Car crash TV
...or, "serious bloody near death (or at least a proper F*cking Up), live on prime-time BBC One"

My father spent years as a road safety officer. He trained as a police class 1 driver, he'd lectured on road safety, he helped the guys at TRRL set up some of the most pioneering crash-cars-into-blocks monitoring units, he met various consecutive Transport Ministers to discuss safety policy, that sort of thing. Not a massively glamorous job, granted, but it did mean that I spent a lot of my childhood either tinkering with cars or hanging around places where people drove them very fast and sometimes very dangerously.

I had my first trip on a Skid Pan when I was six. I can't remember much about it but I do remember it was amazing fun. A skid pan is basically a large square of tarmac sprayed with oil and water, and it's used to train drivers how to deal with skids. And also for drivers to show off to six-year-old boys how impressive their driving can be. My dad introduced me to a test driver called Richard that he knew, I strapped myself into his passenger seat and I spent a good few minutes clinging on to my seat belt while this chap flung the car in all directions at speeds I didn't understand. I remember attempting to shout "wheee!!" while trying to stay in the grown-up-shaped seat of a (I think) Ford Granada.

I'd never experienced anything like it - it was fantastic fun, but afterwards my dad seemed strangely tense and very concerned I was all right - I was fine and grinning from ear to ear. Once I was safely belted into the back of our own car I heard him shouting angrily at this friend of his before he stomped back to our car and we drove home in silence. Later that evening as he was tucking me into bed, he explained that Richard could be a bit silly sometimes and often took risks he shouldn't, but he was very glad I was OK.

I forgot about the finer details of that day.

When I was about 17 and enjoying a few pints on holiday with my dad, he told me what Richard had gone on to do later that year. In the late summer of 1983 my dad received a phone call from him telling him that he was going to be driving live on the BBC, and asking if my dad wanted to go to Santa Pod and watch the filming.

I don't remember the programme at the time - I suspect that I wasn't allowed to stay up and watch it - but I'm told that the Late Late Breakfast Show was quite a spectacle. This was prime time live TV in the days before risk assessments or Health and Safety, and for some reason my dad couldn't go, but he did tune in to BBC1 that Saturday night.

I won't go into all the details, but long before he'd heard John Peel exclaim "bloody...!" on live TV, my dad knew Richard had finally done a really stupid thing. In his own car (a lovely Jensen Interceptor). Live, on national TV.


There used to be a pretty complete video of it on YouTube but for some reason they've removed it. I've managed to find an edited version of the footage, but if anyone's got any links to better quality or more complete video I'd love to see it.

www.liveleak.com/view?i=b81_1184921068
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 15:54, 1 reply)

a longer clip
if you can click through all the advertising guff,

www.megavideo.com/?v=BQ6R84AW
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 16:10, closed)