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James and Madison were the picture of a dysfunctional couple. With the corners tightening into hairpin bends, James put in some spirited helmsmanship, rolling the car into its suspension so much that the wing mirrors scraped the tarmac. Maddie fiddled with her lipstick and looked singularly uninterested. We stopped at a checkpoint and I asked what she thought of James’s driving.

‘’E’s awful. I thought I was gonna be sick. In them corners I looked out the window and all I could see was road.’

‘You should be fine. Just keep your arms inside the car if it really leans over.’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

God knows what a young girl like Maddie made of a clique of eccentric blokes filming cars, but her previous experience certainly came in handy. Phil fidgeted and gnawed his nails as he summoned up the courage to explain a delightfully gratuitous shot of her working her magic with some soap and water.

‘Basically, you’ll be leaning over the car in a tight, er, white T-shirt. And as you’re wiping the car, you know, um, well, some of the water will, er, you know, get on your shirt …’

‘Oh, wet T-shirt,’ Maddie chirped. ‘Yeah, I done that one. No problem.’

We bolted a small camera to the front of the Rangie, so I could chase the farting French supermini through the corners and get some forward tracking shots. Casper had been glued to his viewfinder monocle for nearly three hours, which was murder for motion sickness and would bubble chunks in the hardiest of men.

I had to match James’s speed precisely to keep the nose of the Rangie a few feet from the Citroën as we belted through some dense woodland.

With James leading the way, we inevitably got lost in the town centre and arrived too late to enter some of the stages. The rally rounded off with a few circuits. I joined Grant, who was busy tanning his biceps, to watch the presenters pound around in a chase scene from an Inspector Clouseau movie. Clarkson’s helmet poked out of his convertible like a cartoon character as he was harassed by a Ford Mustang.

James finished off his day with Madison over a delectable picnic of strawberries, foie gras and chilled Chardonnay. Madison swooned in the love scene; after five takes the sun and the plonk had taken their toll.

Brian the dwarf announced that he was unusually accomplished at handling liquor for a man of his stature, but was very concerned for Madison’s wellbeing. We helped her trot indoors to drink some water in the shade. I was looking forward to dinner.

The patron of the rustic hacienda reserved a special table for the twenty-five film crew and guests in the far corner of his restaurant. Brian tucked straight into the vino rosso and Madison did her best to focus on her soup. On the arrival of the second dish, Brian appeared excessively disgruntled by the temperature of his spaghetti. When he rejected it a third time and his noggin started circumnavigating the rafters, I suspected that his gazpacho was due a second coming.

I hustled Brian into the fresh air with Grant, and we propped him up against the garden table. We really needed to get him back to the hotel, but not before a final showdown of man pride.

I had already laid waste the crew champ in an arm-wrestling match: now it was Grant’s turn to feel the burn. As we clapped our paws together and took the strain, I began to regret my recent enthusiasm for the wine and garlic mussels.

Iain helpfully chanted in my ear, ‘Go on, Grant, have ’iiim …’

Russell, the cockney soundman, offered me some cool instruction. ‘All you gotta do, Ben, is go over the top. Seen it a million times; it’s all in the wrist.’

Grant stayed as firm as the pillars of Zeus. It was a dead heat.

‘Well,’ Russell said, ‘seems the only way to settle this one, fellas, is a good old-fashioned fistfight. Chop chop.’

We completed the night in a taxi with a paralytic dwarf, a broken stiletto and a sore arm instead.

Chapter 21

If It’s Got Wheels

The crew were as adaptable as they were wicked. By land, sea and air, from the polar icecaps to exploding volcanoes in Iceland, they