Breaking the Stig-ma

Ben Collins sets the record straight and chats about being the enigma behind the visor

When Ben Collins first put on the white suit and stepped out into the world as “The Stig” in Top Gear, only two people knew his true identity. Those two people become closer to 150 in the eight years that he worked at the BBC,  making it more and more difficult to  fend off the rumours and leaks that he was in fact The Stig.

Despite the severe criticism he received soon after resigning and “outing” himself, Collins says that he feels good about the decisions he took.

“I knew the end was near, and rather than wait to be let go, I decided it was time to go on my own,” he explains.

He handed in his notice, wrote his book and went out on his own terms. He says that he finds that fact that his employers took him to the High Court “ridiculous”, but the judge ruled in his favour and less than a year later Collins is happy to be burying the hatchet.

“I was back in touch with the producers a few weeks ago. You realise  a lot of the stuff in the press is very theatrical, much like Top Gear the show, and that deep down we were mates and nothing really has changed.”

While the last Stig (the original “black” Stig Perry McCarthy) lasted a total of eight or so months,  Collins lasted an impressive eight years. Besides the obvious having to wear a balaclava  and being careful not to speak in front of people, he also says that part of being The Stig’s duty includes a fair amount of self-imposed isolation. 

“It’s great fun, it’s not like you’re going to get shot if you are revealed, but you might lose your job. It’s good fun and a great game while it lasted, but you know it’s going to end. People start to guess  and try to catch you out, shouting  “Ben” to see if you’ll turn around. The Stig is a media character and the essence is the anonymity, so once that’s gone the character needs to be reborn. I’m very surprised it lasted as long as it did.”

Although motor racing remains his first passion – he says it’s the next best thing after his childhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot  – Collins is incredibly humble about living every man’s fantasy on the Top Gear set and also driving James Bond’s Aston Martin DBS. It’s enough to make one wonder just how alike his life is to that of Ian Flemming’s suave fictional creation?

“Are we talking about the cars or the girls?” he quips, before bursting out laughing. “Sadly for me it isn’t quite as exciting as that in real life. I don’t get to keep the Aston DBS,” he laughs, “but I have an Audi S5 and I love my VW  Transporter van.”

He may navigate downplaying the perks and the glamour like a pro, but there’s no denying that Collins has been fortunate enough to sit behind the wheel of some mighty fine vehicles, some of which he has even crashed.

  

“The most cringeworthy was probably the Ferrari incident,” he admits sheepishly. “I was pushing this Ferrari very hard to set up the lap time and there was an expectation of the time it could do. The expectation was by the producers, not by Ferrari, who later told me that it was on a different set of tyres and couldn’t go as fast as everyone was expecting it to.

“I didn’t know that at the time, and I was pushing and pushing and eventually I swiped the tyre wall going around this corner at 115 miles per hour and I could see it coming, and felt this thing scratch the side of this perfect, polished car.”

Collins will miss these close shaves about as much as he’ll miss the Top Gear banter on set to the likes of the fact that The Stig “drinks a lot of petrol”, “was born in space” and “never blinks”.

“Those comments were all very one sided, because I never said anything back,” he quips good naturedly. “Although that’s actually just the public’s perception – I used to swear at them a lot from behind the helmet!” he laughs.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 19 July 2011. Photos courtesy of AFP.

Hell and high water

Adventurer Riaan Manser’s latest book documents his epic kayak journey around Madagascar

It’s drizzling, and in half an hour I’m meant to be paddling around Emmarentia Dam with Riaan Manser. Not that a few rain drops would perturb the man who kayaked around Madagascar, braving around 10 hours on the sea every day, with nine-metre high swells and sharks ramming his kayak. In fact, the bigger the challenge the better for Manser, who first satisfied his pioneering spirit in 2004 and 2005 by taking two years out of his life to cycle around Africa.

Before I have a chance to back out I’m greeted by Manser’s toothy grin and infectious enthusiasm and we’re making our way to the water and the K2 kayak awaiting us. There’s very little prep time, because, as the larger-than-life Manser quickly tells me, the best teacher is hands-on experience.

He couldn’t have known the extent of it at the time, but when Manser first set off on August 28, 2008 to circumnavigate all 5 000km of Madagascar’s coastline, he was embarking on an adventure that would prove to be much more of a challenge than his Africa trip.

There are the horror stories (and photos) of blisters, sunburn, dehydration, parasites and even the particularly painful pulling of a tooth with his own Leatherman, but in reading Manser’s latest book , one realises that the solitude he experienced along the way was something far greater than the physical pain and discomfort.

Unlike many other adventurers, Manser travels alone. Apart from having a satellite phone (with sporadic reception) and a GPS to help coordinate landing spots, he was completely cut off from anything and everything secure and familiar.

“I think you’re challenging yourself in another way when you go on your own,” Manser explains. “I like being on my own, and I like tackling the dangers on my own. What would be the real challenge of me circumnavigating Madagascar if there was someone who could pluck me out of the water if it got too dangerous? To help repair the boat, to give me a hot plate of food, to massage me, to tell me where the next landing was, or where the best place was to enter the sea?”

We push away from the bank and soon we’re gliding happily through the water.

Even though it takes us a while to find a rhythm that complements Manser’s quick powerful strokes and my eager but amateurish attempts to keep up, we don’t fall into the water and to me, at least, that makes the challenge a success.

It’s only when we’re back on dry land that Manser laughingly admits that he thought we were going to fall out in the first few minutes after launching.

His calm demeanour didn’t give anything away, but then again, this the man who wrote about having “to change a mountain into a molehill” many times on his Madagascar journey.

You’d think that once he’d achieved two world firsts, Manser’s adventurous spirit would be quelled somewhat, but he’s recently returned from a trip to Greenland where his next challenge is set to take place. Apart from revealing that he’ll be braving the cold and challenging himself in a way he has never done before, Manser is, however, keeping mum. For now.

