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That had not gone well in my book. I walked into BHS for the verdict. Phil and six of the boys were creasing up with laughter at the playback on his monitor.

‘Can we do that again?’ I said. ‘Just a splash of water on the deck and it should spin properly next time …’

‘Nope.’

The lino was covered in tyre marks. On closer inspection I realised that the rubber had actually burnt into the polymer. Pat, ever the optimist, called for Gavin to bring some soapy water.

The next scene was even more demanding. With a crew filming from the bridge, we needed to drive up two narrowing corridors split by a whopping marble-sided arboretum towards a large circular area bordered by M&S and Costa Coffee, where we had our unit base. The open tab there was causing quite a stir amongst the fire crews. The boys were cutting a swathe through gargantuan quantities of coffee and cake. It was not quite midnight, and they were already on the brink of serious abdominal injury.

We tore out of BHS and into the open corridor. I flicked the Vette sideways, its arse a couple of feet away from a fully stocked jeweller’s window, and dived through the minute gap that separated Next from a marble island. Mark raced into the main hallway, pulled a 180 around the palm tree at its centre and we went head to head. I pulled a rapid 360, swatting aside the chairs we had planted outside Costa.

We rolled through one set-up after another. A rising walkway gave the Vette every excuse to light up its rear wheels. We flattened strategically placed Teddy bears at Clintons, boshed a stack of watermelons and arrived at the first floor gangway.

Only a wooden handrail and a thin pane of glass now separated us from thin air and the floor below – enough to stop an over-excited child but not a tonne of car. We didn’t have time to put it to the test; something far more dangerous had arrived.

Jeremy feverishly thumbed his script as he walked through the atrium in his stock uniform of baggy woolly pully and blue jeans. He threw a lofty one-armed salute to us on the upper deck.

‘I imagine you’re a dog with two dicks in this place.’

‘Oh yes.’

God bless him. The whole chase had been Jezza’s mad idea, and thanks to Wilman’s miracle factory, there we were doing it. I chased Jeremy on camera for the rest of the night as he skidded through the sequence we had mapped earlier. Jeremy’s tongue-in-cheek review ended with the Fiesta plunging into the sea during an amphibious assault by the Royal Marines on a North Devon beach. But that came later.

When Phil called a ‘wrap’ on proceedings four hours later, we were relieved and disappointed in equal measure. We’d pulled off the near impossible task of shooting a car chase through a treacherously narrow shopping centre without damaging the cars.

I took a short cut towards the car park exit and a rusty metal spike came out of nowhere to meet me. I anchored up and felt the back of my neck freeze. It was like walking out of the casino with the jackpot, only to trip and drop the lot down a storm drain. The rear of the Vette skidded across the red painted lines and the nose-mounted mini camera came within an inch of being terminally kebabed.

I handed the keys to Pat – resplendent in a Russian trapper’s hat with the flaps down – without further delay.

Chapter 32

Bus Racing

Every now and then evolution takes a backward step. The decision to drop London’s iconic double-decker Routemaster in favour of the Bendy Bus was more of a quantum leap.

I had the pleasure of driving some ‘fast laps’ aboard a Routemaster at Dunsfold and marvelled at its stability. Controlling something so big and potentially destructive was awesome. The giant rubber treads churned at the tarmac and emitted truly threatening groans, but I quickly figured out that it wouldn’t topple over, regardless of what I did with the steering. Replacing this Goliath of public transport with a vehicle that could drift sideways to its heart’s content but couldn’t turn a street corner was one of Ken Livingstone