Filming Speed was my kind of TV, because I was doing stuff I was genuinely interested in, trying to break records and pushing myself in training and while we were filming. The first programme of the second, four-part series concentrated on me and Jason Miles trying to break the 24-hour distance record for pedalling a tandem. And we did, covering 565 miles in the time. The next was about Pikes Peak, and then I tried to break the 85 mph world speed record for hovercraft. That didn’t go totally to plan, it flipped while I was attempting the record, but I did reach 79 mph, with a hovercraft that was built in a hurry and to a very small budget. The final episode, shown in the autumn of 2015, was based on an attempt to beat the world gravity racer speed record. It stood at 84.4 mph and was set by an American. The Americans call it downhill soapbox. In America, soap powder used to be delivered in big wooden boxes. Right back as early as the 1930s, kids, or their parents, would fit pram and rollerskate wheels to these boxes to make cheap, DIY go-karts, so that’s how they got the name, but I don’t like the description soapbox, so I called it a go-kart. (Like I went sledging in the first Speed series, not tobogganing. We don’t have toboggans or soapboxes in Lincolnshire. We have sledges and go-karts.)
The most important bit of information about this record is that no pedalling or power is allowed. After an initial push-off it’s all gravity-assisted, so aerodynamics are important and, like everything, these karts had developed over the years. Even by the 1960s they were looking like mini land speed record cars and little streamlined Bonneville salt flat racers.
The record we were looking to break was set by an old boy in America. He had built a right fancy thing, a work of art, with wishbone suspension like a Formula One car. There are videos of him setting his record on a public road, with traffic on it, but the location was kept secret. The biggest thing with this job is finding a hill steep and straight enough to get up to speed. You need it as straight as possible, because any momentum you lose braking for the entry of a corner takes a lot of getting back on the exit of the corner. The American bloke achieved 84.4 mph for a split second and went to Guinness with the evidence, but there is no official record, because Guinness wouldn’t recognise it. When we talked to the Guinness Book of Records people they told us we had to set the top speed as an average measured over 100 metres. This American bloke hadn’t done that, but his speed was the benchmark we set ourselves and we had our work cut out to beat it.
The researchers at North One, the TV production company, got on the case trying to find the ideal location. They looked all over the UK first but didn’t find anything. Then they decided on Mont Ventoux in the Provence region of France. There was a place in Brazil that would’ve been better, but the production company had already spent too much going to Pikes Peak, so France it was.
I’d heard of Mont Ventoux through reading about and listening to the Tour de France. It’s one of the classic climbs in that race. Chris Froome won the last stage that finished at the summit, in 2013, and Tom Simpson, the top British cyclist of his day, died climbing the mountain in the 1967 Tour. His death was blamed on exhaustion, dehydration and using amphetamines to keep going. He collapsed off his bike and couldn’t be revived, so the mountain has become famous, or infamous, among cyclists.
Mont Ventoux is also famous for being bald near the top. Its landscape gets compared to the surface of the moon. They say it used to be covered in forest, but all the trees were cut down for shipbuilding and the weather is so wild and windy up there the trees have never grown back. Wind speeds up to 200 mph have been measured on the mountain, but we had two mint days. It couldn’t have been any better.
After working all day Monday and up till dinner-time Tuesday at Moody’s, I drove back home to load up the trick carbon-fibre go-kart, that had been built specially for the job, then set out to drive out to France. The go-kart wouldn’t fit in my van, so we borrowed a medium-wheelbase Ford Transit.
Me and my mate Tim Coles headed off, driving pretty much non-stop, except for the Channel Tunnel, for the next 900 miles. We drove all through the night, me driving till about three in the morning and Tim doing the last couple of hours.
Tim is in his late forties and I see a load of him. We call him the beef farmer, but he’s spread his wings and has about a thousand pigs as well now. He’s a real good man to do a road trip with. I originally met him through the trucks and I like him because he’s understated, he’s not trying to be owt, he’s just dead level. He loves his dirt track but doesn’t race; he helps a load of folk out and he has a track on his farm that I ride at. And he has a really interesting view on the history of World War II.
