My calves have cramped up 5 times today, and until noon there was still a queasy sense of physical inertia, like the inner-ear after a spin, that I was still moving forward perpetually... it was a feeling that had haunted my night’s sleep, despite being flat, comfortable, still, quiet, clean and accompanied by less than 50 other people and their various snacks/gadgets/smells for the first time in 4 nights. I guess a volcano-enforced 75-hour bus/ferry/bus/ferry ride from ASIA to LONDON will affect different people in different ways. I am just very happy to be home, grateful to those that got me here, proud of us all for our morale, humour, patience and endurance. There were flashes of fun – sprinting races on deck halfway up the Aegean; James declaring with a weary statesmanlike nod that this was “the most like a stag-do a working journey had ever felt”; PK’s mission to buy pants only to discover he had bought a vest. But. Really. A three and a half hour plane trip, unfolded and unfolded and unfolded uncomfortably out to a three day traumatic mission, with its frighteningly broken bus, its mysterious detour around Turin shrouded in incomprehension, and its hollow disconnection from The World despite our very definite contact with The World as we carved our way North West across an impressive portion of its surface. Unforgettable.


Mon 19th April 2010 9pm. ISTANBUL [TURKEY]> IGOUMENITSA [GREECE] > ANCONA [ITALY] > CALAIS [FRANCE] > DOVER [UK] Thurs 22nd April 10pm

...some interesting news around the corner, put it this way: to coincide with a new track by excellent band The Thermals called "Oh Canada", in an unrelated incident it looks like I will be shooting something new & visiting Canada for the first time... but before that RALLY MEXICO! Can't wait to get to my actual favourite town in the whole world - Guanajuato. And while I'm there I will be running with the Ford World Rally Team - including Mikko Hirvonen & Ken Block - to raise money for Sport Relief. Please give generously HERE

Labels: Ken Block Sport Relief WRC Mexico Canada Mikko Hirvonen

Happy New Year! It's MMX or twentyten or two oh one oh, or however you say it.
While I wait for the WRC season to begin again, I'm not just twiddling my thumbs... I hereby announce the first ever Neil Cole solo show - NEIL BY MOUTH - on 14th March at the GLASGOW COMEDY FESTIVAL... here's the image:
...and here's the "official" event on FB: bit.ly/6jYTCQ
So... better get writing! x

Here-below Please Find My Daily Notes From A Working Trip To Beijing As Reporter For The Race Of Champions November 2009

DAY 1------------------------------------------------------------
10-hour flight. Not much sleep. Window seat provides a degree of economy-cosiness. Disappointingly, the most recent inflight movie was Sex and the F**king City. Wouldn’t even watch that on a plane if i wanted to, for fear that someone would see me watching it. Actually watched “Leatherheads” which was much better than “Dorkings” and “Epsoms”
After a looong stretch of Siberian whiteness - during which I Laughed Out Loud at least 5 times at the Adam & Joe podcast - and a quick doze, then we are over mountains. Must be China. Looking for the Great Wall? Is that it? No it’s a motorway. After the mountains, some clusters of buildings, factories, small towns, predominantly with roofs painted swimming pool blue. Why?
Suddenly we’re in Beijing airport. Immigration cleared (visa worked then) Out of airport, sunny but a little chilly, maybe 10°, a light smog.
Bird’s Nest stadium is nuts, and huge. Inside is bigger than all the stadiums I’ve ever been in. Almost put together.
Huge hotel – 13th floor. Gas masks in wardrobe – is that just for floor 13? About 6 miles from central Beijing (forbidden city, Tiananmen Square, secret dissenter prisons) so no proper sightseeing yet. Tried to buy local SIM cards, but wouldn’t work in my phone - first linguistically-broken interaction with Chinese was successful, socially, but unsuccessful functionally. This walkabout also yielded no local bars or pubs... Started to feel a little wobbly-of-knee entering my 24th hour awake.
Buffet dinner in hotel – spicy gyoza, shark fin soup, chocolate fondue. Waitress kept giggling when we ordered more beer. We had four beers – is that wierd?
Went to sleep watching Fulham beat Liverpool on CCTV9. Which is state television, not an elaborate security camera system.
DAY 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------
Proper night’s sleep, which will hopefully stop jetag (or “flight-blight” as my son calls it.) Opened curtains in bedroom – snow. What? Thick snow, settling. That was unexpected. The people coming from the final F1 race in Abu Dhabi will get a shock... The little tuk-tuks look even more exposed & dangerous in the traffic chaos.
Staying put in room. Making it home. A nest, if you will.
Eventually ventured into the Bird’s Nest. Chaos –Race Of Champions is a European motor-racing format which is never smooth to mount even in European stadiums, now being crow-barred into a massive State Olympic white elephant with a largely non-English-speaking workforce. I just kinda hid & made my own preparations, popping out once the snow stopped to take photos of the Elvis quiff-building “next-door”.

Back at the hotel, the lobby bar played host to a pianist + crooner doing Dido... *run awaaaaaay* swift exit upstairs, catch the last few laps of the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Pix with a beer from the mini bar – 4 times cheaper than a beer from the bar, and in a can with an old-fashioned ring-pull. Vettel wins, and is on his way here tomorrow. And sleep.
Day 3 -----------------------------------------------------
Strange night’s sleep. Must have slept in a strange position – woke up with a frozen shoulder... of lamb (joke!)
Stadium COLD (between -3 & +2 so far today) & still big patches of unthawed snow on the grass within the track. V tempted to draw a massive cock in the snow, which would only be seen from the high-wide “beauty” camera position... and space, probably, like the Great Wall up the road.
Lunch – microwaved Big Meal.
Track – slippy, adhesive might help.