Riaan Manser is the author of Around Africa On My Bicycle and Around Madagascar On My Kayak. Visit www.riaanmanser.com for more information.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 7 December 2010. All photos courtesy Shayne Robinson.

Polar protector

Lewis Gordon Pugh adds writing to his long list of firsts

There’s a wonderful television advert of Lewis Gordon Pugh in Antarctica walking in one direction, with a line of penguins waddling off in exactly the opposite direction. It epitomises his quote about how “going against the tide has never been difficult” for him, and perhaps this explanation in his recently released autobiography is the closest we’ll ever come to understanding the source of Pugh’s determination and his unwavering attitude to attempt what’s never been attempted before.

Some authors might argue that writing a book is every bit as challenging as, say, being the first person to swim at the North Pole or the first to swim the full length of the River Thames, but with the release of the aptly titled Achieving The Impossible, Pugh really can say he’s done it all. Oh yes, he also summited Everest in May.

Just as every challenge Pugh has set himself has taught him something new about himself, so too, he says, has the writing process.

“It’s been a very good, cathartic experience, putting my thoughts down on paper, because I learned a lot about myself in doing so,” he states thoughtfully, before pausing to take a sip of his peppermint tea. “I often say that a good autobiography is like a good fruit salad,” he continues. “There’s got to be the sweet melon, the juicy grapes, and then

there’s got to be some really bitter grapefruit.When you trawl through that bitter grapefruit you realise that there is stuff that has happened many years ago you sometimes haven’t moved on from.”

Pugh’s lists of “firsts”, including being the first person to complete a long distance swim in every ocean of the world, are incredible, to say the least. He attributes a large part of this to never giving up and all of his successes having a kind of a domino effect.

“I’m the only person in history to do an SAS introductory course three times,” he admits. “At the time, I thought ‘why did my body let me down?’ and ‘woe is me’, but I now look back and say thank the Lord I only made it on the third time because that hardship has moulded and created who I am now,” Pugh says.“That adversity was important to be able to show me that I could handle adversity for things that would be even harder, subsequent to being in the SAS.”

The important thing about finishing something, Pugh believes, is that it releases an energy and a power that one has done something and that the next time around, one knows one can do something “a little bit harder and a little bit tougher”. Harder and tougher define most of what he’s done since he left his law career behind him, but Pugh knows he is following his destiny.

“It’s my destiny to be a peace and environmental campaigner, and that view doesn’t come out of arrogance; it comes out of conviction and humility,” he says emphatically. “There’s a direct link between protecting the environment and peace. And conversely, destroying the environment and using up all the resources and conflict.”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 26 August 2010. Photos courtesy Lewis Gordon Pugh and Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Lewis Gordon Pugh’s book Achieving The Impossible (ISBN: 9781868423408, R195) is available now.

Mile high club

12 000 feet from the ground, 40 seconds of freefall and a five-minute parachute ride – numbers to live your life by

“What’s been your best jump to date?” I ask experienced skydiver and PR Manager for the Rustenburg SkyDiving Club, Mike Rumble.

His answer? “The next one.”

That’s the thing about skydiving, as I was about to find out. There’s just something about jumping out of a plane at 12 000 feet that gives one’s life perspective and forces an appreciation of the everyday. Which probably explains why Rumble greets us with a cheerful “Happy Saturday” the minute we

traverse the dusty road into the Rustenburg SkyDiving Club one crisp weekend morning.

“Doesn’t everyone dream of flying around up above and in the clouds?” Rumble asks. “Skydiving and parachuting are incredibly diverse sports. There’s always something new to try and things to practice and improve on. The personal rewards are great, and it is huge amounts of fun jumping out of aircraft with outgoing friends from all walks of life.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind to the beginning of the story – to how myself and two friends (Jeremy Carlsson and Grahame Finnemore) turned a casual conversation over a glass of wine into a weekend adventure that none of us will ever forget.

It’s one thing threatening to go skydiving in false bravado while in the company of good friends (and good wine), but walking towards the silver silhouette of the Atlas Angel that was about to take us up thousands of feet into the air really brought the concept home and made what we were doing seem like sheer madness.

Put it down to whatever you like. We’d committed to doing this for reasons far and wide and we were adamant that none of us was going home without an overdose of adrenalin in our veins. At this point I must say coming to terms with what we were about to do was helped immensely by the highly qualified, professional guys we were entrusting our lives to.

Almost all of them have “day jobs”, but there’s a passion for their weekly weekend dates with the sky that the rest of us can only envy. My tandem master Gerrit Lambert kept joking that this was his first tandem jump, but in my stressed state I quickly brushed his comment aside.

Later that day I learned that I was indeed his very first inexperienced tandem jumper (as a paying member of the general public), but nothing in his calm demeanour and reassuring ways would have given this away. Especially not when my legs were dangling from the plane and his confident “ready, set, go”

signalled my hasty departure from the big silver Angel in the sky.

If there has to be a “scariest” part about the entire thing, it would be

that part – dangling your legs outside of the plane, waiting to be pushed over the edge. But once you’re out, there’s no space for fear; the rush of air blowing

past your cheeks and a breathtaking view of the Magaliesberg are dominating our senses and, well, rocking your world.

Before you know it, the parachute opens, your world rights itself and time seems to slow down. In a matter of seconds you go from effectively dropping to your death to gleefully gliding towards the ground. The descent to the drop zone is peaceful, silent and a complete epiphany. There’s really nothing on earth quite like it.

So what exactly is left to be said? All that comes to mind is, “same time next week?”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 8 June 2010.

Visit www.skydiverustenburg.co.za or phone 079-345-7058 for more information.