We got to the hotel in Malaucène, the local town where all the film crew were staying, at five o’clock Wednesday morning. Sensibly, they’d all gone down the day before, but I genuinely couldn’t because there was too much on at work. When we parked outside the hotel I climbed in the back of the van with the go-kart, while Tim stayed in the front and we had a couple of hours’ sleep, before we had a pizza and a slice of custard pie for breakfast, then drove up the mountain to suss the job out.
The plan was to head onto the mountain at 8am for practice at nine. It had been arranged that, for the next two days, we could have the run of a certain section of road for 20 minutes in every hour between nine and five.
We met the folk who had built the go-kart. They were a team from Hallam University, Sheffield, made up of Alice, Heather, Christina and Terry. I think the TV lot had asked for this episode to have a bit more female focus than previous ones, and the women were all totally switched on, especially Heather; she was a doctor, a real clever lass. Terry was the fella on the team, and he’d done a lot of machining and fabricating of the go-kart.
While we were waiting to go I told the Hallam lot that I reckoned we’d know on the first run if we were going to break the record or not in the time we had. I wasn’t being negative, but I thought if I’d only done 60 mph or thereabouts at the first attempt, there was no way we were going to find 25 mph in two days. On the section of road we’d chosen to concentrate on, there were a couple of corners that I had to get a good run out of to reach the target speed. We might find a couple of mph here and there, because I knew I’d get out of the corners faster after a couple of runs at them, but I was trying to be realistic when I said if we’d only done 60-odd, we weren’t going to do it.
After weeks of preparation and all the effort that had gone into building this amazing go-kart, it was time to get in and see what we could do. It was built with loads of adjustment and variables, especially to the suspension and geometry. We could also change the tyres, change the tracking, castor and camber and try pushing off or not pushing off.
The first run felt smooth, but I only did something like 70 mph. Everything felt safe and the thing handled well, but even then I started to think we were going to struggle to break the record. Still, we had the mountain for two days, so there was nothing to do but keep plugging away.
As the day went on it was obvious the Mont Ventoux people in charge of closing the road for us were bloody brilliant. We didn’t use the 20-minute slot in every hour because we were adjusting stuff, but then they’d let us have half an hour when we were ready to go.
The TV lot had employed Tag Heuer to officially time our record attempt and we kept adjusting the timed 100-metre section during the practice day, moving it further down the mountain so I could accelerate for as long as possible and brake right at the death before the corner at the end of our section.
By the end of Wednesday we’d done 82 mph. We had found 5 mph just swapping from treaded tyres to slick tyres. We had worked out straight away on the first day that there was no point in having the lasses give me a push-start. We had done some filming at the UK Olympic bobsleigh team’s headquarters near Bath, to practise the running push-start, but when we got to the mountain, the section we decided to use had a corner just after the start, a tight right-hander, so there was no benefit from pushing. If I was given a hell of a push it meant I’d just have to brake harder to scrub off more speed to get around it safely. By just having a gentle push, I got to the corner at a good speed to make it through using the optimum line for the run down the long straight. I had learned the course a bit and ended up clocking a speed just 2.4 mph shy of the existing record. The plan all along was not to try to break the record on the Wednesday, but to use the first day to get a feel for the job. Still, we nearly broke it – even though I’d thought, after the first run of the day, we weren’t going to do it.
We were all feeling pretty good when we drove back to the pretty town at the bottom of the mountain. Malaucène is very French, a bit run-down but with modern cafés, a real laid-back place.
That night I stayed in the Domaine des Tilleuls hotel, the place I slept outside previously. It was just a mile from the bottom of the mountain, posh as hell, really arty-farty. There was no television in the room, but Time and fascinating French magazines were lying around. I’d only slept for a couple of hours in the back of the van the night before, so I was feeling knackered, but we all went to a posh restaurant, and I had a couple of beers. It was the last night of filming for the whole series so it was good to just get out together.
