ONE WEEK BEFORE the live attempt, I started on more intensive training on the big wall while I continued to work on the Rob North triple. The TV lot were still panicking about me not being ready, but they were under more pressure than usual, because the show was going to be live. For me, though, from now on it was all about increasing my speed and finding out how much G-force I could deal with.
I got Cammy on board to be the triple’s mechanic, checking it after every run and keeping it fettled, and I’m dead glad I did. He had been a mechanic for me at the TT and came to Pikes Peak with me. He came down on Monday, the first day of the week of practice, while I was at work. He went to my house and met Sharon, and drove to Manby with the triple in the van. It was nearly ready, but the gearbox was still shit. I left work that day about dinnertime for the 25-mile cycle ride to Manby. I cycled there on a few of the practice days so I could keep up my preparation for the Tour Divide, because I had to build up to 300 miles a week. I could see the hangar for miles – all the trucks, camper vans, satellite dishes – and I thought, That’s all for me, that is.
The triple was finished to a state I was dead happy with, and the TV bods said, ‘OK, you’ve got it done,’ but I know they didn’t trust me. They love the idea that I’m a truck mechanic who does a bit of bike building and TV stuff, but really they think I’m a TV wanker. They don’t believe I build bikes. They weren’t happy to let me ride it on the wall until they had an independent engineer assess it and say it’s safe to ride. They asked me who I knew who could do that, and the first person I thought of was Mark Walker, who was one half of Martek, the folk who originally built my Pikes Peak bike. And he was handy, because he lived not far away. I gave the TV lot his number and they quickly arranged for him to come the next day.
Mark did his assessment of the bike at the Manby hangar. He had a good look over it and said, ‘Yeah, spot on, but I’ve got to say something, so I’ll advise that you should have a cover on the clutch.’ He even liked that the clutch was open, but I knew he had to be seen to be doing something. I’m not sure what they thought this clutch was going to do. It makes sense to have the primary drive covered on a road racer, where it could come into contact with another rider, but this bike was built for the wall of death, with only me on it, and no other bikes or folk around.
After Mark had given it the ‘official’ all-clear, except for the clutch cover, I said, ‘I’m here, I may as well have a go on the wall now that everyone is happy with the triple.’ Tom, the producer and project manager, and Ewan, the director, said I could ride it on the track, but not the wall. So I set off on the triple round the track. It felt alright, so I gave it a bit more throttle and went on the wall. They went off their tits: ‘Insurance! We said just go on the track!’ I explained that it was the bike, not me – it wanted to go on the wall. Nothing to do with me. From then on the bike never missed a beat or dripped a drop of oil.
The gearbox selector mechanism was shit, though. You can see why the British bike industry went bust. It had a Heath Robinson system to do a really simple job. Me and my dad had been filing and fettling and fucking about and it still wasn’t any good, so my dad got in contact with Richard Peckett, who made famous race frames and bikes with a partner under the name P&M. He had a brand new part for the gearbox that we needed. We fitted the new selector arm and straight away it was perfect. I made the smallest clutch cover you could imagine, just to keep everyone happy, and that was it. I’d done it on time. Everything I’d done was right, but it had been a non-stop rush since November and there were some little finishing jobs I’d have liked to have done, so Cammy got on with them. He drilled and lockwired all the things he thought needed it.
I did wonder if the TV lot would say I had to ride the Indian and nothing else. If they could argue that I had to use the Indian for good, solid reasons, I’d have said, ‘Alright, then,’ and I’d have ridden the Indian. But if it was because I felt they didn’t trust my work on the triple I’d have told them they’d best get someone else to ride the wall. I know what I’m talking about – I’ve been building bikes since I was a kid and I’m a good mechanic. I wasn’t about to do something this dangerous on a bike I didn’t have faith in, but I know the insurance was probably a big part of it too.
There’s usually the easy option and the shitty, wanky option, and I usually choose the shitty, wanky one. Like when I did Pikes Peak. Taking the TAS BMW Superbike would’ve been the easy route, and I’m not being a big head but I’d have won the race outright on it. Instead, I built the Martek turbo that was in a thousand bits and took that.
Riding the Indian on the wall of death would have been the easy route. Krazy Horse did a brilliant job and we could’ve concentrated on one bike and got it loads better. By now, we had put rear suspension back on the Indian, fitting fancy K-Tech twin shocks. When they’re built for a road bike they have 250 psi of pressure in them. For the wall they had 550 psi, and they were still bottoming out. They were great until they bottomed out, but when they did it made it worse, because the back end had squatted and that altered the front geometry, effectively kicking the forks out. K-Tech would have altered the shocks for me and they were dead keen to help with my triple bike too, but I ended up using Hagon shocks because I wanted to do my own thing. Hagon make shocks for Rob North frames, so I asked if they could do something similar, but make them as stiff as they could with as short a distance of travel as they could, and they made me these dead simple shocks.
