Ringo: Great Form Facing 70

With a new album, an enduring and happy marriage, and a zest for life that’s the envy of many 30-year-olds, Ringo Starr enters his 70^th year with high spirits.

He’s the eldest of the famous Beatles – he will hit his 70-year milestone on July 7  – and he’s got the newest music.

He’s not missing a beat as he embarks on a three-week promotional tour for his just-released Y Not album, his 15th solo outing on which fellow Beatle Paul McCartney plays bass on the song ‘Peace Dream’.

And he plans to mark his 70^th by flashing a two-fingered peace sign at noon and playing an evening gig at Radio City Music Hall as part of a summer tour with his latest All-Starr band.

Last year on the Larry King Show, Starr noted: “I work out. I have a trainer. And I watch what I eat. That’s it really. And I’m in love with a beautiful girl, so it keeps me young.”

Turning 40 was Harder

And as he told Randy Lewis of the Los Angeles Times, 70 is “not as big as 40 was. Forty was: ’Oh, God, 40!

“There’s that damn song, ‘Life Begins at 40.’ No, it’s not so big anymore. I am nearly 70, and I’d love to be nearly 40, but that’s never going to happen.

“I feel the older I get, the more I’m learning to handle life,”

Notes Lewis: “His charming Liverpudlian accent is nearly as strong as ever, even though he’s maintained a home in Los Angeles for the last 34 years — the majority of it with actress Barbara Bach, whom he married in 1981 — along with residences in England and Monte Carlo.”

God Now ‘My Life’

He’s trim – like McCartney and his late pal Harrison, he’s an avowed vegetarian – looks 15 years younger than his age, and as the years roll by spiritual issues have become more prominent, he says.

“Being on this quest for a long time, it’s all about finding yourself,” Starr says. “For me, God is in my life. I don’t hide from that. … I think the search has been on since the ’60s. … I stepped off the path there for many years and found my way (back) onto it, thank God.”

There’s no secret to his successful marriage to Barbara, Starr told USA Today.  “I’m just blessed that she puts up with me. I love the woman. She loves me. There’s less down days than up, and we get on really well. We do spend a lot of time together. That’s the deal.”

Many Artistic Projects

Starr says he also needs diverse creative outlets to keep him engaged when he’s not making albums or touring with his All-Starr band. In the 1970s it was acting, now it’s art — a selection of his photos appears inside the album.

“I am always painting,” he says. “I love photography. It’s easy to take shots. But if you have to choose, it’s music. I love music, I love playing.”

Ringo was three months older than John Lennon, who would have turned 70 this year. Lennon was 40 when he was shot dead in New York City.

Paul McCartney will be 68 this year. George Harrison would have been 67.

Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Ex’: Tips for the ‘Other Woman’

Is it a case of “Mistresses of the World, Unite?”

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s newly reformed ex-lover Sarah Symonds has written what she describes as a “taboo-busting book “– and she’s passed it on to Tiger Wood’s mistresses in the hope they’ll “learn something from her mistakes.”

A bit late for them perhaps, but self-proclaimed “infidelity expert” Sarah is undeterred. She’s also gone on Oprah peddling a non-profit organisation “Mistresses Anonymous” (which includes a 12-step program to recovery).

Why She Went Public

Sydney Morning Herald sex and relationships blogger Ask Sam was wondering in print what it was with the abundance of mistresses going public on their affairs, so she asked Sarah why she’d decided to spill the beans on her seven-year-affair with the F-word maestro.

As the British tabloids were quick to point out, Sarah is the debonair bleached-blonde babe who shouted from atop the pages of every British celebrity tabloid about her affair with Father of the Year Ramsay.

As Ask Sam notes, “we also quickly learnt that this wasn’t the first time she bonked a married man, with the media dubbing her as “making a career out of sleeping with other people’s husbands”

Other Woman “Can’t Win”

“Outing” Ramsay, – she calls it “Gordongate” – had nothing to do with wanting to see her name in lights, she told Ask Sam.

“I went on record to tell my true story after I heard that Gordon was so hurtfully denying it and me, and lying about our affair,” she told Sam.

In hindsight (and after much trial and error) Symonds now realises high profile public men like Ramsay and Woods are never going to leave their wives for their mistresses.

“A married man will 99.9% never leave his wife, and uses a mistress as his crutch to stay in an unhappy marriage,” she says.

From her recent realisation, she feels her job now is to warn all women against dating a married man and being used in another person’s relationship. So here it is, Sarah’s golden rule for singles.

