A Rolls-Royce to Ukraine & how to drift a tank, with James Cameron | Episode 43

It's not just something you made, it's the privilege that you get to work with your hands.

It's building something that serves a purpose, proof that you have the grit to keep going.

At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality.

We put in the work so you can perfect yours, with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention.

Timberland, built on craft. Visit Timberland.com to shop.

Getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream.

How could you make a sort of nonstick tank, which is fabulous?

And then I was asked to go and comment on it.

I said, well, how do you get in it?

I'm leveled out.

What?

Hello, and welcome to Evo podcast, episode 43.

This episode, I'm joined by Henry Cashpot.

Hello.

Jim Cameron.

Hello.

Dickie Meadon. Hello.

I'm Stuart Gadigat.

So, Jim, you are a guest on the Evo podcast.

Very welcome.

Thank you very much.

We'd like just to introduce yourself.

Who you are.

Why would we want to talk to you today?

And also, why one of those?

Why are you called tank slider on social media handles?

Well, I can start with the easy question, which is I brought biscuits.

That's why you're here.

That's the answer.

Which is why I'm here.

So, my name's James Cameron.

I am a lifelong petrolhead.

Always love cars.

I've done bits and pieces with Evo over the years,

which has been a great privilege.

But I served in the army through until end of 2012.

And laterally, for the last 14 years, I've been running a charity

that I've founded while I was serving called Mission Motorsport,

the forces motorsport charity.

So, which gets to do all sorts of joyous things,

but is very much around harnessing that, you know,

thrill of driving an automotive and the love of machine

and helping it with people's recovery journeys

who've served in the military and, you know,

perhaps had a bit of a tough time on the way,

put it into good things.

Why I'm tank slider?

Well, you just...

Somebody had already taken James Cameron, I think, on top.

On to it. Somebody had already thought of that.

He's more of a navy person, isn't he?

Yeah, no, he sort of does.

His watch is more expensive than mine.

That's certainly true.

But when I was a young officer,

I discovered, thanks to some of the people I was serving with,

that you can do skids in tanks.

And particularly on a very icy, cobbly, German tank park,

we'd got the hang of doing...

Panzerplatz.

Yeah, Panzerplatz, which was fantastic.

I was doing Christmas duties,

which you get to do if you've also been found out

for doing other things.

You become the Sultan's, the young officer's friend,

because you're doing the rubbish duties.

We got bored and there was no one around.

And unfortunately, I didn't realise that the one person

who'd stayed around on camp was the Brigadier,

who was walking his spaniel through an idyllic wintry scene,

when all of a sudden a Challenger 1 appeared

around the side of the tank shed.

It's very, very crossed up.

And the spaniel went directly underneath the tank and emerged.

Fortunately, absolutely fine.

And unfortunately, the Brigadier was less interested

in just how beautifully executed the Scandinavian S

in a 60-odd, 65-ton main battle tank was.

And a bit more bothered about the fact that his dog

had had a very near-death experience by going underneath it

all together.

I missed it.

But yeah, that's really where Tank Slider comes from.

How does the mechanics...

Now we've got to say, how do you do that?

If you've got the levers for...

Yeah, no, it's just a dab of oppo, isn't it?

It's opposite stick.

Yeah, it's opposite stick.

How do you initiate the slide?

Oh, you were just momentum and enthusiasm and gung-ho.

And the engine's in the back.

Oh, so it's just a big 9-11.

So you back off.

Yeah, so literally, yeah, you back off and the thing will slew.

So it does all the same dynamics as a car,

but your contact patch is sort of two long contact patches

instead of four separate contact patches

that you've got on the car.

So it'll do a lot of the same things.

And also...

One side, obviously.

Well, yeah, well, they don't...

It depends how fast you're going.

So in a sort of really pure tracked vehicle,

one will be going slightly faster than the other

in order to allow it to go around the outside of a bend.

But this is presumably momentum that you skid it, isn't it?

Yeah, well, that's what we discovered.

And it was really slippy.

And yeah, we'd had a couple of...

We had a few goes and got quite handy at it.

Which, yeah, was...

Did you say, watch this?

It was quite exciting.

Before you did it?

Well, I don't get what...

It was our last go.

So, like, just one last...

One last lap, you know.

How can it be, watch this, you know, various other,

you know, sort of phrases that were said.

You were very fortunate that Aston wasn't there photographing it

because he'd asked you to do one more go...

Bit of smoke.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, Challenger 2, you can do that.

I was going to say, what's the difference between Challenger 1

and Challenger 2?

So, there's actually quite a lot.

In the same way that there's got a big difference between

Challenger 2 and Challenger 3, which is the new one,

which is they're going to re-engineer

some of the old hulls in order to be able to do.

Are we talking, sort of, 991 to 992?

No, no, no.

Or are we talking 930 to 993 or something, maybe?

Maybe we'll do it and then 993 to 996.

The big thing they haven't changed is the lump in the back.

That's not changed as significantly.

So, we're not talking, sort of, you know, 993 to 996.

We haven't got more change.

But, you know, all of a sudden having car play

is going to make a big difference to the crews.

They're going to really appreciate that, I think.

Well, you did ask.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a relevant question.

Yeah, and most of the big changes are with

with Challenger 3 are guns.

So, it suddenly goes smoothbore gun,

different kind of ammunition and things like that.

But it's the technology in the turret that just goes up a level.

Difference in between Challenger 1 and 2.

Well, actually, it wasn't that great a difference,

but I, because I had a weird career,

I spent lots of time doing tank stuff right at the very beginning,

which is mid-lake 90s.

And then Wenton did weird and wonderful things.

So, I worked at Portland down for a bit.

I did lots of strange foreign deployments in weird places.

I spent a lot of time overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq

and sort of other interesting countries.

And I hadn't had anything to do with tanks.

And in the meantime, the tank that I was trained on,

Challenger 1 had gone out of service and Challenger 2 was in.

And I did a squadron leader tool doing specialist stuff.

And then they said,

we want you to come back and command a squadron

at the Royal Tank Regiment.

And I had to go and do a conversion course.

Did you complain about lack of track feel

and it's a bit heavier, a bit wider,

doesn't feel quite the same.

Well, it's amazing though how long some corporate memories are.

When you turn up down at Lowellworth to do your gunnery course

and things like that.

And it was like,

ah, Major Cameron, we've been expecting you back.

It's like, we remember you.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah.

So the principles, though,

are sort of very much the same of those kind of things.

And actually, laterally in Afghanistan,

the reason why I was brought back

was to take a vehicle called Viking out of service

and bring into service something

that was an urgent operational requirement.

So normally the military takes a very long time to procure kit

and it goes through a process that I think has carried me

off the top of my head,

some concept assessment, demonstration,

manufacture, in-service disposal.

I think it is off the top of my head.

Good acronym.

Yeah, absolutely.

And these, the military is amazing for acronyms.

There's one which is for,

what are the things you need to take with you

if you're a sentry in an armored location

and they'd come up with this acronym for it.

But the acronym wasn't a word.

It didn't make any sense at all.

And it really annoyed me because I'm like,

but it's not a word.

How does it help you remember?

Because it's just a random collection of letters

that you're just saying quickly.

And it was, you know,

you have to remember like a label and a pen

and like just really stupid things,

but they do things like that

to help stupid soldiers like me remember stuff.

And the most annoying thing about it is,

having got really upset about it,

was the instructor at the time said,

yeah, but you'll remember it, won't you?

And so I can remember Urcat Lee

and somebody from Devon.

Yeah, because he was a West Country.

He said too.

And he said, oh, but you'll remember it, sir.

Urcat Lee.

The things you need to take with you when you've got,

the things I've forgotten.

Because that piece of information

pushed all of the useful things out of my head.

You could have been a hedge fund manager or anything,

but that didn't.

Man, I could have been, yeah, successful and instead.

Here you are in a podcast with Eva.

Yeah, where did it all come from?

My goodness, cheers.

Did you not learn,

first time you came and worked with us?

Urcat, no.

Urcat Lee.

Oh my God, yeah.

Urcat Lee.

So there you go.

Now you're going to remember that.

It's just down the road from Balstable, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah, it is.

It's a very narrow lane to get there, isn't it?

Unless you've got a tank.

So how fast is a tank, V-Max,

and how far away can you hit a target whilst moving?

Everything you can see here, out of this window.

You can hit.

Wow.

That's all the Bedfordshire.

Brilliant.

It's pretty much.

Corby, could we hit Corby?

I think that's a good hit.

How would you know?

That's always the question, isn't it?

So longest tank to tank kill.

There are lots of questions that I'm not prepared for.

It is huge.

You know, miles away.

Five, six, seven miles.

Because if you're a tank commander,

you're not actually driving it, are you?

No, you're not driving.

So you're talking to someone.

You're in the turret.

You're doing the big kind of valve.

The driving about bit is someone else.

So the driving about bit is someone else.

