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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 hill. 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 all fackin’ day!’ He jogged alongside. ‘Right, you’re gonna fackin’ sprint and catch that group in front. NOW – GO! Fackin’ move, you cunt.’

Bollocks 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 totally ball-bagged and almost the last man in, but crucially within the cut-off time.

We still had to complete a minefield of tests and acquire skills 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.

‘Well done, fellas,’ said the training officer. ‘Transport will be here to collect 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 organ-isers had banned me from the next race meeting, then reduced my ‘suspended sentence’ to starting the next event from the back of the grid.

Chapter 17

Happy Landings

In 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 all 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 actually pull this off before shelling out for a crew to capture footage of a man falling to his death, then being run over and killed all 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 actually land Tim in the car, but we matched speeds with him alongside it. We know it will work.’

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

Top Gear sourced a convertible Mercedes CLK55. It had great acceleration and all 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