I sat with the Hallam University lot, about a dozen of the film crew and a French lass called Hélène Schmit, who featured in the programme. She was the world street luge champion, an expert at racing what looks like a massive skateboard which you lie on, feet first, and hammer down mountains on. The TV lot got her involved to show how body position and the like affect the vehicle. It was more for TV than to actually help my record attempt. After 15 years of racing motorbikes, if I haven’t worked out that moving around on the machine helps it go around corners by now there isn’t a lot of hope for me. Still, it all adds to the programme and she wasn’t hard to look at, so no harm done.
I’d enjoyed all the stuff we’d done for this series of Speed, but the filming was starting to get in the way of work. I also felt I had no time to myself. On Saturday or Sunday I’d be racing my pushbike or motorbike, or training for a race. On Monday morning I’d be up at five o’clock to bike to work. I tried to make Monday my night off, and I’d aim to get home from work and try to stay out of the shed, by just reading instead and planning to get an early night, but it hardly ever happened that way. I’d end up in the shed and the early night would be out of the window, or I’d call at my mates, the Maws, and still be there at 11. Tuesdays would normally see me cycling to work at five or five-thirty again. Then I’d leave at five or six o’clock and drive to wherever we were filming for Wednesday morning. I had been filming on nearly every Wednesday and Thursday from February till the middle of October.
I’d get home at daft o’clock on Thursday night, go to work at Moody’s on Friday, bike home, then, if I’m not working Saturday, I’d be trying get caught up at home, building flat trackers, preparing the Martek for Pikes Peak, racing motorbikes or doing a training ride.
I’m not complaining, but it felt good to be finished with the filming, and by the end of the evening I was feeling a bit drunk. Not drunk, drunk, but on the way. I had an early night and was dead to the world, so I wasn’t even going to start thinking about going to a bar late at night with a good-looking luge lady. I’m not saying she wanted humping, but I’ve learned my lesson from past mistakes and I was seeing a new girlfriend, Sharon.
As far as a timetable for day two on Mont Ventoux went, the plan was the same as the practice day – meet up on the mountain at eight for a nine start.
I had a proper French breakfast with some strong French coffee. I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but when in Rome. We drove to the mountain, parked up near the bottom of the run and I got into my race overalls to be ready. We all waited at the point the run finished and sussed a plan. We made some small adjustments to the go-kart, changing the castor and camber of the wheels. We knew if we added a bit more ballast we’d break the record on the first run, then we could spend the rest of the day trying different stuff to go faster still, because I didn’t just want to break the record, I wanted to smash it if I could. Anyone who attempts a record like this is dealing with gravity, so if anyone was going to beat us, it would be by bugger all. No one was going to do 120 mph.
I was really looking forward to getting back in the go-kart, having the canopy clipped down and setting off for another run down the mountain, trying to get every corner entry and exit perfect. We just had to wait for the ambulance to arrive. You can’t be doing these things by the seat of your pants any more, especially when the TV and timing officials and all that get involved. You have to get all the proper insurance and hire the correct medical cover. The TV lot even put crash barriers along sections of the roads and covered the metal Armco barriers with softer stuff in case something when wrong.
With time ticking on, me and Tim drove to the top of the section we were using. We got a message, telling us the ambulance was going to be another half an hour, but by now that strong French coffee had, as Viz comic puts it, greased the runway.
I asked Tim if he had any bog roll, because I was breaking my bloody neck for a shit. We had a look around and he found some kitchen roll. I said, ‘Give it here, I’ve got a big job on.’
I’m not afraid of shitting outside, so I traipsed up this mountainside, right into the woods. We were on the lower slopes of the mountain. Higher up, where it is bald, white rock, the road wasn’t suitable, because there were too many hairpins and I wouldn’t be able to get a good run at it without having to brake for another sharp bend. We had settled on a 2 km section with a couple of kinks in it that was still surrounded by woodland.