But where you're sat, and you've got your head in a site,

you've got a periscopic site above you

that can go 360 degrees.

So the driver is completely independent

to where you're sat and where you're going.

So the bit of the tank that you're in,

and you can see, is pointing where the gun is going,

but the driver can be going in that direction,

or that direction, or in the same direction.

You're always looking in the direction of the gun.

So unless you get your head out of the site,

and then look around,

and then there's a bit of figuring out where the hull is

and which way he's going.

Because you'll say left and right to him.

It might be right and left in actuality.

Absolutely.

And if he's reversing, you've got to give him...

Because he can't see behind him.

Challenge your three.

You can see, you know, we've...

You've got a reversing camera and beeps and stuff like that.

When you can't play, you've got a reversing camera as well, you know.

It's part of a package.

You wouldn't want to damage anything.

No, no.

You're not really that bothered, if you're honest.

When you're really using the things, you're not too fast.

So you've...

You're sat this way.

The tank's going in that direction.

The gunner, who's basically sat immediately down in front of you,

he's looking exactly where the gun is looking.

So he can be engaging something.

You're looking into a site and you're actually...

You can be looking in the direction of the gun.

You can be looking in the direction of where the hull's going.

Or you can be looking somewhere else altogether.

Normally looking for the next thing.

I was going to say, so the gunner is that you're looking for the next target

or where to scarper to presumably...

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

So you can be looking for that.

So you can actually find the next target and lays it independently.

So you'll get a very accurate range position.

It appears on the map.

Challenge your three is then sharing all of that information with the other tanks.

They all go, there's something interesting here at this exact spot.

And it's also set up.

So if the gunner, you might have authorised him to go on

and he's engaging a target, which is in front.

As soon as he goes right, boom, that's destroyed.

It will whip round and point to wherever you're going.

Even if the tank in the meantime is moving in that direction.

You almost pre-selected it.

Completely.

And you've also got these 360 degree episcopes around you.

So you can sit there and look all the way around under armor.

So everyone takes...

Everybody says, winter, don't be a tank commander, you know, in your car.

And that always really annoys me.

Because, you know, it's people driving through a little bit of the side of the window

and they managed to clear with their hands.

Don't be a tank commander.

You're like, no, that's the tank driver.

He's the one who sat down.

If you were a tank commander in winter, you would have opened your sunroof

and you literally would have shot this out of the top.

That's what the tank commander did.

Yes.

How much could you actually, presumably, you can only see there.

So you can't see where you were skidding it.

So if bad guys are going to shoot at you, you don't have your head out of the top as the commander.

You'd be sat down looking through the episcopes.

And they're really cool.

So if you see something interesting over there, there's a button underneath it.

You go bang and the turret whips round.

So your gun has gone.

It's like moveable DTM balance.

You suddenly sort of find yourself...

Yeah, absolutely.

So everyone's like, whoa.

Basically, you don't want to be easily distracted in that job.

No.

I have a really short attention span.

Yeah, absolutely.

All of these things are terrible.

And then you've got radio sets.

So you'll probably have three...

Do you have a different channel for different guys?

Because otherwise it would be closed or open channel for everyone in the tank.

Well, it's open channel for everybody in the tank.

So you're just talking and like this.

So everyone in the crew, including the driver who's down below is doing those.

He can't hear the radios necessarily.

And depending on...

You've got an operator there who'll normally be listening into something the same as you are

and will probably be listening into something else as well.

And it's sort of different layers of command.

So for the squadron leader, you'd be listening in on a regimental and probably a battle group.

One higher up.

Of course.

Because you're running the whole show.

Yeah, so you've got like 14 tanks as well as the ones that are immediately sort of flanking you.

So you're thinking about quite a lot at the same time.

There's a lovely, lovely quote, which...

God, forgive me if I get my phone out, but I should be able to find it very quickly.

Which is from a grant tank commander in the western desert.

Which I've just demonstrated I can't find.

But you are holding a conversation whilst doing that.

Yeah, that's it.

Thereby demonstrating your mum.

Yeah, that's it.

My ability to do that.

But presumably you can drive the tank from with your head above.

Yeah.

If you haven't got any bad shooting at you.

Absolutely.

In the answer to your question about how much could you see when you're doing skids,

I wasn't down closed down or looking through an aposcope.

You've got your head up, but the turret is immediately above you.

And your effective forward view is sort of like that.

You've got about 90 degrees on that sort of forward art.

You get different, because if you're in the driver's position and you're right up the front,

are you?

Yes.

So everything's swinging around behind you.

Whereas you're in the centre.

And you're actually much higher up.

Much, much higher up.

Yeah, and also rotating with the turret as well.

So it's like a 9-11 Dakar.

It's a bit like a 9-11 Dakar.

Yeah, that somebody's then sort of stuck a turret on top of a new turret.

That massive gun was the only way you could make a Dakar any better, isn't it?

Two guns, that's it.

That would be really good.

But here's the tank commander.

So this is a direct quote from a tank commander in the Western Desert in 1942.

And it's often trotted out as a reality of fighting in tanks.

Those things had a 75-millimeter gun that was set into the hull.

So as he sat there, he's got...

So if you think about what I've just sort of described in the tank,

you're sat there with a thing in front of you,

and you're actually looking in that direction.

So you're looking in that direction and doing that.

The tank is moving around,

and you're giving the driver left and right in order to be able to do it.

And he might be pointing that way going in that direction.

The gunner in the meantime, he's engaging a target that is straight ahead of you as it's going.

And then you've got two different radio nets in one ear

and one different radio net in that ear,

who are all saying different things and overlapping because they're not...

It sounds very much like an either long-term planning meeting or something.

Absolutely.

It sounds a little bit more organised if you ask me.

And then someone in the tank is asking, you know, like, can I have a cup of tea?

Oh, no, then...

Yeah, you've done those.

But this lovely quote from 1942 is,

the 75-millimeter gun is firing.

The 37-millimeter gun is firing.

That's the one in the turret, but it's traversed round the wrong way.

The browning is jammed, which is his machine gun directly in front of him.

I'm saying driver advance,

but he's saying it on the A-set, so he's actually...

The driver can't hear him and he's transmitting it over the radio set to, you know,

a battle group who suddenly got some idiot saying driver advance over the battle group net.

And the driver who can't hear me is reversing.

And as I look over the top of the turret, I see 12 enemy tanks 50 yards away.

Someone hands me a cheese sandwich.

It's exactly the same today.

It's exactly the same.

So that wonderful quote from 19, you know, from the Western Desert in 1942.

It's still very much...

And the sandwich comes with black fingerprints.

Obviously.

Yeah.

So how many of you are in a modern tank?

Four in a main battle tank.

Yeah.

So starting with the driver, he's the only one who's in the hull.

Yeah.

So he's pointing in the...

He's got the most comfy seat.

He's laid back like a race car.

His knees and his feet are really quite high.

He's steering as you sort of...

Everybody immediately did the dab a boppo, you know,

as you start steering.

Imagine he's steering wheel.

It sticks.

Yeah.

So he's got sticks on either side.

They're quite heavy when you're just setting off.

And as you get light, they come alive.

And it's literally just fingertips.

And then throttle...

Is there a throttle and brake?

Yeah.

So pretty conventional sort of throttle and brake thing.

And it's a, you know, V12 Rolls Royce twin turbo knocks out a bit of power.

It's quite torquey.

And transmission wise, it just...

Yeah.

Does all that for you.

It does.

Yeah.

It does all of that sort of stuff for you.

And as you haul into a corner, it either is then slowing the outside track to the inside

track.

So the thing starts to slew around.

As you get slower or you haul more on, it will actually stop the inside track.

If you're stationary, you can go like that.

And one will go forwards, one will go backwards and you spin on the set.

Like one of those dreadful G-wagon.

Or EV.

Yeah.

So all these EV can't be gone.

Oh, look at that.

Yeah.

No, but it's called a tank turn.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And they've been doing it for years.

Generally speaking, tank turns are really, really cool unless you're the Duke of Richmond

and some idiot has just done it on your lawn at the end of Festival Speed to show off to

his mates.

And I don't know if the G-wagon is still speaking to us.

He remembered that for quite a long time afterwards.

Yeah.

Pumping white.

Still reminds me about it occasionally.

Actually the thing that really caused...that wasn't me.

That was Anthony Reid who I made the mistake of letting Anthony Reid have a little go in

it.

Actually, Anthony Reid in a bath tank.

It was just opened up whole in the world.

How can you make a tank more lethal?

Put Anthony Reid in it.

I guess your defence was you were overseas in the 90's so you didn't see him race a touring

car.

Yeah.

I had just watched him take the left hand wing mirror off that Chevron that he went up

the hill in and he knocked it off on the flint wall.

Which having driven up there during a Festival Speed, it's so intimidating.

It's ridiculous.

Most people stay as far away as possible from it unless you're in a tank, presumably.

Maybe he just thinks he's in a tank.

