I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

you know the kind I mean? It was a low-to-the-ground riding tricycle, with a huge front wheel and big handles. The entire thing was made of heavy-duty plastic. My Big Wheel was yellow, with a red-and-black seat and thick black wheels. These particular bikes were popular in America in the sixties and seventies, and when I returned with mine to Mount Vernon in Scotland, I was the talk of the town.15

When I rode my Big Wheel, I could beat any kid on my street riding a bigger bike, plus I could generate the most amazing black skid marks on the pavement with it. I was known on Dornford Avenue as ‘that wee demon driver’. All I needed to do to create these marks was to get myself going at high speed – preferably by beginning on the hill at the top of Dornford – then close to the corner I’d back-pedal really hard and pull the handbrake, and the Big Wheel would skid and spin wildly. Awesome!

One of my last rides as ‘that wee demon driver’ happened when I was racing my friend, Francis, from next door. I lost control of the Big Wheel, went flying over the handlebars, and hit the top edge of a low brick wall with my mouth. As you can imagine, when my mum reached me, I was bleeding badly. I had soaked through my shirt by then, and yet, because I was terrified of seeing blood, all the way to the hospital she kept telling me that it wasn’t so bad and there really was no blood at all.

After that accident, I learned how to control my bike when I was speeding; and I applied the same rules to my driving when I got my licence. I’m a firm believer in the ‘don’t panic and drive’ school of driver’s education; the lesson taught me by my driver’s ed teacher. His idea was that all drivers should know how – if it’s possible – to get out of a dangerous driving situation without panicking and making the problem worse. When Clare and Turner were learning to drive, they practised manoeuvring out of dangerous situations in a neighbourhood cemetery. Why not? Everyone there was already dead.

Admittedly, I can be an impatient driver – a safe one, but most definitely impatient16 – but I’ve never forgotten my driver’s ed teacher’s lesson about not panicking when facing a dangerous situation. It was a lesson that I recently had to put into practice – and it saved my family’s life.

In June 2009, Scott, my parents and I were driving home after we’d eaten out for lunch near my home in Sully. My parents were in the back seat, enjoying the view from the full roof of glass on my Avantime, and Scott was in the front seat, navigating.17 It had been raining, but the downpour had stopped a short while ago.

Suddenly, up ahead, a car careened around a curve so fast that the driver had to swerve out into the other lane to avoid hitting the vehicle directly in front of him. The road was steamy wet and the speeding car lost its grip on the road’s surface. Its abrupt swerve put it into the outside lane, and facing oncoming traffic. I was the oncoming traffic. I remember my mum screaming, ‘Oh dear God, he’s going to hit us,’ and Scott recalled me saying, ‘I’ve got to get off the road.’

Logic told me to slam on my brakes, but given the other car’s complete loss of control, I knew that, if I stopped, the oncoming car would hit us head-on at full speed. More than one of us would die. Instead, I listened to my instincts. I accelerated. I swerved quickly round the oncoming car – missing it literally by inches – and crashed off the road into a gully, smashing first into a series of bushes and then a pole, which snapped under us on impact. The airbags deployed and, in a heartbeat,18 the inside of the car filled with powdery smoke. My mum thought the car was on fire, but it turned out that the airbags had released a powdery substance upon impact.19

When I knew my family were fine, my adrenalin dissipated, my anger calmed,20 and, while I waited for the emergency vehicles, I looked closely at the offending car’s tyre marks. Then I examined mine, serpentining off the road to safety. I was so ready for Fifth Gear rally driving.

A month later, I joined the Fifth Gear crew at a rally track near Llangurig, Wales. Gavin and Rhys, my PA, came with me for company, and also because I wanted Rhys to film my circuit for me. I got suited up in a red fireproof jumpsuit, after which the show’s host, Timothy ‘Tiff’ Needell, sat me in the Prodrive Impreza and gave me a quick lesson on rally driving.

I’m a regular viewer of Fifth Gear. Although I’d never met Tiff before, I knew of him by reputation and skill. For the first half-hour or so, Tiff tutored me on the car and the circuit while the cameras set up for my practice lap. I felt like that sixteen-year-old boy again, waiting to take his driving test. Inside the gloves, my hands were clammy and I could feel my adrenalin pumping.21

It was a familiar sensation. On Torchwood, especially during series two, I did most of the driving for shots that didn’t require a stunt driver. This meant I was in control of the Torchwood SUV quite a lot. Burn didn’t like to drive the SUV, as he thought it too difficult to handle; and Evie didn’t like to drive fast, which was usually a prerequisite. Gareth didn’t have any interest at all in getting behind the wheel, and neither did Naoko, so I – willingly, excitedly and possibly a touch too enthusiastically – always stepped up to the plate … wheel.

My favourite drive time in the Torchwood SUV was a scene in the ‘Meat’ episode. The entire