Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Land speed record holder who set a 633 mph record in the 1980s and masterminded the supersonic car that reached 763 mph in the 1990s.
On the island
Eight records
Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the King's Own Scottish Borderers
I my father was um I was in the army, had a long career in the army, and my early days were spent in Scotland. And all I can really remember of Scotland was obviously the hills and lots and lots of tattoos and marchings and military bands and so on. So this is for Father, Scotland the Brave.
Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars
At home I'd had a diet of constant sort of military Scottish music and classical music and I didn't know any others. And when I arrived at Winchester there we had a library there where somebody had very kindly donated a very very exotic record player and then I suddenly realised there was some really fantastic music around. Here we've got Louis Armstrong with the All-Stars playing Tiger Ag. This is my favourite.
And in the back, we had one of those very early little tape players, and the tune that was played incessantly, and this is for Sally, was Hey Jude.
Well, this of course, all this was terribly tough on Sally, because Sally came out to all these record attempts and I didn't realise until this year just how tough it was, because I'd never seen a land speed record car run, I'd always been inside it. And in the dias when we could be together from time to time, which was very, very few and far between, we used to drive around the desert just to get away from it. And the local radio station in Reno there was constantly playing this one tune and this became our tune.
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 2 in A minor
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves
And I needed some music to back this up and by sheer good fortune I sort of fell over Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, number two in A minor.
I think really on the Thrust SEC project one of the problems was there wasn't much time for music. It was all I remember is just nothing but hard grasp. There was one recurring theme which was a guy called Rob Hemper. Humpy as he's called, is a brilliant guitarist and singer. He's far, far better than Bob Dylan, but you know, he's absolutely brilliant. And every evening there he would be playing away on his guitar and he could play so well.
The Dam Busters MarchFavourite
Central Band of the Royal Air Force
It's a brilliant bit of music by Eric Coates. It comes from a film called The Dambusters. And it covers the whole thing. It covers the beating the British establishment, which is Bar what Barnes Wallace did with his bouncing bomb. It covers all the teamwork, terrific teamwork of people going out to undertake this vast enterprise.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Why do you do it? For Britain and for the hell of it has always been your flip answer, but it must run a bit deeper than that.
Yes, it is the most the land speed record really is the most exciting thing you can do on God's Earth. I'm absolutely convinced about it. It seems to fit a number of things. Basically it's a wonderful teamwork thing and you build great bonds with your team and it's a terrific, terrific team effort. You get an enormous buzz from that. The second thing is that it's a funny old country this. It was once very, very successful and we're trying to do our little bit to put it back again in the in the limelight.
Presenter asks
2:35So you've sat behind a wheel driving at more than 600 miles an hour. What does it feel like? Can you describe it?
It's an extraordinary experience. Basically what's actually happening is that the car is unstable, or thrust to this was, was unstable from naught to about 350 miles an hour, so it slides around a bit. You've got to sit there with your foot hard on the floor. You've got 35,000 horsepower. And from about 350 to about 550, it's boring, and there's not very much happens. ... because your mental processes are working at a hell of a speed. So everything is happening in very, very slow motion. You can actually see tracks on the wheel, the wheel tracks on the desert, come up and go under the car at 650 miles an hour.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
What does that [deceleration] feel like?
Well, it's extraordinary. You've got to think all the somatographic illusion. What actually happens is that the inner ear can't cope with this very savage deceleration. And you are absolutely, totally convinced you're driving vertically down a mineshaft. You're into a vertical drive. And then as the G comes off, everything levels off. So you're back to then 400 miles an hour, 400 miles an hour.
Presenter asks
5:18How far back does this ambition of yours go, Richard, to be a speedster? Does it have a specific origin?
Yeah, it really does. Um it was extraordinary. It was one day in nineteen fifty two. Father took us for a for a drive in the in the Hillman Minx round the north side of Loch Ness. It was a sort of Sunday afternoon drive. And we came round the corner at Drummed Rocket, and there was John Cobb's jet boat Crusader. ... And I saw that boat and I thought, wow, this is really something. Somebody's really beaten the system to get a boat like that built.
Presenter asks
21:51What does a man do, then, when he has achieved his life's ambition at the age of thirty seven?
It's a terrible problem. It really is. ... I suppose that you've got two options, one of which is to go off and be a kind of media star and the other is to get back to work. And I decided I've got to get back to work as quickly as possible.
“It's not about danger. It's avoiding danger at all costs. It's actually getting rid of the danger element by share professional.”
“I driven ... with the Thrust Two car I drove that over six hundred miles an hour eleven times, and with the supersonic car Andy Green drove that um over seven hundred miles an hour ten times, and he went supersonic five times.”
“I'd started at that point to realise that I'd really got to do this the land speed record thing, because the bugs simply would not go away and you've got to live with yourself, you know.”