Well, yeah.

Well, he's certainly his...he's not big on listening to briefings and things like that.

I'm telling what he's told, certainly so.

But yeah, Anthony was great.

But in between Anthony and I, we dug up a bit of the Duke's edge of his cricket pitch.

And I wasn't forgiven for that for quite some time.

Oh, the cricket pitch.

It wasn't quite the cricket pitch.

Maybe it's silly me off.

That's something like he said.

Yeah.

That's what he did say.

Yeah.

It's very nice that the lesses come back.

Apart from the being shot at whilst you're doing it a bit, it sounds brilliant fun.

Why has no one ever done tank racing?

Well, actually, the people who have are the Russians who host the tank games every year.

And...

Oh, I think I've seen a YouTube clip of that.

Oh, yeah, I do.

Go and have a look.

And it stopped, really, actually with the war in Ukraine because they don't know how to

have allies to do it with.

So it got more and more ropey as they did it, as the Russians did it.

So the tanks are sort of T90, Soviet era things.

And the countries that they're competing against are the very finest from across the

world when you go and have a look on YouTube.

And there's various random African nations who clearly owed the Russians something,

or bought Russian kit, would turn up and have a go in it.

And so the tank games on YouTube are absolutely glorious.

Are they in there in, like, Group N tanks?

And then the Russians turn that with a full Group B to T90?

Pretty much.

And then, you know, and then somebody rolls it.

And because that's definitely possible.

So you've seen the video and that's just terrifying.

Is that bad?

Can you get out if you've turned it?

No, because most of the lids are on the top.

When I was at Portland Down, actually, I was involved in a program.

I wasn't involved in a program.

I got asked to comment on a program.

So you have some wonderful things where scientists will get together and they will follow a thread

of science that absolutely will identify a problem to something that nobody's ever

realized is a problem.

But they'll absolutely pull away on it for a while.

And there was a lovely program which was about sloped armor.

Works for a number of reasons.

It makes the effective thickness of the armor greater because you put as an angle, so it's

further to go through and things could glance off.

And somebody had gone, well, the glance off thing is interesting.

What if you made a sort of nonstick coating to the, you know, actually, would that help

something to be deflected instead of penetrating if it literally just skidded off the surface?

So there was this wonderful program that they were pursuing, which was all about how can you

make a sort of nonstick tank, which is fabulous.

And then I was asked to go and comment on it.

I said, well, how do you get in it?

And they were like, what?

Well, they haven't got a door on the side.

You don't step in.

You've got to climb on top of it.

And just the idea of a crew.

I'm like slipping.

Scrapping.

I just thought that was absolutely glorious.

But yeah, I don't think that program went any further.

And then, unfortunately, should they end up in somewhere warm, frying eggs on it?

Yeah.

All of these things are possible.

Perfect.

We'd better talk about something other than tanks.

Oh, tanks.

Teflon tanks.

Well, I was going to talk about, because it's on your t-shirt, race remembrance and your

recent track day that we, so race remembrance, I remember I wasn't at Eva at the time,

but the first time you did it, which was 2014.

Yeah.

Started a sort of a relationship with Anglesey, hasn't it?

Yeah.

With you guys.

But yeah, just what is race remembrance and who came up with the idea?

I think I know who it is.

I think I'm looking at him.

No.

Well, that's it.

So I credited with it, but it wasn't me.

So I, the manager at the time of Anglesey, I'd collared at Autosport as we held in January

at the NEC.

Was that Richard?

Was Richard.

Richard Peacock, but he had a chap in there who, who, who was a, he was a lovely guy and

I'd managed to collar him and said that we really want to do something.

It'd be great.

We haven't got any money because we're a charity, et cetera.

You know, could you do something for us?

And he said, well, yeah, why don't you have a couple of days, but we'll do it at the end

of the year, effectively in time, which would be commercially not that viable for them.

And therefore, you know, it's something that the circuit could afford to do for us.

And we batted around a couple of dates in November and then, and they said, well, yeah,

this is going to be the weekend.

And we sort of looked and went, oh, that's remembrance weekend.

And I'd sort of thought, hey, let's do a track day or just what a great opportunity to have

Anglesey to yourself.

Let's take some folk up there and we could do some instruction and go and stand on a

couple of corners, really do some theory and piss about, do some skids.

It'll be great fun.

What's not to like.

And it was actually a guy called John Earp, who was in the process of leaving the military

at the same time as, as me, who was a helicopter pilot.

And John was about to take over flying a Knaven air ambulance.

So he was a local or becoming a local.

And John's like, no, we need to have a race.

And I'm sorry.

Okay.

Well, you know, maybe, maybe one of the days he was like, no, no, no, absolutely needs

to be a race.

We can talk to race organizers.

We know how to do this.

And for us, that was genuinely the, it felt like we had two and a half employees at that

time.

I was the half.

I was, we had two professionals and then me who was doing it sort of in my spare time.

And it felt a bit like Guernsey launching a space mission, but in 2014 with a bit of

support from Mazda UK, we had 26 cars on the grid for the first ever race of remembrance

held on Remembrance Weekend.

And we, this idea of always had that an unusual format, hasn't it?

Yeah.

Of where you stop a race in full flow and do a service of remembrance in the pit lane

and then away you go again.

And you have this wonderful sort of, and I thought, I thought it was a ridiculous idea

from the outset.

And as I was stood there and the weather had been appalling as, as one would expect.

And then the sun came out as we started doing this.

As it can do.

Yeah.

As it also will do without a doubt.

You know, you will have everything.

And it did it for the remembrance service.

And I just remember standing in the window drops.

And the only thing you could hear was the waves on the, yeah, just over the cliff, isn't it?

From the...

And when you're doing that on the falling notes of a bugle with, you know, best part

of a thousand people, now two and a half thousand people all in a pit lane, it's, it's extraordinary.

It makes the airs go up on your arms.

And I stood there and I had these two simultaneous feelings.

The first one of which was, this is wonderful.

I mean, this is, this is really great.

And the second feeling that I had simultaneous, it was like, I've got to do this every year now.

It really is a, it's part of the calendar, though, isn't it?

Now, I think people...

It's a really special thing to come and do the race.

I've been lucky enough to do, to do the race.

And it's normally a race meeting.

The race is the most important thing, is it?

So everyone's there for this.

It's a service of remembrance.

That we just write about.

It's like the least, it's enjoyable, but it's the least important component of the whole weekend somehow.

It's a very sobering but enjoyable thing to do.

It is really poignant.

It's an amazing thing to do.

And, you know, when you've got two thousand people there in Anglesey, we're in our fifth year of running

a karting race of remembrance.

We have an online race of remembrance that allows anybody to, you know, take place anywhere in the world.

You know, we have people from different countries.

You get overseas teams do the actual race.

We do. Yeah.

I mean, I think we had Dutch teams there across when you were there.

The Americans and Canadians, absolutely.

Well, they came across, it was a friend of mine called Graham Martin, who's a wonderful bloke.

He and I were both in Iraq in 2003, I think.

And he's a wonderful guy.

And he'd followed our progress because he listens to Radio the Monty.

He's just a huge endurance racing fan.

So when the charity first set up, he'd heard, you know, Heimdall banging on about the stuff that we were doing and had made a donation.

We got in touch and he came across for a race of remembrance and just went, this is incredible.

I need to bring back my countrymen to come and see it and brought back some people who were so inspired that they set up Operation Motorsport, which is a U.S.

and Canadian charity that's doing a very similar thing.

You know, it's harnessing Motorsport in order to help people who've served in the military that's now, you know, they'll be approaching their 10th birthday soon,

which is just extraordinary.

And it all sort of came from this wonderful thing.

But it is really poignant and it's not, but it's contemporary.

It's not sort of thinking about, you know, the deprivations of the First World War and things like that.

You know, you're you very much got a got a front rank of people who are in the middle of their own sort of contemporary stories.

But I think everybody there, Christ, we all, you know, we live through COVID.

We've all suffered deprivations at different times.

And you're never quiet or silent or in the moment, people pay a lot of money to do mindfulness training.

Because if you find yourself silent, you get your phone out straight away, then you distract yourself with stuff.

So it's actually quite a discipline to to do nothing and to be just alone in your thoughts.

But when you're not alone in your thoughts and it's with 2000 other people at the same time, it's it's really it's really quite a moving thing.

So it's lovely.

It was Motorsport UK's event of the year last year.

This year, I think that's been won by another event, British Grand Prix.

I've never heard of it myself, but, you know, apparently it's a great thing.

But it's it's lovely.

It's a great because it has it's evolved into this, as you just said, big thing and taken on by others.

But it was very early days of Mission Motorsport, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was a big thing to take on.

How did the charity come about?

And what's what's the premise behind it?

And where is it now?

Because you've just sort of moved on in your role with with it as well, haven't you?

Well, I have.

