‘We are Bedouin people. We love the desert and we like to go there in the winter when the north wind blows so it’s cool. But we like to have the comforts we are used to in the city.’
It’s been said that he has too much money but I am delighted to see someone enjoying his wealth, to find someone who doesn’t just sit back and get fat. He was, is, a genuinely humble man who wants a Lear jet now.
Me, I want the Victory boat. This to the world of offshore, class-one racing is what Williams is to Grand Prix. Yet they let me drive it. Well, to be exact, they let me drive it once the rain had stopped. No, I couldn’t work that one out either.
The last time I went in such a machine there were three seats so I could just tag along, but this time I found, to my horror, there were just two. One for the throttle man and one for the person who would steer — me.
My instructions went like this: when it flips, reach out with your right hand, undo the seat belts with your left and pull yourself out. There’s an air hose here in case you are having difficulties and a belt-cutter there. Here’s your helmet. Bye.
Er… how do I drive it?
But it was too late. My throttle man, Saeed Al Tayer, had hit the starter and the starboard motor was up and running.
Now, at slow speeds — anything up to 60 or so — the boat is at a crazy angle with its nose in the air so that way back down the deck the driver can’t see a bloody thing. And there I was trying to steer this ?600,000 boat out of a marina where every other boat was worth five times more.
Whoomph, now the port engine was on song too and I could see Saeed, in the neighbouring cockpit, easing the throttles forward.
Attached to my cockpit canopy, taken from an F-16 fighter, was a rear-view mirror and what was going on in our wake can only be described as biblical.
They’d only given us the small propellers but as the engines were now churning out their full 1,800 horsepower, no props at all would still have made a mess.
As it was, our rooster tails were 60 feet high and a hundred yards long. This is not good practice because it means the boat is trimmed badly, but it doesn’t half look good for the cameras.
Then there was a god-almighty bang, the boat slowed and I turned, looking worried, to find Saeed grinning. The automatic gearbox had just taken us from second to third and now we were really moving.
By the time we were in fourth, the boat had levelled out nicely so that just the bottom half of the props were in the water and my GPS speedo was giving a crazy read-out. It said we were doing 106 mph.
I was trying to explain to our on-board camera that the deck which joins the two hulls is like a giant aeroplane wing and that it is supposed to keep the boat out of the water to reduce friction, but I was mesmerised by that speedo.
It said 132 mph. On water. With me at the helm.
Saeed was on the wireless. ‘Um, Jeremy, can we turn now please?’
‘No Saeed, come on, let’s see what she’ll do.’
‘Jeremy turn now, or we’ll be in Iranian waters and that’s not good.’
So I turned and the thrill put my hair on end. Damon Hill described this boat as being like a 300-mph fork-lift truck but he was talking horse shit. This had won the world championship and as I turned that wheel, I knew why.
You can actually feel the hull gripping the water in exactly the same way that in, say, a Porsche 911, you can feel the tyres hanging on. Turn too tight or too fast and just like a car, the boat will spin, and roll and you will die.
As we came out of the turn and Saeed hit the throttle hard again, I heard the helicopter pilot over my headphones. ‘Er, can you slow down, please? We can’t keep up.’
That night, we all went out with the British mechanics from the Victory team, determined to find out about the boat’s innermost secrets. Unfortunately, I must have had a bad pint because my recollections of the evening are a trifle hazy. People think you can’t drink in the UAE, but you can. Unfortunately.
I remember wandering around on a roundabout for a while and I vaguely recall being in a bar with some tinsel in my hair but when it comes to remembering how big the V8s were or what effect the hydra-dynamics have, I’m not really your man. Sorry.
The UAE, as I said on the programme, is the world capital of speed, but it’s much more besides. It’s disorganised like you wouldn’t believe. Arabs are more unreliable than a 1972 Allegro. And it was cold too. But when it comes to having fun, nowhere in the world even gets close.
Epilogue
UK
Night after night, stern-faced men and politicians come on the television to tell us that Britain’s roads are the modern-day killing fields. Alongside the M4, the Somme looks like a stroll in the park. Severe, blood-red captions flash up, warning us that excessive speed causes 100,000 deaths and serious injuries every year.
The Department of Transport spends millions on gory, X-certificate commercials that tug at our heart strings and lift our right feet. We are shamed and beaten into submission.
But despite what the doom-mongers say, British drivers are the best in the world, by a country mile. We invented queuing and it shows on the roads. We don’t lean on the horn every time the lights go red. We don’t simply ignore cycles and nor do we dawdle, American-style. We’re fast, organised and, despite what the suits say, safe. I’m not playing with statistics when I say that nobody does it better.
And I think it’s all thanks to Nissan.
Anyone who is not the slightest bit bothered about cars is likely to be a poor driver. People who don’t care about handling or performance; people who buy a car simply as a means of getting about are not going to worry if they indicate left while turning right once in a while.
So what if they trundle along a country road at twenty, causing ten-mile tailbacks? They can’t park, don’t understand roundabouts and are not averse, once in a while, to driving the wrong way down a motorway.
All these people want from a car is reliability. And that leads them, inexorably, to the door of their nearest Nissan showroom.
The good news is that when you or I see a Nissan, we know it may do something unusual and can take appropriate action. By herding all the bad, uninterested, mealy-mouthed and selfish drivers in one type of car, the roads are immeasurably safer.
They’re also stationary, which might have something to do with it. Years of under-investment by successive governments mean we have fewer miles of motorway per car than any other noteworthy industrialised power.
I’m always staggered when I consider that we have a fleet of nuclear submarines but no motorways in East Anglia.
We also have no car industry to speak of. Oh sure, we still make cars here but that’s because various Secretaries of State have bent over the railings in Westminster and allowed foreign investors to push broom handles up their backsides.
Britain, they crow, is a net exporter of cars but that’s only because Honda, Nissan and Toyota set up shop here to exploit plentiful grants and cheap labour.
Blame who you like — Red Robbo, Michael Edwardes, Tony Benn, Mrs Thatcher — but our own car firms are history. Jaguar and Aston Martin are part of Ford. Rover is German and even Rolls-Royce has had to do a deal with BMW to survive.
Great names — like Humber, Singer, Austin, Morris, Alvis, Hillman, Wolsely, Riley and Jensen — are gone.
I wonder, when Lord Stokes went over to Japan after the war to help Datsun set up a car plant, if, for one moment, he could have believed what would happen just 50 years later. The greatest car nation on earth has become a secretary bird, riding around on the back of the German and Japanese rhinos, picking at the fleas. And being cap-doffingly grateful.