After a few minutes’ hiking I found a suitable spot. Then it entered my head that trying to drop the kids off at the pool while I was wearing my race overalls could potentially get messy, so I took them off and hung them from a tree branch. I took my undies off and hung them up too. Then I got straddled and leant against this tree. From there I was looking out across what looked like the whole of the south of France. I could see the Alps, the sun was just coming through the trees, I’d had a real good night’s sleep after a few beers, I was pretty sure we were going to set a new world record, and it was a mint morning. I was feeling good.
Before anything even started moving I knew it was going to be a big moment in my life. I didn’t want anything to spoil it. It was a bit of ‘me time’, that’s why I made the effort to take my overalls fully off. Sitting like that – my back straight, against the tree trunk, like a bear scratching its back, my legs akimbo, bent at right angles – I would be able to see the fruits of my labour. When I’m at work and need the bog I’m not a read the paper man, but it’s my time. I like to just relax. It was the same on the side of this French mountain, and I was propped against the tree for a good five minutes.
I’d rather have a good shit than a good shag, any day of the week. I told this to a mate and he said, ‘You’re obviously not shagging right.’ And I told him, No, you’re not shitting right. It’s not about the actual shitting. It’s about everything around it. You’ve got to be in the right frame of mind. And propped there, on the side of Mont Ventoux, was the ultimate shit.
I was thinking, I don’t have a bad life. I got to drive a Transit to the south of France, and I love driving Transits. I had a bit of tea, a few drinks … Sometimes when I’m getting pulled from pillar to post I think, What’s happening? I never question why I’m doing it, but I sometimes feel I need a bit more of my time back. Still, it’s not a bad life.
After I walked back to the van I got out my diary and made a note: ‘The Greatest Shit Ever’. It’s very rare I put pen to paper about something like that, but it was a big moment.
By the time I got back to where the van was parked, the ambulance had just arrived. I got my helmet on and climbed in the go-kart, then went out and beat the record on the first run of the day, like we all thought we would. We did 85 mph, breaking it by about 1 mph, showing just how difficult it was to beat.
We did another two or three runs, gaining a tenth here and a tenth there, just by carrying more weight. We’d broken the record, so all the team and TV bods were dead happy, it was all champagne and blowjobs. North One had a helicopter there to film the two last runs, telling me to stay nice and safe while they filmed what they call drop-ins, a different angle of the action to cut to when they edit the programme. We loaded the go-kart into the back of the van and drove to the top again.
I had spoken to Alice, Heather, Christina and Terry, saying, ‘We’ve broken the record, but I think we’ve got to go shit or bust.’
We’d been adding a couple of kilos every run, just filling up any space with bottles of water, but we’d run out of room for any more bottles. The only space we had left, in this very cramped, faired-in, teardrop-shaped, carbon-fibre go-kart, was under my bent legs. My idea was to fill my helmet bag with rocks, so me and Tim got as much weight in the bag as we could. We had some bathroom scales with us that had been used to weigh each corner of the go-kart to make sure it was balanced as well as possible, and found we had 20 kilos of stone in the bag.
In all the stages of adjustment up to that point we had added a kilo here and a kilo there; adjusted a millimetre here, a millimetre there. Then we were going into the unknown by adding 20 kilos. But all I was thinking was, Every time we add weight we go faster, so let’s have it.
Heather had obviously read the same book as me, The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters, because she said, ‘That’s your chimp talking.’ She knew chimp behaviour was just to say fuck it, without fully thinking of the consequences.
I even knew it was my inner chimp talking as the words were coming out of my mouth, and I also knew if things went wrong the chimp would be stood there saying, ‘I didn’t say those rocks. I didn’t say put them there. It’s not my fault.’
Heather and I were laughing about the chimp thing and agreed, ‘Right, this goes no further.’ The TV lot didn’t know about the 20 kilos and I said I’d take all the blame if it went wrong. I felt that no one needed to know, because it was my neck on the line and it was all my idea. I never did admit we had done anything different, and if North One are reading this book, it’ll be the first time they’re finding out about it. Sorry …
As I set off, with this bag of rocks under my legs, my chimp was shouting, ‘Yeah, we’re going to smash the record! 90 mph! We’ll have it!’ Then, going into the first corner, still within sight of the start, I had to gently feel the brakes to get around the corner and even with a dab on the pedal the back-end came round on me. It made me think, Hell, this is going to be nasty.
