Ferrari Mailing List: (OT) - London Telegraph reports 'very serious' injury to 2nd Top Gear presenter

[Dennis Liu (BigHeadDennis]

Remember the accident earlier this year to Richard Hammond?  Well, another
Top Gear presenter has been injured during taping for the show.  Our
thoughts are with James May.  For details, see the newspaper report below.

Vty,

--Dennis


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml=/motoring/2006/11/11/mrma
y11.xml


As seen on TV: Top Gear man suffers 'very serious' injury
Second high-speed crash causes health and safety panic, writes James May


James May, the other bloke off Top Gear and co-host of this year's MPH '06
live motoring theatre, was last night said to be "severely hacked off" in
his local pub after sustaining a suspected fractured wrist in a high-speed
supermarket trolley crash.

May, 43, was performing a live stunt for the MPH extravaganza, billed as
"human 10-pin bowling". In this, he attempted to guide a modified shopping
trolley, fitted with rudimentary steering, into 10 giant rubber skittles on
the opposite side of the stage after being propelled by his co-presenter
Jeremy Clarkson, driving a low-powered G-Wiz electric city car.

However, in what the show's script described as a "humorous twist", and
supposedly unbeknown to May, the G-Wiz was replaced at the last moment with
a 480bhp Ford Shelby Mustang. Members of the audience, many of whom filmed
the tragedy on mobile phone cameras, have reported that the trolley reached
a speed of "almost 20mph" before it struck the skittles and toppled sideways
in a rather pathetic way.

"I feared the worst," said Clarkson, who, even after the dust of the impact
had settled, remained firmly rooted to the spot, smirking to himself. "But
then James opened his eyes and said, 'You bastard', and those two words told
me we'd get him back after a minute or so."

Richard Hammond, who was involved in a similar accident involving a
jet-powered trolley some weeks ago, and who claimed to present the popular
Sunday-night TV show Songs of Praise with May and Clarkson, told reporters:
"Riding around in a supermarket trolley is the sort of thing that drunken
22-year-old men on a stag night would do. Sadly, it's the sort of thing we
would do as well." Half an hour later, he told them the same thing again.

However, within minutes of that paragraph being written, the real Richard
Hammond rang this column and said, "I've heard about your trolley crash.
That's pathetic. I hope you're not going to use it as an excuse to make some
more cheap gags about my short-term memory loss, because it's been greatly
exaggerated and anyway, I'm better now." Even after several hours he had not
rung to repeat himself, so he might have a point, unless he simply forgot to
call back.

"But while you're at it," Hammond continued, "You may as well make up some
stuff about being depressed and being paid a billion pounds by the BBC.
Everyone else does."

The director of the MPH show was quick to defend the stunt. "The trolley had
been thoroughly tested," he said. "I've driven it, Tiff Needell has driven
it, our researchers have driven it, the people who modified it have driven
it and we didn't have a single mishap. In fact, the only person to have
fallen out of it is James May. Every reasonable precaution was taken, but
there can never be any sort of contingency for the unpredictable, ie just
how bloody useless he is at anything involving speed and direction. I'm
afraid he was the victim of his own incompetence."

Following the accident, the trolley was impounded by Sainsbury's, who were
keen to establish how the event's organisers had come by it in the first
place. They were dismissive of claims that it had been "bought for a pound"
from a local branch, and were trying to establish the whereabouts of the
simple security device normally bolted to the pushbar.

Elsewhere, countless people who have never driven a shopping trolley in
their lives would have appeared on national television and radio, given half
a chance, to say something along the lines of, "It's idiotic to think that
anyone can just jump into a Sainsbury's trolley with no formal training and
steer it into 10 giant comedy skittles at this sort of speed. The people who
normally drive these things are very drunk and aiming at the bollards
erected around local roadworks."

This morning, and following an exploratory X-ray, doctors at a leading
London hospital downgraded May's injury from "a suspected fracture" to
"nothing more than a sprain", although after they were given some free
tickets to MPH they agreed to record it as "a very serious sprain, not the
sort of thing most people have". 

Inevitably, there have been calls from health and safety operatives for MPH
to abandon stunts such as human 10-pin bowling, but the show's organiser,
Chris Cash, remained bullish about the future. "James May is a grown man. If
he gets in to a supermarket trolley that Jeremy Clarkson is going to push
across the arena with a 480bhp car, then he needs his head X-rayed, not his
wrist."



D James May co-presents Top Gear on BBC2; a new series will begin when
Hamster has convinced everyone that he has no short-term memory loss, that
he has no short-term memory loss. 
James's book, May On Motors, a collection of columns from Telegraph
Motoring, Scotland on Sunday, Car and Top Gear magazines, is published by
Virgin (rrp £7.99) and is available from Telegraph Books Direct for £6.99
plus 99p p&p. To order, call 0870 428 4112.