Krazy Horse had already spent £7,000 on machining a few parts for the Indian Scout: the footboard assembly and the solid struts that replaced the rear shocks. It looked brilliant and it never missed a beat, but I needed to be sat more upright. Either the bars needed to come back to me or the seat needed to move closer to the bars. In the end, they did a bit of both. Then, after another practice, they moved the bars back again. None of this was easy. They cut and shortened the petrol tank and had it repainted, but it was such a neat job, you’d never know. They had lovely new bar clamps machined, which moved the bars right back.
With both bikes sorted I could just concentrate on the riding and going 80 mph on the biggest-ever wall of death. In the mid- to late-60s it was already getting difficult to hold my body in a good riding position, and that wasn’t much quicker than the lowest speed you can get on the wall. Late-60s on is when I really had to tense up and hold my breath, pushing all my muscles, like I was taught by the fighter pilots. Then, as I went faster, my vision would go.
There was a green line, top to bottom of the wall – the start and finish line, if you like – and a red line around the wall to let me know where I was in relation to the top and bottom. The lap was timed from the green line, so I’d cross it, but wait until I had done half a lap before I wound on the throttle. I knew that by the time I was back to the green line I’d be up to speed for a flying lap. The problem was that, by the time I got back to the green line, after only half a lap of hard acceleration, I could hardly see anything – my vision had pretty much gone because I was greying out. I was still conscious, but the blood ran out of my eyes. I’d tense everything – stomach, legs – and blow inside of my closed mouth to puff my cheeks. It’s hard to explain, but my vision gradually goes like a sparkly, untuned telly. Halfway through the flying lap I can see even less, then I’m blind for another half a lap, just guessing when I’m over the green line and I can back off. Then, my vision comes back. When I knock off the throttle, I don’t do anything drastic. I just wait for my vision to return so I can spot the red line. It doesn’t come back instantly, but very quickly.
I wasn’t thinking too hard about suddenly passing out under the G-force, but I knew what could happen if I did. The best case would be to slump forward and close the throttle. If I did that, I might regain consciousness and, with the G-force decreased, be able to steer the bike to a stop. If I didn’t regain consciousness in time, but I had let off the throttle, the bike would slow down, dip towards the track at the bottom and I’d fall off. The worst-case scenario was falling unconscious, somehow winding on the throttle and going out of the top of the wall. There was a steel cable, held by heavy brackets around the top, to stop the bike going into the crowd. If I went out of the top I’d be short of an arm or leg at the very best.
I felt I put in a quick lap on Thursday night. Sharon and Cammy both thought it was a fast one, and the speed of it frazzled my brain. It felt like early 80s. I was driving home, while Cammy and Sharon were chatting, but I was gone. When we passed the pub at the bottom of my road I asked, ‘Shall we go for a pint?’ I’m not a drinker, but Cammy likes a pint, so I pulled straight into the car park. I didn’t even drive the 200 yards to the house. I had a pint of Guinness and I fancied another while we talked about all sorts, and two pints later I felt alright.
I could always go quicker on the triple, right from day one. I’m sure it was because of the riding position. Perhaps some of the crew thought I was trying harder to go faster on my bike, because I’d built it and was stubborn about wanting to use it, but it wasn’t like that. I just always felt more comfortable on the triple.
The only thing I’d change about it was the rear suspension. It has about 30 mm of movement, but I’d make it stiffer. It was spot on to about 60-odd mph, then it got a bit rough. It has 15 mm of travel and 15 mm of rubber bump stop that compresses as the G-force increases. Then it bottoms out and there’s no more suspension. So, if I was doing it all again, I’d make it stiffer so it didn’t move through the first 15 mm of suspension quite so easily.
Months and months before, I would spend the night in the shed with Sharon and cable tie her legs in different places and move her hands in different places to try to get the riding position like I thought it should be. That was before I had any wheels in the bike. Then I would go to bed thinking about it. We tried all kinds of handlebars, but I couldn’t find any that were dead right until I had a word with my uncle Rodders (who isn’t really my uncle), and he brought some round that I ended up using.
