How I Won the Yellow Jumper by Ned Boulting Page A

o’clock already and he couldn’t be arsed. The waiter implored us to be quick in choosing our meals, because, he said with a flick of his head in the direction of the kitchen, the chef ‘
dans la cuisine, il fait la tête
.’
    It is in this manner that we progress around France, with ninety euros in the glove compartment nestling next to our passports, for presenting to the gendarmes when they inevitably pull us over for something or other. We keep the correct money for the fine so as to save time. It works well.

    The motorbike cops in their bright blue and slightly camp jeggings appreciate how quick we are on the draw. Money. Passports. Licence. Sign here. Apologies.
Au revoir. Et bon Tour!

    Time must be saved at both ends of the day. It slips through your fingers.
    It sounds simple enough, but it’s not always that easy beating the race from the
Départ
to the
Arrivée
. If we have been filming at the start village, we have to get going five minutes before the race leaves or risk getting stuck behind it. The Tour puts up signs that point to the preferred off-race route. We hunt for these amidst a forest of brightly coloured and often contradictory signs pointing to various car parks, for the teams, for the caravan, for the race officials. The ‘Hors Course’ signs aren’t easy to find in a strange town, which has been almost entirely shut down for the day and features random roadblocks around every corner.
    Add to that the well-intentioned ignorance of local volunteers stationed at each roadblock, and it makes for a frazzledexit. They are often as unfamiliar with the layout of the town as we are.
    â€˜Excusez-nous, madame. On cherche l’itinéraire hors cours.’
    â€˜
C’est pas par ici. Alors . . . je sais pas
.’
    â€˜Brilliant. Thanks.’
    Suddenly we’ll spot the correct sign to ‘Hors Course’. It’s generally met with an excited whoop of ‘Whores Cors!’, using the same highly amusing pronunciation that means Bagnères-de-Bigorre is rightfully known in our car as Bangers-de-Big Ears. And Pamiers is Pam Ayres. Obviously.
    On arrival at the finish line, there’s a similar problem, in reverse. In an unfamiliar town, getting as close as you can to the TV compound to cut down on the distance you have to lug the camera equipment requires skill, persistence, instinct and brinkmanship. Things can get fractious. I will be desperate to get parked up and get going, since normally I have to feed a story back to London immediately on my arrival at the TV truck. Liam, however, conscious of the fact that his is all the heavy gear, will look for the closest possible parking space.
    Eventually, inevitably, we lose our bottle, dump the car and run. Usually we leave it parked slightly diagonally, half up on a pavement, with one wheel hanging off the kerb outside a fire station or a hospital or some building of minor importance. But in provincial France, Tour accreditation is like having diplomatic immunity. Only once have I ever received a ticket on a bike race in an accredited vehicle. And that was on the 2010 Tour of Britain, in King’s Lynn.
    And after the day’s work, the pressure continues. Released from duty, we throw our kit back in the car and fire up the sat nav. This moment is key. The details of that night’s accommodation are entered. We hold our breath as the route is calculated. It could be anything from twenty kilometres to ahundred.
    It might take ten minutes or two hours. It might mean dinner and wine and chat. Or it might mean a sandwich from a petrol station before unloading all our equipment from the car in the dead of night.
    Either way, Unloading Must Happen. Buried back in the mists of time, some equipment had been stolen from one of the Channel 4 crew cars parked up overnight, and ever since then, perhaps understandably, the edict has been handed down that the vehicles will be emptied of their