So I mean, you know, when we when we started,

it really was because I I mean, I was commanding the Armour Group in Afghanistan in 2010 into 2011.

And that was the vehicle that was going out of service was Viking sort of the two boxed tract

articulated in the middle things, which versions of which the Royal Marines still use,

mainly the Arctic taken places like that.

And they're an amazing vehicle that can go just about anywhere, very low ground pressure.

Yeah. So they're incredibly good off road.

But they've been targeted very successfully and increasingly successfully.

You've always got an arms race of

of one side against the other, trying to, you know, trying to outthink.

And that was being replaced by this thing called Warthog, that in incredibly quick timelines,

I was sort of taught earlier about Cadmid, it takes forever.

So you order a laptop in 23 years, you get a ZX81, you know, in a hardened box,

because it's been made to military specifications in a world of, you know,

cheap, you know, not even Panasonic Toughbooks, you know, just cheap things.

It doesn't work.

Doesn't matter, because all the information is in the cloud.

You just get another one on the way you go.

So to be able to bring out a vehicle in just two years was incredibly

fast to do that under urgent operational requirement.

But you're doing a job as well, which is about closing with and killing the enemy

of fundamentally sort of taking and holding ground.

And that puts you in harm's way.

And therefore, you know, you've got bad guys who are trying to do bad things to you

in exactly the same way.

And so, you know, we knew that on the previous tour, we'd lost,

you know, we'd lost people, Scotty's Little Soldiers,

which is a service charity that some might have heard of.

Corporal Scott was a Royal Tank Regiment, Corporal who was killed in Viking in 2009,

amongst others.

And so to go out there with Warthog, we knew we were sort of going into harm's way.

And the best way of defending against IEDs is, yeah, V-shaped hulls and blast

attenuation and stuff like that.

But the best way to do it is don't run over them.

So therefore, be as unpredictable and as maneuverist as you possibly can be

to be really difficult for them to have anticipated where you're going to be

was very much what we did.

So we went out a lot.

And I was very fortunate that we got to bring everybody home,

which was a mixture of, you know, good kit.

I think I would have gone to nine funerals had we been in Vikings and as it was,

you know, got to bring people home, but not necessarily intact.

Yeah.

And, you know, that's sort of a mixture of luck and things like that.

So when I came back, I was spending quite a lot of time in sort of

Queen Elizabeth's hospital meeting people, and it was at the same time that

there were some wonderful things happening like Top Gear talking about,

you know, some lads who were off to go and do the Dakar.

And that's a great idea.

But when you meet a bloke who's in the bed next door to one of our lads who's

getting extra bits sawn off him as a result of an infection he's received

because he's been told he's a hero and he's going to go and do the Dakar.

So he's been hill rallying, but with no medical risk assessments in place.

And that for him was the difference between going on a program where he can go on

prosthetics and walk again or being in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

You're not helping him if you haven't done that.

And so to put that duty of care piece right in the center of what we do,

because it's not about the sport, the sport's just the tool that you're using

to help people who are on a journey of recovery and to help them and their families

is the big piece.

So that race retrain recover bit that underpins what the charity does

has been there since the beginning because sport is just the tool.

It's the thing that you're using to get people off the sofa and engaged

and then to turn it into something really positive.

And so those links to the automotive industry came really quite early.

And it was three things like Invictus Games in 2014 that was amazing.

Nobody knew what it was going to be like.

And JLR, bless them had gone.

You know, yeah, we're in for this.

You know, let's make it something great.

And as much as it was most sport, because I remember coming to you very early days,

and it was kind of, it was, I suppose most sport is so much more than just the driver

and talked about the race, but it was getting people involved wherever they could be.

And then you had successes with putting people with manufacturers to do all sorts of engineering.

And they were the team of people with diverse skills that are all you belong to the same

type of thing.

I think a lot of your guys, when I've been lucky enough to meet quite a few of them,

and they've been so focused and so part of something much bigger than them.

And then I guess when you're discharged from the army,

you come in terms of whatever's happened to you.

And yeah, you're not part of anything anymore, are you?

So to see your guys gelling as team and finding that actually,

I might have a arm missing or a leg missing or, but I can still be really, really good at

what I'm doing here and enjoy the success that comes from that.

You remember me saying that, you know, these are people that you go out to interesting and say,

look, here's something that's going to turn up on time.

It's used to working ridiculously, more hours than you will ever do,

kind of sort of, and is also, you know, has more skills than, you know, you would ever believe

in all sorts of theories that have been put because of some of the army training for

high voltage electrical systems and all of the things that we're coming to see.

And it's everywhere, but there's a translation piece and it's often that's the translation.

So serving the military is a very different culture.

And so there's a bit of helping people across that sort of culture divide from one thing to the other.

But it uses different language as well.

And high voltage in the automotive industry got a big shake up when, you know,

the government white paper came out in 2018 that the road to zero,

you know, which, whether it was going to be hydrogen or whether it was going to be,

it was electrification at the center of it.

And you suddenly needed people who couldn't just do 12 volts or even 240 volt AC,

they needed to do sort of big fat orange tubes underneath the bonnet of your car.

Which was high voltage.

And we'd sat down to do a, with MOD, a skills thing and said,

look, can we find out who is leaving the military with high voltage qualifications?

And we had actually the Navy stuff turned out, it was a not a figurative,

it was a literal stack of paperwork.

You know, these are the courses that the high voltage stuff and the Navy and the Army and the RAF.

And so I go because I know nothing about the Navy.

I know a bit too much about the Royal Air Force.

So I go looking for tanks.

And I'm looking for those, I'm looking for those roles,

because we talked about that turret of the tank that you hit the button and it whips round.

It's not some phthalo going like that.

That's moving 26 tons of turret round on the move and stabilizing the gun.

It's, it's some, it's some pretty big electrons.

So I go looking for driver Mac and gun and Mac,

because there's the point at which they're allowed into the metadines.

I don't even know what a metadine is, but it's the,

it's the electric gubbins in the turret that drives the turret round,

which is over a certain amount.

And I'm looking for those trades and I couldn't find them.

I don't know why aren't they there?

And we genuinely spent a day sort of head scratching.

And we're looking for that high voltage keyword search thing.

And then when, hang on a minute, what's high voltage?

And high voltage at different industries do it in different, different ways,

but high voltage as far as automotive industry was concerned,

is anything over 60 volts, depending on which bit of, of legislation you look at.

Oh, so the threshold was different.

Yeah. So Tesla, you know, what's that 400, 600?

We're now seeing 800 volt vehicles, military high voltage over a thousand.

So, you know, and you're like, for God's sake,

so these people have actually got all the behaviors, the competencies, the skill sets,

but they haven't got the language.

They don't know that they haven't got a certificate that says high voltage,

and no one has said that to them on it.

They think that's something that's beyond their reach.

The reality is they've done it all of the time.

They're already one step, two steps ahead of people in the industry.

Well, yeah. And, but they don't have a degree.

They're much more, less likely to have a degree.

They haven't got prior industry experience.

They've never written about themselves in the first person.

So their first attempt of doing a CV is agonizingly awful.

And they use words like sniper and things like that, which, which in industry,

I've met lots of morale snipers.

Don't get me wrong.

But they use a different language.

So to help them navigate that is a bit of,

yes, you can try to change the person to make them a better fit for industry.

But I've looked at it the other way of to go,

how can you give industry the right tools so that it can actually

unpick which of these people are the ones that are really going to enhance your business

and, and which, which aren't the right fit and give them the right tools to be able to do that.

And then it's the best thing in the world about my job, which is easy,

because I just bask in the reflected glory of, of others.

How many beneficiaries have passed through the charity since?

So we've just levels of beneficiary.

Yeah.

So people that have gone on to have full-time employment and other people that have just

benefited from the, the boost of being part of what you.

So we, we've got those who are wounded, injured or sick.

So they've, they've been medically discharged from the forces,

leaving with some sort of issue.

More than 20,000 now have been through the doors of the charity,

which is mind blowing in 14 years at distinct individuals.

There's a larger audience of people when you go and include family members and

spouses and all of the rest of it who've, who've been involved too.

And then the work which is representing a more, a bigger community,

those who've served and their families, you know, not necessarily the ones who were broken,

is, is bigger than that again, but whether they've directly been through the charity or

whether they've benefited from things that the charity has put in place,

where they've never even heard about us, because I'm not that interested in empire building,

you know, to make a thing I'm interested in, in the outcome.

So Jaguar Land Rover changed quite profoundly around that first Invictus Games back in 2014

and started counting and actually, you know, using some metrics.

And we know then that, that more than 1,600 veterans have found new careers in Jaguar Land Rover

since the 1st of January, 2015, which is, is fantastic.

And then when you look at what Lotus have done and Morgan have done and then into the supply

chain and lots of other things, Stellantis doing great things, you know,

into, across those companies too, then it's, it's much more than that, which is, is lovely.