Those few days of practice were my idea of the perfect week. I had a bit of pressure on at work, because a job had to be out, and I was biking to work, then biking to Manby – no filming, just riding. Sharon and Cammy there, the dog’s there, I’m riding Ken’s wall as well. Ken asked me if I was doing all this just so I could ride the big wall or because I wanted to be a wall rider. I said I wanted to be a wall of death rider and do some shows with him. Ken was becoming more confident with me, and he told me that before the end of it all we’d both ride on his wall together. And we did, but it was hairy.
I set off around the small wall on a Honda 200, and Ken was half the wall behind me on another Honda. He’d told me that I would go to the top so he could go underneath me. He overtook me and then pulled in front of me, and that was my signal to move to the bottom of the wall and pass him, while he rode around the top. I got a bit lost, forgetting what I was supposed to be doing, but he’d already accounted for that, because he said that if anything went adrift he’d come in and get out of the way to let me pull in. When Ken talks, don’t speak, listen.
I think the challenge of riding the big wall at 80 mph was far harder than riding at 180 mph down Bray Hill at the TT. At wall speeds in the low 60s, it was a case of, Yeah? What’s the problem, officer? I could move about, even ride one-handed, like Ken had suggested. Go late 60s, however, and it suddenly got very difficult.
I only ride for selfish reasons, because I want to ride. Ken is a showman – he’s at the opposite end of the scale. When I was practising on the little wall, Ken said, ‘Right, you can put your hand out now.’ I thought, Why would I want to do that? But I did and it gave me assurance that I knew what I was doing. It became a good gauge to see if I was confident enough. It was only for me, not putting on a show. I wasn’t giving a flick of the wrist like the full-time riders would, playing to the crowd. I’d just put my arm out like I was on a pushbike and doing a lazy signal to show car drivers I was turning left, nothing fancy.
I would only take my hand off on the big wall at lower speeds. Your hand’s heavy, its increased weight caused by the G-force. If I put my hand on the bar like I normally would, just releasing the muscle pressure and letting it drop on the bar, it could unsettle the bike and send me into a wobble, so I had to be dead careful and controlled.
Ken had told me not to change gear on the wall, because if I hit a false neutral I’d be in trouble, but I was doing it anyway when I’d built my confidence up. He didn’t like me doing it and, while changing gear on the wall, I broke the gear linkage on the Indian because I was pressing so hard on it with all the extra G-force. It was the only breakage we had to deal with.
Once I’d got up to a certain speed on the wall, no one had done more relevant experience than me of this kind of riding. At this point it was more important what Curly and Cammy, the two blokes looking after the bikes, were saying. As long as the bikes were alright I was on my own. Ken had got me to this stage, but now it was into the unknown.
I thought Ken, Luke and Alex would all be begging to go on the big wall and show how fast they could go, but none of them did. I don’t know if they didn’t fancy it or if they were doing the professional thing and staying out of the way of the TV bods, but none of them asked me if they could have a go and I was a bit surprised about that. It was a potentially dangerous job, though, and if it did go wrong it could be a bomb scene.
Everything was going smoothly until Friday. Almost as soon as I got on the wall I was blacking out – not unconscious, just blind. I didn’t crash, because when it happened I knew I had to back off the throttle and my vision would come back. I wondered if it was because I hadn’t biked in, or was it because I’d had two pints the night before?
I rode on the Saturday and took my turbo trainer. I hadn’t had any alcohol and drank loads of water, so I was well hydrated, and I was still the same. I couldn’t even reach 70 mph without blacking out. I kept going on the wall, then coming off it. Going on and doing some laps, then coming back down, putting my body through it, and it didn’t make any difference. I couldn’t understand what was happening.
That afternoon I did a timed 54-mph lap. The added friction of the tyres must have kept the whole lot up as well, meaning I didn’t have to do the theoretical 57 mph that had been worked out on paper.
On Sunday, the day before the TV show, I didn’t try to set a high speed and took it real steady. It was like the Wednesday night of practice before the Senior TT – just get your lap in, no heroics. I still didn’t know if I’d black out at 70 mph or if I could set a fast time.
On the day of the TV show, I walked the dog in the morning and visited my gran, Double-Decker Lil, who I hadn’t seen for a month because I’d spent every spare minute building the triple. Near my gran’s, Nige got in a bit of bother and cut his leg. I reckon he got shot by the pheasants he’d been chasing. I was on my pushbike with him and sweating my tits off getting my heart rate right up, hoping that would help the blacking-out problem. I went with Sharon to the wall at about dinnertime.
