mirror. I buried the throttle in reverse and hit her just hard enough