That's very impressive, isn't it? A lot of people with positive

It goes quite a long way from, you know, talking about on a track day, you know,

and doing skids in tanks, you then end up sort of, you know, doing some of those things.

But it's, but it's kind of been a logical extension of doing more of the things that

worked. And when something hasn't worked going, well, let's not do that again.

No, that was rubbish.

To the MOD, do they,

are they more engaged with what happens to their, you know, the people afterwards now

than they, than they used to be? Do you think there's a consequence?

Very much so. They, well, as a consequence of us, I don't, but they, they certainly are much more

than when I was leaving. And I think there was a narrative that we, I think we broke,

the IRA were responsible for us breaking our contemporary link with those who serve,

because we hid service from society for, for the best part of four decades,

for very good reasons of security. You'd change into civilian clothes before you went home,

most people who served in the military did it overseas in Germany and various other places.

And if somebody, you bumped into someone in a pub or at a trap day and they said,

what do you do? You would lie for, for security reasons. And so the chances of somebody knowing

a contemporary serviceman or woman was massively reduced. And so we think about,

you know, the war as being the second world war and the greatest generation, you know,

about those and you lose that contact in society with those who sort of come along afterwards.

Help for Heroes helped us find it to a degree with this amazing thing that

captured the zeitgeist that people just wanted to support, regardless of politics,

you know, they, they, they wanted to support the blokes and the girls, you know, independent of,

of politics, because you recognize they're doing a job so that we don't have to, you know,

and that, that was important. But that's very much focused on those who've had the most awful of

times, you know, have really been, been hurt by it. And we're really pushing a positive message

because you see these people who've gone on to do incredible things. The more we can help them to

be successful and independent and successful civilians, the better. And that's not really

a traditional service charity narrative, but it's one that we've, we've found a really happy

space with and where it's, it's kind of resonated with people and it's, and it's, it's made a

difference. But I think society is, is better. I think government is much better. I mean, I have

a thing called the office for veterans affairs and governments that sat in the cabinet office

underneath, you know, sort of Johnny Mercer's rising star and crash and star and crash and,

you know, Johnny's way of doing things, but gave us this thing called the office of veterans affairs.

And that's represented at the, yeah, yeah. And that that's now being subsumed into, into MOD.

But, but it does mean that sort of veterans have a voice in a way that they, they didn't in the

past and they're sort of, but they kind of recognize if we want the UK to succeed and we

want Britain to do well, they're a strategic national asset, you know, we've invested a fortune

in these people in blood, sweat and tears. If we allow them to be underemployed,

you know, or unemployed or worse under a bridge or a suicide statistic, then we are failing as a

society. So it's natural for us to want the best things for them because it means the best for

us as a country. Yeah. And they've gone on to do some, some of the roles that we've discussed

over the years that you've been really proud of putting them into amazing roles. Some of the

stuff that they're doing is sort of dream job for is joyous. And you sort of, you look everywhere.

So I had a, I had a call from a lad called Richie Storer on the way here. Richie's,

Richie's nuts. I mean, I hope he listens to this, Richie, if you, if you're watching, you are crazy.

Irish guardsman, medically discharged, post traumatic stress disorder had all sorts of

impacts on Richie in his life. But he was ringing me up because he's currently working for a

facilities management business, basically. And he said, I got pulled in. He's a brummy. I went

to attempt his ax on me. So I got, I got pulled in by, I got pulled in by my boss and I thought I

was in for a bollocking. And they're basically having a, they're expanding and his boss had

brought him in to say, we need more people like you. And for, you know, for somebody to be saying

that to Richie Storer is huge credit to that lad for just the distance that he's come. But also

the fact that he works, he properly grafts and he's a great bloke. And, and then it's, you know,

it's reflected, it's reflected back of them. So I was, you know, took a phone call on the way here,

joining him up with a thing called the career transition partnership, which is what we as

taxpayers have paid for to do resettlement provision for those who are leaving 15,000

people leaving the services every year. It's free to advertise your jobs to them. At the moment,

the government will give you a national insurance window over year for national insurance contributions.

And that's worth up to about £6,500. It's capped out. If you've hired somebody, it's their first

job out of service or their first 365 days of employment out of out of service. You won't pay

national insurance contributions for. So, but Bob's widgets of Peterborough or the facilities

management company doesn't necessarily know about that. So how can we, I use the platform that we

have, even the Evo podcast and be able to get that out to people to go, you know, consider these

people, you know, perhaps, perhaps think about giving them a chance and, and you asked about the

government and what do they do? Well, yeah, government is leaning in as well in order to try

and help to just level the playing field a little bit for these people who aren't as good on LinkedIn

as, as some of their peers who didn't work with them. I mean, they can't sell every opportunity

into a sale. Yeah, that reminds me. Yeah. Should we, should we have a break and then talk to Jim

about all these ridiculous, Annie is, I was thinking more, can we eat his biscuits first

and then we can talk about his ridiculous cars. Yeah, this sounds like a plus. Okay, we'll see

you in part two. Thank you very much. This episode is brought to you by Palm Olive. Family time isn't

just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palm Olive Ultra. Palm Olive's most

powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the

new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and

more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

Listening to this podcast, Smart Move. Being financially savvy, Smart Move. Another Smart Move?

Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto.

Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor,

State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.

Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability,

amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

Welcome back to the Evo podcast. I'm with Henry, Dickie and special guest,

James Cameron in the second half. I get promoted. It means I'm in trouble normally.

Yeah, the full James. So if it was my mother, stick around for the third part, you'd be major for

God. Demoted again. Let's talk about you and your cars because if anyone's

followed you on social media, you've got quite an eclectic mix of stuff over the years that I've

seen some of it similar to your tanks with the engine in the back. Yes. But you've also some

very old stuff that's currently in a literal shed in your garden that you built the shed around the

car. Yeah, well, there was a bit I needed more space at home because I owned things but they were

but they weren't accessible, you know, so it's a bit of a pain in the back side to go and

I'm actually, we're Barksha and, sorry, against the Hampshire border. We can see the Hampshire

border from my house. And you have a car just currently conveniently parked at the Nuremberg

and I used to have a E30 3.5 litre so it's like the boat engine, the big 3.5 in this E30 which

lived out at the ring for some time and I wanted to be able to put more stuff at home and it

coincided with the shed came about. I'd asked my wife who's famously long suffering and sort of said

I need a shed. I'm a man. I don't have a shed. I should have a shed and she sort of went, yeah,

right, whatever. Was she imagining they're like talking to each other? Yeah, a little century

shed of gardens. Well, she got suspicious because I was a bit too happy about, you know, planning

for this shed and then she twigged that I sold a Maserati to pay for the shed and she was like,

whoa, hang on a minute, where's the shed going? I was like right in the back. Oh, because you had a

4200 GT? No, I had a 4200 GT. Yeah, so I wasn't quite that masochistic

that I had. Yes, I missed the rear lights but I did get the sort of Ferrari-ish B8 which was great

but that was sold really to pay to pay for the shed and Jude sort of went,

hang on, how big is the shed? And I said, what's the shed? It's six by nine and she went six by

nine. Me too. So if you're some local planning authority website, you'll see it.

Exactly. 500 miles to Brooke. And so yeah, well this, yeah, so she had gone to London for a few

days for her brother to go and do good, good auntie duties as her brother had had, I think

their first, second or third or fifth born or whatever it was and came back and there was an

enormous JCB in the back garden and this trench, the Somme Reenactment Society that we were,

we were building at one point but then a big concrete base and then this thing, it's called a

shed but it's a sort of a log cabin really but it's, yeah, six meters by nine meters so it's a

decent size and so that's been office man cave. There's obviously a beer fridge in it and at the

moment there's a 1976 Carrera, 9-11 Carrera race car, a Carrera three litre which is,

which is a really cool thing and a 1923 Dodge touring car which was really the result of me

attending an auction having had a couple of beers. But it's also that 90, it's the,

I never used to understand the pre-war stuff but I went and did,

through the charity, we took a lot of boys out to go and support Martin Ovington

racing at Classic Le Mans in a 1929 Blower Bentley and that was like the light bulb kind

of came on then actually because Martin would also then just take it on the road and go to the

pub in it at insane speeds and I sort of went oh I kind of get this, there's some real charm to it

so I bought the Dodge when it was 95 years old having this fanciful idea that when it turned

100 it was going to be worth more money. That didn't occur so that hasn't happened so the 9-11s,

so I've got a couple of 1970s, 9-11s and they in value I guess have done ridiculously well.

The Dodge has gone the other way and I broke the roof just to make it even worse but that's a great

thing and it's the best thing in the world for going to the pub in, it's hilarious. So it's a big,

for people who haven't seen it, it's a big, I'll get a bit of it for like five seater. Yeah and

it's got running boards so it's that sort of 1920s, Valentine's Day Massacre sort of Tommy Gung

kind of, it's one of those, it's exactly one of those but it's the Americans so like that

that wonderful Bentley Blower is actually quite intimidating to drive because the throttle's in

the middle and any one of you driven one of those things, whatever you do intuitively is wrong,

you know the thing you first try and do is the long thing. So that's perfect for tank commander.