There’s normally half-a-dozen people there at the most when I’m filming. Someone told me there was a crew of 100 involved in this show. Lighting folks, directors, fitters, security, ambulance, cameras, catering … over an Easter weekend, too. Fill your boots, lads. Surprisingly, it was all water off a duck’s back to me. I was just riding my bike and, even writing this, I still haven’t really taken in that it was all for me. I never felt any pressure.
Before the live broadcast we did what was pretty much a full rehearsal of the hour-and-a-half programme. It was good, because they didn’t use me for all of it. So, when it came to live transmission, I was in it a lot more and not repeating what I’d been asked to rehearse. They knew if I was asked the same questions in the live programme that I was in rehearsal I’d lose interest. When I’m being filmed I’m not thinking about what I should say, I just answer the questions. I can play the game, I’ve been doing it long enough, but I still thought they were brave doing it live, because I know I can ramble on when I’m asked something. They have a job editing me sometimes, and, obviously, they couldn’t do that with this.
By now I knew both bikes were up to the job, but riding any bike, especially the triple, really was a trip into the unknown. The Indian was fuel-injected, but the much older BSA triple engine had Keihin 34 mm carbs, which I wasn’t sure would be able to deal with the 6 or 7 g that they might be forced to work under. I was worried that the plastic float in the bottom of the carb – which, as you might have guessed, floats on the fuel in the floatbowl – might sink through the fuel and flood the carb. I also didn’t know if the fuel coming up the emulsion tube would have to fight against the G-force, and I wondered if that was going to be a problem. The G-force overpowers blood pressure – that’s what causes people to black out – so it seemed possible it would cause a problem for the engine too.
I spoke to Matt Markstaller, who is the man who built the Triumph streamliner that I plan to ride at Bonneville for another record later in the year, and he put some doubt in my mind. He thought about it and rang me back saying it would cause a problem, because the float at 7 g is seven times heavier than it is just sat on the road, so he reckoned that even though the fuel would be seven times heavier too, it isn’t seven times more dense.
A month or two before the record attempt I spoke to the lads at Wirth Research in Bicester, who do Formula One simulations and computational fluid dynamics for some of the top teams. I had met the lads at Wirth before, when they did some simulations of the downforce of a spoiler for a Transit van (but that’s another story). I gave them the numbers and sizes and they chewed it over. Wirth thought there might be an effect, but not a problem with the fuel coming up the emulsion tube and into the airstream, before it’s sucked down the inlet manifold towards the head and intake valves.
Finally, I spoke to Dr Hugh Hunt, the man who worked out the numbers behind the wall of death itself. This was on the afternoon of the attempt, so a bit late, but by now I was sure, in my own head, that there was no problem. I should have spoken to him from the start, because he came straight out and explained that none of that mattered because of Archimedes’ principle. I could balance a washing-up bowl of water on the petrol tank and put an apple in it, then ride the wall of death, and the apple wouldn’t sink or float higher in the water. It would stay the same, because the water the apple displaces weighs the same as the apple and that’s a constant. ‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘I didn’t think of it like that.’ I should’ve spoken to Hugh six months ago.
Steve Jones had been chosen as the live show’s presenter. Davina McCall had been lined up for the original date that was postponed, but I wasn’t bothered who did it really. I’d met Steve at Silverstone a month before, when I was filming with David Coulthard. I think Steve was eyeing the job up because he’s doing some F1 stuff with Channel 4. From the off I had him down as a TV wanker because he had sunglasses on, even though it was overcast, but it wasn’t a problem. If you don’t remember, a TV wanker isn’t a wanker, just a TV wanker. The ones I work with joke about it. They get it – they don’t take offence. Steve was very professional, thinking hard about what he was doing. I liked him.
In the rehearsal I had a good go on the wall, just to be sure I wasn’t going to black out, and I did a recorded 80.8 mph, riding blind, just pointing and not making any movements so I stayed as close to the line as I could. Even though all the timing was official, you have to inform the Guinness record people before you start that you are going to attempt a world record. The woman from the Guinness was stuck on a train, so it isn’t official, but I know I did over 80. That’s all that matters.
After the rehearsal I had a few hours to hang about, before the live show. The whole day was dead relaxed and there was always someone interesting to talk to: Sharon, Ken, Curly, Cammy, my dad, my good mates Jonty and Ruth came, Isla Scott, Hugh Hunt, and my dog, Nige, was there. Coulthard flew in from Monaco to Humberside International Airport (I did wonder how many times that journey had been made before). I could make a brew when I wanted and there was no pressure. It wasn’t like I was the epicentre. I felt like a small cog in a machine, and the people who were there were either working or knew me well enough that they could see me the following week.
