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‘How’s he going?’ Wilman asked.

‘He’s on it. He’s just four tenths of a second short of Simon Cowell. He can probably beat it if we stick with him.’

‘OK. Keep me posted; I want fireworks out there.’

Jay was super-consistent. I tried everything to pull the extra time out of him and it must have pissed him off big time to be so close, but not quite close enough.

‘Keep pushing; you’ve got to find more in the penultimate corner.’

‘I am, man. I’m braking as fucking late as I can in this HEEEAP OF SHIIIIIT. Am I there yet, have I beaten the time, can you just tell me?’

I shook my head. ‘All I can say is you haven’t done your best time yet. But you will.’

‘C’MON! You’re fucking kidding. Grrrrrrrr …’ He banged his head on the steering wheel a few times and blew out a lungful of air. He was working himself up to a performance.

‘If you really want this, the money is all in that corner over there. Brake so late that you think you’re having an accident, let go, the back end starts sliding, then bury the throttle.’

The producer raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm, I wonder what will happen now …’

Sure enough, Jay went flying into the weeds. I decided it was time to bring out the spare. It would give the boy a chance to draw breath and gather himself mentally.

Jay went out for two more laps. We remained stony-faced. Grant told him that he could do some more laps if he wanted but that he’d reached a plateau. It was time for the ordeal of the leather sofa. He tapped his foot like a jackhammer throughout the interview, then went still as Jeremy started to read out the time.

As usual, he extracted every last ounce of tension from the announcement.

‘One minute …

‘Forty …

‘Five …

‘Point …

‘Eight!’

Jay had pipped Cowell by a tenth of a second. He leapt off the leather sofa and danced an emphatic jig. His passion was utterly infectious.

He expressed his gratitude in the best way he knew how – by scaring the crap out of me and his two mates in a C63 Merc. He shaved the wall at Hammerhead, drifting the car wide through the corner, and I couldn’t wait to get my own back. We swapped seats and I returned the favour. He chanted ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard …’ throughout the process. I took it as a compliment.

* * *

During eight years of racing around the Top Gear circuit, my glittering array of celebrity drivers had to put up with muffled rantings from behind the helmet of their white-clad passenger. There was the odd exception, however, who needed to hear my every word.

I was in plain clothes when I met Wilman in the OB truck, but he still hailed me as per normal.

‘Stig … We want to do a lap with a blind guy. Do you reckon he can do it?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Um … I don’t see why not, if he can hear what I’m saying. Can I sit next to him?’

‘Of course. But we don’t just want him to crawl around out there. It needs to be a proper lap. I mean we want him to do a time, like close to Richard Whiteley or something.’ My most challenging pupil yet was the kind of gentle soul who might run a local toy store. He had a regular, sighted driving partner with whom he’d developed his own arcane communications system. At first, they didn’t even want me in the car with them. Listening to them discussing the track and how they’d indicate the required speeds and directions made me feel like an amateur. It was so precisely coded that I couldn’t wait to see them in action.

I insisted on at least demonstrating which way the track went, so that the sighted man could take in the layout of the circuit and the blind driver could listen in. I promised to shut up the rest of the time and just observe.

So far, so good …

After a couple of laps I banged in a fast one, fast enough for them to agree I should stay in and keep talking. We swapped seats. The blind man slid behind the wheel with me alongside and his partner in the back.

At that moment Dunsfold looked a lot more twisty than usual and the old Suzuki Liana felt faster too. There were tyre walls, trees and concrete outbuildings that