You can't enjoy driving because the moment you enjoy yourself you completely forget and you

hit the wrong pedal. You forget yourself and something happens in front of you and you hit

the brake which turns out to accelerate you dramatically towards the seat of your car.

Just do the hammer and press all the pedals at the same time.

Something hands you a cheese sandwich and it's all the same.

But it was the Americans so Buick's and Dodgers from the early 20s did clutch brake accelerator,

they were the first ones to put them in the right order, H-pattern gearbox and the thing for this

particular Dodgers it's completely restored so it's basically it's like a new car with a broken

hood. All the oil leaks are standard. Yes so all of the oil leaks happen in the right place as

opposed to the wrong place but it's pretty mint but it's not on wooden spoked wheels, it's got disc

wheels which means that if you're like me and you want to park it up for six months and just ignore

it, you don't need to know a car trite to make the wheels. Yeah absolutely, you don't have to

lift it up over winter for the wheels not going oval. You just basically and particularly after

we put an electric fuel pump so with bad obsession motors what we dug it out after an extended hiatus

just to go to the pub in it and it took all day tinkering just to get to the pub which is a mile

down the road to be able to do it and that was great and really charming but yeah we put a

modern fuel pump on it so you literally get in it's electric start and it just goes boom 12

volts electrics and it just yeah and it's great I mean if you the fastest I've ever gone on it

according to GPS was 47 miles an hour and that felt like you're re-entering the earth's atmosphere

I mean that was terrifying and if you sort of sneeze or faintly look away and then back again

it's in a different place to where it was so it'll just cheerfully. There's no further down the road

it's just move left or right. Yeah yeah it just sort of veers off but it's I mean they're amazing

off-road because roads then didn't look like roads now they were literally car tracks. Yeah tracks

so they were better. So the articulation of it. Yeah it's not bothered by potholes and things

like that you just don't feel it and you're on this lovely sort of sprung sofa and Jude just

tweaked because she's always wanted a place to look like a bloody officer's mess in the house so

which she said there's just way of getting Chesterfields into the house without way.

So yeah we built the shed in in lockdown with my kids and so it was brilliant when there was all

of those regulations and it was you know you couldn't be in the house but you could be in the garden

and you're like well it is a shed we're in the garden so it's also if you lift the carpet itself

it's full of crisps and things like that where drunk people have been in it so that's pretty good

but yeah that and 9-11s I tend to get associated with that and inevitably Landrovers. What was your

first maybe not your first unless your first car was a sporty car what was your first like

proper? Well my first car was a car that I did sport in because it was a Series 3 Landrover

okay and I did all my first skids in Series 3 Landrovers because it was their rear wheel drive

until you plonked that yellow or thing down and then it would engage but I did trialing in it

because that was the only thing I could afford to do that was motorsport as a student but

the first really well I had quite a lot of fast stuff the first thing I sort of really

did motorsport in was an Integrale I guess. 8 valve 16 valve? It was it was an 8 valve but

with a 16 valve bonnet and the vertical spoiler on the back and white speed lines and that was

yeah I was mega love that thing and I was based at the time in Harrogate which is pretty much where

I'm from yeah and so with a girlfriend who lived up the Dales so it was just amazing you see you

know go and chase the bikers around there I had an XJS as well for a bit that I used to use for

similar purposes that was a bit more of a handful but yeah that's that's that's been a really good

thing and then just a sort of succession of Subaru's and 200SX's due to the S13 I had an S14

so it looked a bit like the owner's club it was always so that had to move on

and an RX-7 because I'm a because I'm a a masochist. I've forgotten about the RX-7.

Yeah there's a late whether FD or what are they called? Yeah yeah the beautiful shapes yeah

yeah the beautiful shapes RX-7 and that that was I was based in Suffolk and our house was in

just outside Harrogate and so economical then to that weekend commute but just how do you get

home on a Friday as fast as you can and the A14 A1 but it was it was yeah that was a car track

yeah not not a lot of fun or you go well hang on a minute you surely go a much more direct route

you know learn the names of places like Sleaford and you know go across the fence

and that RX-7 was extraordinary for doing that because you could you know you'd be stuck behind

um nor locals

or tractors yeah absolutely but you could you know you can pull that there's the

six mile or nine mile straight on that piece of road yeah yeah that's yeah exactly you look at

and you go I think I can overtake one or two and uh yeah you're still at you're still in the outside

landing counting at 20 odd but it's um get to the end check the oil oh yeah overtake them all again

so yeah I mean obviously I bought the finest one that I possibly could

and then had to rebuild it like within a month of buying the bloody thing so which

which bankrupted me so I'm still paying for that I think I'm still paying for the intergrally

um yeah there's been a variety of variety of stupid things like that where did your

love of cars come from is it from family father brothers yeah mom calls and stuff

mom and dad really and my grandfather always had I always remember them having big old Jags

which was great my dad was a um I think he he was um he worked for Barclays Bank um and uh

and so he he had the big Jags and that was on my mom's side on my dad's side his his father was a carpenter

um sorry Morgan's no I mean the um but my my dad was my dad was a rep so I remember

really clearly I remember every car that my dad had because it was such a big thing that they'd

have the list that they would then choose from and it was all of that classic you know Diavore

Sierra or a Cavalier you know all of that thing and so my dad's first sort of jelly mold but by

far my my best birthday that I've ever had was um when my dad turned up to come and pick well my

mom turned up to come and pick us all up and she borrowed her boss's car that was a Bentley

T2 they got a load of excitable schoolboys then all in this Bentley I think I'd have been at eight

or nine and then my dad turned up in um a white 1.6L Capri YOLT 208T and that having you know he's

coming out of a Cavalier into that and that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen and it was just

Lewis so it's like at some point this idiot will buy clearly a Capri I've had a Coke bottle

Cortina that I ran when I was based in Hollington um so one of those Mark III the you don't see

any of them anymore because they they weren't bangler racing or they all yeah you're right they

all went bangler racing you know and it that had a pinto in it and then it had a it had a v6 in it

and ended up with side exhausts underneath under the back doors because it was a three because it

was a four door obviously and it was orange with zero one on the side but with a black vinyl roof

did it play country and western yeah but I obviously I put Dixie horns in it as well

and um and we I turned up at a Snetterton track day and it had a tow bar on it and there were

loads of them there I would imagine I'd turned up at a at a Snetterton track day and it was

yeah circuit driver magazine and um Mark Hales who was attempting to be serious in the pit lane

and I was going past hitting and playing Dixie every time I was going past on the main street

I took my race cars I had a seven type thing but yeah the Cortina was more funny to shake a stick

and then it got the 2.9 24 valve V6 in it as well costs were yeah yeah it wouldn't stop

but it was yeah that was great so I love I love that thing it was so much

so there's a bit of me that really likes the Ford's and that sort of you know

if I was Australian it'd be Bogan but you know I'm yeah I do like that I do like that

and then Porsche's happened at some point so I got based in Germany and you spend time at the

Nürburgring and I used to uh help take groups of Brits out there yeah um and Ron Simons who's

a bit of a Nürburgring legend you used to run a thing called the I mean RSR now when you see

RSR and RSR it's super sleek isn't it now amazing organization it's fantastic but he used to be Ron

with one mechanic that's about 75 who every week would threaten to leave Ron

because he'd been yes treated appallingly or you know taken advantage of all the rest of it and

Ron would sort of win him round um yeah and a fleet of alpha 70 times it was the 75 experience

and so I used to go out and you'd find yourself instructing with and Ron would just give you

and you would do ducks and drakes during tourist fun so with people just literally following you

with radios sets with earpieces that didn't really work and and it and just if you give people

someone a radio and say use the radio at the same time well you were shouting go left

where you were facing backwards and I'm eating a cheese sandwich you know Ron's on a different

level of talking on two mobile phones at the same time whilst going around the outside of all of us

but you'd have five people and of course when the third person in the line like has a wobbly you

know dives out of the way of something ends up a bit on the grass and then the other two slowed

down even further then you're just and all of a sudden you've only got two people behind you

like what do you do do you slow down do you go faster or and it's the Nürburgring or it starts

raining halfway around you know and that's character building. It was so much quieter then

there wasn't I think people that probably go now can't imagine having the luxury of doing that

because it's just rammed. People taking their garden rubbish down you know because you've got a

yarrow's cart and it is the quickest way from the top to the bottom Nürburgring to up now

you're able to take the bottles back was a classic down to the railway in the bottom is you do that

and then you'd hop back on the ring and then come back up you know somebody with one of those little

traders on the back which is fine and the dog in the back of the car yeah sounds perfect yeah yeah

but you'd be overjoyed by the blue mini which was Akim you know yeah the plumber yeah by that mini

yeah yeah any of the not the plumber so yeah and that that sort of

it took me a while. Well we could cut that a bit out it's fine. That should stay in depth. Yeah yeah

so we yeah so I kind of I kind of got an appreciation for

I've never really liked Golfs but yeah okay and BMW is one of my first laps actually was in an E30

and that really sort of shaped my you know one of those and so when I bought a car that lived

out at the Nürburgring an E30 but the one with the most ridiculous engine that I could get into one

was was a great was a great idea I do love that car. Do you get on track much these days or are you

more up in the control tower or organising stuff because we've just all used it for the week did

your yeah the track night at Anglesey track night which it's a great idea he loves his track day he's

and loves being on track and bit different when you turn the lights out yeah it was it was fantastic

and then it the turn the lights out and it was dark and then it was like really I've driven around

