‘Then I noticed I was beginning to have weird thoughts.’
WHEN MAGAZINES FIRST started writing about me and asking me to contribute by going on road tests and new bikes launches, it was still unusual if I was recognised at anything other than a road race meeting, and then it was only the race fans who noticed me. I remember going to see an exhibition of TT photos in London. I had just parked my van, and was looking for a parking ticket machine when someone recognised me from my column in Performance Bikes – I was amazed. It was a magazine I’d always read, and if people read PB they were right folk. When the TT coverage grew and began to be shown on ITV. and then the film Closer to the Edge came out, I started to get mobbed at the TT and bike shows.
I don’t regret doing Closer to the Edge. I’ve watched it twice, at a screening and then at a premiere in London, and it is me, I come across how I am. The film also opened a lot of doors. But until I saw the film I didn’t realise how much I was in it. I went to a private screening with Steph and Andy, and before I got on the tube to start going home, me and Steph had to call into a nearby pub and have a drink. We were both speechless, just shaking our heads in disbelief. They were filming a bunch of riders at the TT, but everything that happened to me must’ve made them choose to focus on me a bit more. If I hadn’t crashed, perhaps things would have turned out differently.
The boat programme went out on the BBC in 2011, twice a week for six weeks, and that meant even more people recognised me. The first programme was due to go on at seven o’ clock, but I was flying to Spain for a week’s testing in Cartagena at exactly that time. It couldn’t have been timed better. I landed in Spain, switched my phone on and there must have been a hundred text messages. I was glad to be out of it. After that people started recognising me in Tesco.
I was working as a labourer in Grimsby at the time and we’d going to the local supermarket to buy our butties. If someone said, ‘I know who you are,’ one of the lads I worked with would stop dead, look at me and laugh, saying, ‘You’re right, he does look like that fella off the telly, loads of people say that.’ Then we’d just walk off. They got brilliant at it.
Since back in 2010 I’ve been suffering with these strange thoughts. It came on gradually and I don’t know why. I’m not rude, but if I’m at a big race and I stop to sign one thing, another person always wants something, and then someone else wants something, and I’m trapped, and I have a job dealing with it. Mentally, I mean.
I began to feel uncomfortable. Then I noticed I was beginning to have weird thoughts when I was in the middle of a crowd. And, from my experience, a crowd attracts a crowd. It’s not Chinese water torture, but it triggers odd feelings, and my mind goes adrift.
At a race in Ireland I met a lass called Andrea who has two sons that she regularly brings to the racing. I got talking to her about stuff like this, the problems I have in crowds, because I found out during the conversation that her sister was a psychiatrist. Towards the end of the chat Andrea said, ‘You need to see my sister.’
I made an appointment, and me and Steph travelled over to Ireland. Steph really encouraged me to see the psychiatrist. She wanted answers, to find out why I am like I am, but I don’t know if she accepted them.
We sat down with the specialist, and spent all day filling out forms and answering questions, while we drank tea and ate biscuits. It wasn’t like a doctor’s office; we were sat in comfy seats, no desk between us. She didn’t have one of those mirrors strapped to her forehead either.
I explained that I can be sat talking to someone, nodding, smiling and agreeing, and a thought will enter my head, like, ‘What would happen if I smashed this cup around the side of someone’s head and went crackers for five minutes?’ The people who come to see me are mega folk on the whole, but I could be talking to the Queen and I don’t think it would stop me having these thoughts. I’m just wired up wrong. I weigh it all up logically in my head before I snap out of it. Small talk triggers it off. People are talking to me like they know me, because they’ve read something in a magazine or seen me on TV. And I’m being polite, because always I try to be polite, but my mind starts wandering. I’ve even done it myself when I met one of my heroes, Mick Doohan at the Goodwood Festival of Speed one year. I blurted out, ‘I’ve read your book three times,’ but it wasn’t even his book – Mat Oxley had written it about him. He just nodded and smiled. Perhaps he was looking for a cup to smash me around the head.
I had the cup-smashing thoughts a couple times in the practice week of the 2013 Isle of Man TT. I was sat with my friend and sponsor, Gary Hewitt, boss of the company Elas, at his house on the Isle of Man when Steve Parrish, the ex-racer and TV presenter came to visit. It was all very pleasant. We were just sat having a cup of tea, but Parrish started talking about Twitter, saying stuff like he does it to keep his profile up. My mind drifted off and I started thinking, I wonder if I should start smashing cups and take all my clothes off and go crazy, running round for five minutes.
I picture myself doing things and it’s quite vivid. That was the first time I’d had the naked thoughts, though. I visualised myself, John Thomas in the breeze, jumping off the sofa onto the sideboard. Normally, it’s still the cup around the side of someone’s head. I never have acted on the impulse and I am pretty sure I never would, but I realised I’d better go and see someone before I do.
At the end of our day with the psychiatrist she said, ‘There are no ifs, buts or maybes, you have Asperger’s Syndrome.’ It’s a type of autism, but there’s a massive scale and I don’t know where I fall on it. I haven’t even looked up Asperger’s Syndrome on the internet. I’m not denying I have it, just disregarding it. Other than trying not to be at the centre of a crowd, when everyone’s looking at me, I haven’t changed anything I do. I’m not famous in my garage at home. I’m not famous at Moody’s truck yard or my mates’ houses either.
The psychiatrist reckons the Asperger’s shapes the way I look at everything. While I’ve not been brought up to be rude, I’m not bothered about offending people by saying what I think is the truth. Which is, I suppose, why people want to interview me and have me write columns for magazines. The psychiatrist made it clear that it would be a good idea not to put myself in the kind of positions that trigger the thoughts that cause this tension. That’s one of the reasons I try to stay out of the way at the TT and why I really don’t want to do media days at shows like Motorcycle Live at the NEC, Birmingham if I can help it.
Lots of people, from race fans to team managers, marketing people, sponsors and race organisers think I’ve been awkward for not wanting to do all the PR stuff, but the truth is, I can’t stand dealing with. Some of the other riders are happy to do it. They even enjoy it. On the surface, it’s not difficult to sit and sign stuff for people who like me as a racer or have enjoyed the TV shows, but that’s just the surface – underlying it are these weird thoughts and emotions bubbling away. I’m not trying to be different or awkward, but I can’t help the way my brain has been wired up.
The problem is all to do with this tension, not pressure. The pressure of the race or pressure of work doesn’t do it to me, even if a boss and five drivers are at work all asking for their truck to be finished right now. I can deal with that.
I’m not turning into a recluse, I still do signings for sponsors, because they really want me to, and they’re loyal supporters who I’ve worked with for years, but we set it up so I only do half an hour. More than that and things start to get on top of me. People might think, ‘Who does he think he is? I’ve been waiting here for an hour,’ but I hope I’ve explained it. If I have or haven’t, there’s nothing I can do about it. I know I could sign stuff at the TT for 12 hours and someone would still slag me off for not signing stuff for 13 hours.
The psychiatrist also said she thought I could love tools and machines as much as I could love a person, that I see them in the same light. I do know that people can shout and scream and have tantrums at me, and I don’t give a shit – and perhaps that’s unusual. I’m looking at them, but thinking about the next cylinder head I have to port.