My mum and sisters were there, too. My little sister does all that tweeting shit. I didn’t want her to be taking photos and tweeting them, but she did anyway and it annoyed me. My brother Stu was racing at Donington, and he didn’t make it back in time.
Part of the programme was to have the former world BMX champion and British Olympic rider Shanaze Reade set a record for cycling speed on Ken’s wall of death. She’d been there for a few days, being taught by the Foxes and riding with Alex Fox a lot. I liked her, and she was another one who was dead straight-talking. She asked if I’d ever been for a bike-fit, where someone tells you how you’re supposed to sit on your bike for the optimum power output, because she didn’t like how I sat on mine. I had, Brian Rourke did one for me, but I do enough miles to know what I like and what I don’t like, so I changed it all back. The seat’s at the wrong angle, for most people at least, and the pedals are wrong. She knows what she’s on about, but I have my seat like that to stop my bollocks going numb.
Then, it all started. While the programme was live, there were pre-recorded sections slotted in: the first time I went on Ken’s wall, when I went up in the stunt plane and when I met Hugh Hunt to talk about the science behind it all. There was a fifteen-minute delay on the broadcast, so what people were watching on their tellies at two minutes past seven had actually happened fifteen minutes earlier. The reason for this was that there was a fair chance it could all go pear-shaped, and no one wants to see a lorry mechanic plough into his family and friends live on TV. Or not many do, anyway.
The only time it felt like this was a really big thing was when I walked out into the middle of the wall for Steve Jones to introduce the programme and saw all the folk who had been invited on the viewing platform. I thought, Hell, that’s a lot of people. I had a massive smile on my face, because I thought Steve Jones was cool and he did a right good job.
Shanaze was up first, her record attempt was quite early in the programme. She and Alex Fox had been having a bit of friendly rivalry about the speeds during practice. Alex actually put in a faster unofficial speed, but Shanaze set the official record at 26.8 mph during the live programme.
I had new black Dainese leathers with ‘Kirmo’ written on the front. The TV lot had rung Spellman, my agent, to ask what Kirmo meant, because I wasn’t allowed to show ‘undue prominence’ of sponsors’ logos. Kirmo is Kirmington, the village I grew up in and the centre of the universe, but I joked on TV that it was my dog Nige’s Cayman Islands-based finance company. I don’t know if anyone got that when I said it on telly, but I thought it was funny.
Then it was time to ride. First I went out on the Indian and set the record at 70.33 mph, beating the 60-mph limit that would get the attempt an official Guinness record, and then I had a go on the triple. I was over the moon that I’d done 80 mph in practice, but I couldn’t quite do it again on TV.
I came in and was told I’d done 78.15 mph. I asked if I could have another go, but they’d run out of time and it didn’t happen. I’d pushed my luck. I wasn’t thinking, Give me another hour on this thing. I was never going to do 90 mph. I might have done 85, but it was all guesswork, because I was riding around blind. I’m not sat here thinking anyone has denied me a chance. I have no regrets, because you can’t see what I could see, which was fuck all. I bet I shut off a fraction before the green line on the live telly attempt. I had proved I’m not a TV wanker, too.
I was dead pleased with how it all went, but I was most pleased for the Channel 4 and North One lot: Neil Duncanson, Ewan, Tom and the rest. It had been a way of life for them for a month. They’d thought about everything, and the hard work and effort they put in impressed me and stuck with me more than the experience of riding the wall at 80 mph. It was a long programme for four or five minutes of riding, but I didn’t hear anything negative about it.
There was a big after-show party at the hotel the TV lot were all staying at, but Sharon, Cammy and his missus, Hannah, loaded the van up with me, and we got back to my house at about ten, unloaded the van, had a beer and went to bed because I had to be at work the next morning. There was no high-fiving or whooping. I gave Cammy the Guinness certificate. I’m not ungrateful, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Never say never, but I’d be surprised if this record is ever broken.
I got into work the next morning, but Moody wasn’t there. He turned up late and explained that his missus had an epileptic fit in the audience and got taken away in an ambulance. He said, ‘That was embarrassing, wasn’t it? I missed the best bit.’ Dry as you like. It was all too much for Belty, our valeter at the truck yard, and he didn’t turn up till Wednesday.
I’m glad I managed to achieve what I set out to do, but even in the van on the way home on Easter Monday I was saying to Sharon, ‘What’s the next thing?’