The wise thing to do then would have been to feather the brake all the way down, so I could come to a controlled stop at the end, and get a feel for the job. The braking system, that was brilliantly designed by Hope, the mountain bike parts company in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, had big, ventilated, hydraulic, mountain bike type disc brakes on each of the four wheels. Hope had designed an adjuster with a knob I could twist to alter the bias of the brakes from front to back, meaning it could be tweaked so the fronts were doing more braking than the rears or the other way around. It was trick and could be set to compensate for changes to the front-to-back weight ratio and balance of the go-kart. Now that I’d put all this extra weight in the go-kart it meant I had too much brake bias to the front and the front brakes were biting hard, so the weight was transferring forward and making the back end light. With less traction and grip for the rear tyres, the back end came round when I braked because the back wheels were virtually off the floor.
We were way over-braked anyway. I just had to fart on the brake pedal and it would lock the wheels, but, previous to this run, we had it set up so all four brakes were biting evenly.
After getting so out of shape, I got out of the corner and into the 1.5 km-long straight run of steep stuff. Even before this run, by the time I got to the end of the 100-metre timed section and into the braking zone, I felt I needed every metre available to slow down before a proper tight hairpin loomed up. If I couldn’t stop, or slow down enough to make the hairpin I’d head straight into the metal crash barrier.
So, while the sensible thing to do was coast down on the brakes, the chimp was telling me, ‘Have it! Keep going. Worry about stopping at the end of the run.’
It was pretty unusual for me to listen to my inner chimp by this time in my life. If I had thoughts like that in a motorcycle race, and acted on them, I’d be dead, but this was only a go-kart. There’s a time and a place to say fuck it, and it was probably then.
Looking back, I don’t know what was going through my head. I just tried to blank any possible consequences out. My chimp had convinced me the first skid was just some dirt on the road and it would all be OK.
A few seconds later I went through the timed 100-metre section at 90 mph, 5 mph faster than any other run I’d done, but for the record to stand I had to come to a controlled stop …
As soon as I pressed the brakes the back end came straight round. I let go of the brakes and it came back into line. I got on the brakes again and the back end came round again, so I corrected it again. I’d probably got rid of 10 mph before I realised the barrier was coming up fast. I braked hard and the whole kart flicked sideways. The canopy came off as it started going end over end, barrel-rolling down the mountain. All I could see was sky-trees-sky-trees-sky-trees, before the go-kart ended up sliding, upside-down, into the red and white barrier at the side of the road. I can remember hearing my mint, pink and blue, Britten colours helmet scraping along the floor. Bastard.
Everything went quiet, but I kept still, because I didn’t know if I was still in the air or what. I was expecting a big impact with the barrier, but then I realised I’d stopped and put my arms out.
I’d had to do something. If I hadn’t have slammed on the brakes, causing the go-kart to spin out of control, I’d have gone head-on into the barrier at 80 mph. That would have been an ankle-breaker, no doubt about it. So I did the right thing. After doing the wrong thing.
The TV lot came over like it was Armageddon. I had to take my trainers off to get out because the bag of rocks was still in the way and my inner chimp had already started denying any involvement. The cameraman in the helicopter filmed the crash, but there wasn’t going to be another run. Two of the wheels had been smashed off the go-kart and the other two were bent in half.
No one saw the bag full of rocks and I didn’t feel bad about not telling the film crew about them, because the University lot were sort of with me and they’d built the thing I’d just demolished. I guess they would probably have preferred to build up to the 20 kilos a bit more slowly, but my inner chimp wasn’t having it.
For some people that would have all added up to a bad day, but it was the most pleasant crash of the year. I wish I hadn’t smashed up the beautiful bit of engineering, but I still drove home with a smile on my face. And I’d had the best shit of my life.