Anglesey quite a few times and then started driving somewhere completely different it's not who comes

up with this again you and your team go how can we do something slightly different have you make

it harder for people yeah exactly yeah no how can we make it as challenging as you can so do you get

to enjoy those do you get more enjoyment now pushing those on and seeing people sort of

taking advantage of of the opportunity well do you sort of have that hacker and I wish I was

out there doing stuff well I mean I've sort of gone through so that very first race of remembrance

I was racing you know and the Graham Fudge lent us a car to go and do it so we had a

Mazda Works race car but it was the Jota car yeah the Jota built ones which we've still got

one of those cars has done an every single race of remembrance it's done four 24 hour races

done a bunch of 12 other 12 hour races and stuff it's done you know various other things and it's

amazing it's still we bullscaped it the other day to go and have a bit of a look and it it

compression tested better than it's supposed to as it was new and you look inside it and it's

absolutely perfect and this thing has been given death by idiots for every single mile it's ever

it's ever well yeah journalists have raced it yeah totally totally both the Frank Kitties racetracks

yeah the Frank Kitties yeah both yeah both Frank Kitties have been in it it's had a it's even had

a Chris Harris who famously loves his MX-5 so we'd put him yeah he's a big fan of those isn't he

yeah no he is yeah so we've done those but I mean answer to your question the the sort of

Nurburgring stuff for example it it is such a privilege to be able to share your love and

your insight with other people and to be able to share that with people who you give stuff about

is is wonderful but it does mean that as sort of the charity's got bigger we've now got you know

where I was the instructor I now you know sits on committees in motorsport UK helping disabled

and accessible motorsport become more available to people in the UK it takes you further away from

the grassroots of being in the car so I do still absolutely love that and I've sort of gradually

found myself doing less and less of it because there's people now who do that for us who we've

sort of grown up through those programs so there's a tiny bit of me sort of wanting to get my

hobby back in a way to be able to to be able to do some of that and so this year I'm going to go

and do a little bit of racing I think which would be which would be quite nice because after 14 years

of being out front and running the charity I'm taking a step back from the sort of day-to-day

operations of of of Mission Motorsport and sort of I'll never be too far away from it and I'm

going to formally continue to work for the charity but as founder helping it to yeah we've got some

big stuff next year like the Invictus Games coming back to the UK which is really exciting you know

that's that's in in July 27 and where's that going to be so the NEC in Birmingham so you know

but Commonwealth Games and stuff has demonstrated it's actually it's a brilliant and really

sustainable venue because you've got airport and motorway and and rail all in one place and

accommodation and the evening stuff you don't need to bust people around for miles so yeah

that hasn't been back no since 2014 yeah the original in 2014 so it's done Canada twice I think

the US twice it's on Australia the Netherlands it was in the Hague and Düsseldorf and I've

so I was obviously I was really involved in that first one that was run and then I've I've sort of

been peripherally involved in some of the others but it was Düsseldorf I went back out to and it

was really from my time in Germany and when I was a student I had one summer out there trying to

do an off-eaters impact with a Geordie mate in in Düsseldorf so I kind of know the city quite

well and I was really interested particularly after sort of you know Prince Harry's you know the

book spare and all of that sort of stuff and how that's received in the press and I wanted to go

and see how Invictus felt and particularly somewhere like Germany where military service for years has

been not something that's been looked at as a as a desirable career or because of some

unfortunate 1940s history I'm not really sure what they're on about but and went to kind of just

spectate I was there for the opening ceremony and it they'd really thrown themselves into it and

Düsseldorf's got this amazing their sporting facilities are just unbelievable in this massive

arena and you're watching the the the atmosphere grow as the teams are all paraded in and they're

sort of sitting in the floor of the place in this huge auditorium of sport amazing production

qualities and everyone's kind of waiting for Prince Harry to come out and do his piece and Harry

came out and did his speech it was brilliant it was really good and then the bloke came out from

the main sponsors and you sort of go you know right this is this is good and he says his piece

and then the German Defense Minister Boris Bisturus I mean you're like oh here we go so

Boris Bisturus comes out and helpfully spoke excellent English but his opening paragraph

of his speech he actually talked about Ukraine and what he wasn't expecting was the applause

that interrupted him going on into the second standard of his speech and he was on

auto queue and he lost his place and he realized he had to wait and he held on to his podium which

was glass and looked down at through this glass podium and there in front of him was team Ukraine

oh wow those that could were standing and were giving him standing ovation and you saw this bloke

grip his podium and you know lump in the throat and have a moment but we're all watching him

blown up 80 feet high on this huge screen behind you know as they're focusing on his

face and you see this guy have a moment and then he gets a really big standing ovation the whole

place was on their feet didn't sit down for 10 minutes and you think wow man this is amazing

and the reason why I remember the name of a random German politician is yeah okay so

Oscar Bisturus shot his girlfriend didn't he threw these so I remember the surname

but Boris Bisturus when you watch him now he he has been instrumental in determining Germany's

support and making the argument against the Greens in German parliament for support to Ukraine

he's been instrumental in an awful lot of that stuff and you think that's made a mark on his

soul he will remember that moment until his dying day as will a lot of other people who were in that

who were in that room it was extraordinary and that power of Invictus is absolutely not undimmed

by you know salacious gossip or royal this that and the others or we don't you know don't give too

much of stuff it's still very much as has a power which can transcend all of that sort of stuff and

so next summer that that's a piece of work for us and the theme of the games is enabling communities

to thrive and as we've been talking about these unforces communities in society how can we uplift

and promote that there's a job of work there for us to do that that I'll be proud to lean into

nice that's exciting sounds great you mentioned Ukraine in the break you showed us something

don't worry he's automotive related yeah um you're off there in a couple is it couple of weeks

a couple of days yeah so next month I'm yeah tail end of tail end of April I'm going out there

actually with a mission motorsport beneficiary we've we've done quite a bit with the Ukrainian

recovery programs who they've been keen to learn about how are we helping literally stand people

up again and and get them going I've just actually come back from the outside raising money for for

a program that's all about amputee care that's been taken forward a huge amount but there's

an organization called driving Ukraine they are one of many that are doing similar things but

a particularly inspirational young man runs that an extraordinary thing they're more than 300

vehicles they've bought here in the UK and then deployed them out to Ukraine where they're used

as casualty recovery vehicles so these are the things that are just behind the front line

that are taking casualties off those front line medics and helping them get back to

proper medical care this is life-saving stuff and so raising a bit of money to buy a Toyota

Hilux and the the biggest fan of Toyota Hilux is that I've ever met in my life as a guy called

Jack Taylor who's a former REF engineer he's also incredibly artistic he's the one who makes those

wonderful trophies and he does remember trophies yeah which is joyous and jack's amazing and so

with the permission of his doctor his psychologist but most importantly his mum we're raising a bit

of money and we'll be part of one of these convoys that's going out to Ukraine but it's also an

opportunity to visit the superhumans program which is out there in Ukraine that's all about

personal recovery of going how can they use sport community things like that in order to be able

to help people whose lives have been impacted and so are you driving out there yeah my my sabbatical

yeah I'm I'm going to Ukraine you know so you know my wife's just like yeah just whatever go

and have a lovely time but yeah we're driving out there but part of Jack's job is obviously because

it's a Toyota so it's not going to break but the command vehicle that we're taking out is

is quite special it's a 1963 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud

there's done an awful lot of historic rallying and things like that amazingly

and that beautiful old roller's going out there as well so we will go out and back so Jack's going

out in a in a highlights and then he doesn't know it yet but he'll be going he'll be coming back in

the in the silver in the silver cloud so where where is your ultimate destination in in Ukraine