Got Mao-style hats from a street hawker. 10 RMB each, about a quid. That’s the only shopping we’ve done so far...
Drivers have arrived – Pastrana, Gronholm, Mikko Hirvonen, Ekstrom, all to practice. Brilliant fun – the 2-seater cars, like Focus WRC & Solution F – the drivers ride shotgun to see how it’s done. Everyone wants the hotseat next to Bosse in The Ford as he pops, bangs and drifts brilliantly around the tarmac.
So many of the Bird’s Nest staff wearing surgical masks... if combined with glasses, one eye is always steamed up. I think the main reason for masks is that it is obviously normal in China not to cover mouth when cough, sneeze, hawk & spit. Which happens a lot. *mental note – buy a mask*
The Red-Bull X-Fighters are struggling – these extraordinary freestyle motoX space cadets have landed, and the stadium ain’t quite ready for them. So they just wing it and, in front of the crowd & cameras, the first one is nearly decapitated by a trailing spidercam cable... then the first one to actually jump the gap goes too big, wipes out, rips the landing CARPET hits the base BAMBOO sheeting, and breaks his hand & wrist. Off in an ambulance (eventually), his co-Fighters unfazed, pulling backflips.
Ended evening driving Ho-Ping Tung’s (aka Dong He Bin)’s winning VW Scirocco round the circuit into paddock. Look at me! I’m a helper! Shit it's automatic! Mind your feet!

DAY 4 ---------------------------------------------
Same food. Sleep in.
Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Blogger are all banned since the summer riots ... no wonder they get so much work done.
Disney-esque music piped into stadium starting to get to me... much better to hear the roar of the engines than a post-Olympic state-sanctioned “it’s a small world” motif.
Lunch, again, is a warmed-up “Big Meal”. This is like having Chinese take-away twice a day every day, except with unnamed things you wouldn’t usually order.
Here comes ol pal Travis Pastrana – I’d forgotten he’s so stiff from so many injuries he walks like he’s wearing ski-boots. Also, watching the body-language, looks like Sebastien Vettel really doesn’t like Jenson Button very much.
So today we find out the snow 2 days ago was because the Chinese government seeded the clouds with chemicals to make rain... except a cold snap landed, so it made snow. The chemical snow killed all the flowers & my lungs hurt. Help. It’s like an evil future sci-fi world.
Nation’s cup racing was good – Tom Kristensen crash in open KTM was inches away from decapitating co-driver (who happened to be Ford WRC PR Mark Wilford) and himself.
All the fake snow has melted. It’s starting to smog-up again. Late out of stadium. 3 beers. Sleep
DAY 5 ----------------------------------------------------------
Shit – this smog is thicker than the snow. Woke up with a Jones for junk... popped to KFC, which is next to the Bird’s Nest & it’s Metro station which has NEVER BEEN USED. Interesting KFC meal – chicken burger, with chicken & OJ.
Drivers clearly went pretty large last night, there’s talk of Schumacher (or "Chewbacca" as he appears to be known locally) in a bar with his trousers down. And here they are – 20 of the world’s greatest drivers, riders, World Champions, heroes – all sparkly-eyed eating a table-top banquet of MacDonald’s. Someone’s been to the Forbidden Arches...
Race Of Champions runs without a hitch apart from an enigmatic & slightly bolshy Le Mans & DTM ace Tom Kristensen taking me to one side and saying “Neil, you do realise that in the whole of the last 2 days, you have not interviewed me once? Not once!” Crikey. High-maintenance. (Not my favourite, to be honest - last year he pushed cameraman & friend Jean-Michel backwards off the podium while he was filming live...) My response? He was my next interview after LOSING to Ekstrom.

Day 6 ----------------------------------------------
Sluggish. Very little achieved, unexciting writing & voicing the highlights which have been beautifully edited through the night by the French post-prod team. Who are sleeping at their desks when we arrive in the morning. Poor fellas. Hubert wakes up momentarily, pokes head out from under his hood, says “Putain!” and goes back to sleep.

Day 7 ----------------------------------------------
Day off! Must make effort to see the sights. Might never be in Beijing again.
Breakfast – noticed the dragon-fruit for the first time which, thinly-sliced, looks like carpaccio of dalmation
Taxi journey – through parts of Beijing that smell of treacle - to the Forbidden City. Incredible. All wood, with ati-fire gargoyles & huge ornate cauldrons for anti-fire water. An extraordinary place, popular with hundreds of thousands of unyielding Chinese tourists. Walking through the Gate of Heavenly Splendour, past the Mountain of Accumulated Elegance, up the Staircase of Dwindling Stamina. Enough time to get out of taxi one end, shirk someone trying to sell me a fake Rolex, walk through Forbidden City, find taxi rank at other end & get ride back to hotel. 3 hours. Then on mini-bus for a BRILLIANT nap & then the wonder of the Great Wall – highlights being the breathtaking ride up in ski-lift, and the breath-taking ride down on the toboggan chute. The wall itself is amazing – just like a 5,000 mile castle made entirely of stairs. Which, apparently, you CAN’T see from space. At the base of the wall, everyone bought panda hats. Except for me – it’s cruel,and anyway aren’t they nearly extinct or summink? In the end - we're all friends with the Mongols now. Especially if you pay them 20RMB (about 2quid) for a photo & a go on their axe: