Retro stunt footage

FFS! Did you see the state of that Jensen?

Is it me or was that John Peel doing the commentary?

what a bunch of fecking nutters - its a pity they didnt drive in Noel and that mike ' cant fly-wont fly' smith - instead of wrecking great cars

i mean a bloody Jensen - he deserves to get hurt

i think it was peelie do in the commentary - he is sorely missed

Nope - that was Rich Smith, he broke a couple of bones, but survived.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late%2C_Late_Breakfast_Show#_ref-3

Just sent my Dad that......he won't be amused with the interceptor jump.....it'll make him wince..

His one....doing its best to take up most of my driveway..

That was really rather unpleasent. I wasn't expecting to see him looking quite so mangled.

I vividly remember watching this at the time. It was indeed John Peel doing the commentary, he was the outside broadcast presenter on the first series.

The crash in question came a couple of weeks after they'd done it as part of the 'Whirly Wheel' challenge spot. I can't remember the name of the chap who did it, but he jumped a Hunter at the Pod, set a new UK leaping distance record while doing it, and smashed into a 3 week old Mercedes BBC staff car. He was 'trained' by an old school UK stuntman (Dick something or other), who also featured on another challenge which involved rolling a car as many times as possible (Victor FD, I seem to remember). All the stunts were done live.

So a few weeks later, the challenge to do car leaping was thrown open to the public. Again, this was broadcast totally live without any sort of time shift or delay, which sounds unbelievable now. A few people (both male and female) managed to do the jumps sucessfully, the Escort was the first crash and you'd have thought they'd stop it then... but no. I seem to remember that the members of the public actually supplied their own cars for the jump, but I could be wrong. Whatever, anyone with a modicum of braincells should have maybe mentioned that a 10 year old Jensen was possibly not the best car to use. You'll note there were no saftey mods to be seen, no roll cage or anything. The credits rolled as Noel looked worriedly at a monitor screen. Next week he was back, "he's ok... and he wants another crack at it..."

The Michael Lush tragedy in the next series put the kybosh on The Late Late Breakfast Show, but Noel was soon back with the Saturday Roadshow - same programme, different title, just with no mindless stunts involving untrained proles...