I can't tell you mate you know that's it but it's a need to know yeah no it is it's a little bit

basically so we're not we're not going out there to go and try and nudge the front lines the last

thing that is a fat end of the grey head tank in a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud there's one of those

there's one of those drones coming out

I think for I know Ukraine is is a vast country but it seems because it it sits in the

forefront of a lot of our minds as a place that's in the midst of a horrendous war but it seems

quite strange to think oh well we're we're driving to Ukraine so I guess where where all the bad

stuff is happening is is that quite localized or is that on one side of the country in Ukraine

so definitely well I mean of course the that sort of Russian front line is across the south so

sort of bisects the the coastline and then across the top of Crimea and the the eastern side of the

country but the Russians you know hitting things in in depth and and they're not targeting military

stuff you know they're they're targeting civilian stuff so

but it's I mean it's safe and it is it you know I I obviously had a couple of these conversations

at home actually I didn't really because you just went whatever you covered anyway you're gonna do

it you know which which is fine but yeah no it is it is the viv so very much the the western side

of the country towards the towards the Polish border in order to hand things over but the turn

around of these things then being used so so they're then sent yeah and wherever then so there was

a convoy that went out last week and within three days of that convoy dropping off a vehicle one

of those vehicles was used in a genuine casualty extraction in the uh in the east of the country

so these things properly get used do they have a list of the I don't know they probably want

anything they can get their hands on but is there a yeah they're they're absolutely yes and they're

securing uh and they are sort of they've got people out there hunting down vehicles for them

all the time L 300s were a real sort of favoured but if you try and buy an L 300 in the UK now

the prices of you know it's very difficult to find one of that vintage and it's because a lot of

these have gone have gone out to Ukraine so I guess any any kind of four by flucker shogun or

isuzu or whatever and the highlight yeah highlights is stuff like that yeah absolutely you know

are perfect for that kind of thing I'm more parochialy in for the Cameron family fleet

my the dodge I was supposed to have sold that at a profit and then I wanted a ferret

which is a ferret scapegoat yeah well I commanded the last ever ferret in British army service

onto the back of the low loader that was taking it away to get shot at as a tank tug in otterberg

very offended you know with it yeah I love that ferret so I always wanted I always really wanted

a ferret because you you came and I've got the perfect spot for it at home it wouldn't go in the

shed I've got a armored hide that's going to be right right gap between some trees that I could

just slot it into with a thing do you think that's going to be some sort of garden water

feature you could emerge like out of the back cave in my ferret yeah it's just brilliant

Brian the dog I'd be so happy Brian would love that but yeah but prices of ferrets have gone

which is crazy but but it's because yeah armored stuff is finding its way out to Ukraine because

it's really easy to sit here you know and drink tea and look out of the window and think isn't

life peaceful and all of the rest of it but on the eastern border you know it's can't imagine

it is it is mind-numbing and because we've become numb to it because of the scale and pace of the

new cycle and the lunacy of of you know what the Trump government is is giving us just in terms

of a new challenge every day of oh it's Cuba now you know all Greenland or you know that you just

get lost in this incredible yeah he's barely on the news agenda anymore is it it's just a thing

that's happening in the background totally but it's it's very real for people who you know who

were a big part of the automotive industry yes you know in all of that side so that knock on into

automotive you know of of of a place that's you know at the center at the heart of European

manufacturing you know is well it's those skills that have actually have enabled them to survive

in no small part you know they the pace of their change and their other initiative with developing

turn it to drone stuff as well and there's a bit of that that we're starting to think about in

this country too so one of the other pieces of work we've been doing is helping automotive

industry companies to understand and access defense market stuff how can they make themselves

ready to be able to take on whether it's Ministry of Defense or other supporting things

to be able to use British ingenuity or all the rest of it to be able to satisfy

because we're in a changing world yeah we did that well the industry did it in the pandemic

didn't it turn slightly far and with yeah and wonderful examples you know RML and you know

companies like that that well that skill set in those yeah Williams yeah absolutely fast isn't it

but and and it comes from so why do those companies exist why do we have a motorsport

triangle that is where it is that this is all left over from the Second World War you know and the

where Beaverbrook you know took British industry and you know turned it into well let's make

Spitfires and Hurricanes at an extraordinary pace and of course you're making Spitfires and

Hurricanes in places like Castle Bromwich in places like that's turning out bent these days you know

as a million engines were built yeah it is part of our it is part of our national heritage and

character that we've we have the ability to do that kind of thing and the contemporary contextual

version of that it's really easy to change the channels and forget about it but yeah it's something

that is a is a grim reality if if we're to continue to enjoy the freedom that we've

we've bashed in for the for the last decade yeah it comes at a price doesn't it yeah yeah it really

does so me deploying a Hilux isn't a isn't a huge step in the right direction but I'm I'm

grateful for the opportunity to to get to go and do something and how much money do you need to raise

so the amazing thing is that that Driving Ukraine are such a professional organisation

that for £7,000 that covers the the purchase of a vehicle they get these things get serviced they

get the right tyres put on them they all end up the same sort of uniform colour of sort of dodgy green

or you know yeah paint sample absolutely yeah paint paint a sample pete inspect you know absolutely

and and then that also covers the the cost of getting the thing out there in order to be able

to do it so I'm raising yeah £7,000 but the money that gets raised over and above that

they then plough into the next generation of vehicles that are getting sourced but also things

like drone countermeasures as well too so the better they can send these things across to be

be equipped to to be useful saves Ukrainians money on the other side and just sort of helps them in

and it's a lovely way for something that is entirely you know defensive is entirely altruistic

is entirely about you know helping people out where there have been casualties to be able

to help people to survive it's a really meaningful way in which people can lean in and and make a

difference and I'd encourage them to do that that overlap with that lovely mission motorsport thing

as well is there are lots of veterans who are involved in doing this as well as working out

there in in Ukraine as well helping to refit some of these vehicles is there a website or

anywhere people can look yeah so if you go go and have a look at driving Ukraine if you just

all one word google will help get you there into the right place you'll find some incredibly

compelling stuff and we'll hope to try and tell the story a little bit as well of us going out

there with a silver cloud that I don't want to be anywhere near the front line with I don't know

it's probably pretty strong yeah I know exactly yeah what could possibly go wrong so well

okay well I I have a Rolls Royce Armour Carter story that I will tell you at some point but

it's probably going to be over a pint and away from this how can people get involved in mission

motorsport how can they support it and then we will let you go back to thank you getting ready for

your adventure so mission motorsports the forces motorsport charities on mission motorsport.org

you can find it on all of the obvious social sites and things like that mission motor SPT

I think it's shortened to on Twitter and on Instagram obviously donations and people who go

and race funds for us is the lifeblood of charity and without that nothing works but for remembrance

weekend race of remembrance is not just a race that happens in Anglesey it is how British motorsports

and their motor industry marks remembrance weekend and encouraging people to support the Poppy

Appeal to take that moment to stop and take a pause over remembrance and to do something to

support the forces motorsport charity is the way in which we can bring things together um one of

the pieces of work that we were talking about it has been in clean energy is to you know try and

help those who've served in the forces to find find their way into great jobs afterwards

and as such I was in the the national uh energy systems operator main control room which is the

big place that controls the flow of electricity across the UK so it's really cool so where they

turn on the nuclear power stations and often the flow underneath and over production and all of the

rest of it it's amazing but it's also the place that would generate that fascinating statistic

every year that you know the peak power usage in x year was normally at the end of the bond film

Christmas do you remember we all sat down to watch it at the same time and everybody

had such a British thing as well you know there's that peak from everyone goes to the

loo flushes the toilet some pumps run but they make a cup of tea and they turn kettles on

but they're streaming these days so they no longer see that you know bond film moment at Christmas

in the same way um they see the peaks for things like the six nations they see strictly final

but in 2025

were you were you not watching I shoot them on the six nations in England it's quite a lot of half

got half time and oh my god yeah anyway but in 2025 the peak power usage in the UK was on a Tuesday

day completely any guesses it was at 1104 on the 11th of November oh really and that talks

about national character that's not me veterans and remembrance types sort of doing that that's

about that's about national that's after the size after the after the silence 11th of the 11th was

the time when most people in the UK simultaneously use the most power wow wow that's extraordinary

yeah that is extraordinary great way to end as well I think thank you Henry Dickie and Jim thank you

so much for giving us your time yeah thanks Jim best of all to Ukraine thank you and coming back

again hopefully so well most of the car comes back yeah that's important yes um thank you everyone um

we will see you next time

two good and co-coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream real milk and contain three

grams of sugar per serving that's 40 less than the five grams per serving in leading

traditional coffee creamers for a rich delicious experience whether you enjoy your coffee hot

cold bold or frothy two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one two good coffee

creamers real goodness in every sip find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle

A Rolls-Royce to Ukraine & how to drift a tank, with James Cameron | Episode 43

About this episode

petrolhead

Mission Motorsport

acronym

reversing camera

beeps

gunner

engaging a target

tanks

75-millimeter gun

wing mirror

sloped armor

Operation Motorsport

IEDs

Dakar

high voltage electrical systems

Jaguar Land Rover

Lotus

Stellantis

Morgan

lived out at the ring

Maserati 4200 GT

oil leaks

Banger racing

vinyl roof

track day

track night

Ukraine

Toyota Hilux

Williams

£7,000 covers purchase, servicing, tyres, and deployment costs

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from The evo podcast