Top Five Tips For “Other Women”

1. Never date a married man! Why be second best?
2. Do your due diligence when you meet a guy to find out if he is married or not. Some men slip their wedding rings off.
3. Empower yourself enough to not settle for the crumbs of a married man’s time. Find a SINGLE man.
4. Wives, act more like mistresses to stop your husbands from cheating on you!
5. Never believe a word any man tells you. Basically, “if his lips are moving he is lying”.

Ask Sam (Samantha Brett’s) new book The Chase; Everything you need to know about Men, Dating and Sex is available from February 1 at Booktopia.

Michael Douglas: Keeping Marriage Hot

Michael Douglas answers the questions we’d all like to ask – like how does his 65-year-old body keep a smoking-hot marriage going with much younger wife Catherine Zeta-Jones – in a recent interview in AARP magazine.

And not surprisingly, like many men his age, he relies on a little male enhancement.

On Catherine: “God bless her that she likes older guys. And some wonderful enhancements have happened in the last few years—Viagra, Cialis—that can make us all feel younger.”

Pick Up Line That Almost Blew It

He talks frankly with interviewer Jim Jerome about how he almost blew his first meeting with Catherine, when he opened with a leaden pick-up line.

“I want to father your children,” he said.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she responded calmly. “It’s nice to know it’s all true. Good night.” And she was gone.

Smitten, he persevered with roses and romance and the rest as they say is history. His second time round chance at marriage and children is something he never expected.

Family Most Important

“My career was the most important thing in my life, followed by marriage and children,” he confesses. “And it’s completely reversed now. I never anticipated starting a family and the joy of raising kids at my age.”

Early on, the couple came to terms with the 25-year age gap between them: “Catherine is an old soul,” Douglas says.

Still, there were complications. Douglas’s future in-laws-David, a retired confectioner, and Patricia, both now 62—were three years younger than the groom.

“I wasn’t quite the son-in-law they’d envisioned. I do like to wind up Catherine’s father and call him Pops.”

Hands-On Dad

Just finished filming Wall Street 2, Douglas is playing “house husband” while Zeta-Jones comes home at midnight and sleeps in late with her starring role in the Broadway musical A Little Night Music.

He is waking before 6:00 to help get the kids off to school. “I love to be the first face they see,” he says. “It’s a selfish pleasure. It’s a very special time, the mornings.”

Zeta-Jones says that Douglas thrives on his at-home role: “Michael tells me that [new fatherhood] keeps him agile. He’s a terrific, extremely hands-on father.”

Staying Fit at 60

Douglas stays fit and energized by hiking, diving, and taking family skiing trips near his Quebec farm. But he admits that age has its limitations, in particular when he goes to the gym. “It used to be you got that 30-minute cardio workout and that great sense of euphoria. Now you finish and go, ‘Phew, I’m glad that’s over.’

These days, the Douglases’ social life often amounts to hanging out with the kids or catching up with friends at a local restaurant. “You’ve got these few years of unequivocal love when Mom and Dad can do no wrong. So we’re a tight family unit.”

Different from Dad Kirk

It’s a different domestic scene from the one Douglas grew up in. His father, Kirk, according to Michael, didn’t handle parenting well. “I was the product of a divorced family,” he recalls. “My dad was always torn; he was working really hard and would want to see us. But then, with all his Kirk Douglas passion, he’d try to be a father for a week, a summer, whatever. It was tough.

“I think it’s easier for me to be a good father. I’m not so concerned about my career,” Douglas continues. “I like to be home a lot more now.”

Natural Enhancement

If like Michael you’d benefit from a boost to your sex life, but prefer herbal to pharmaceutical products, there’s plenty to choose from.  For more information see  http://www.herbaligniteusa.com.

Incurable Optimist: Michael J Fox

Family Ties and Spin City star Michael J. Fox is the first to acknowledge his diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 29 could have been the undoing of his life in many ways.

He’d been married to fellow actor Tracy Pollan for just two years. The first of their four children, Sam, was just a baby.

“It could have left us undone,” the Back to the Future megastar says in his latest book Always Looking Up – The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.

And if there was ever evidence needed that he is indeed, an optimist, you only need to look at how he has handled the challenge of living with illness.

He and Tracy went on to have three more children (twins Schulyer and Aquinnah, and six years later, Esme) and build one of the most enduring marriages in Hollywood.

An Amazing Life

Michael was faced with a choice, he says. ”I could concentrate on the loss – or I could just get on with my life and see if maybe those holes started filling in themselves.  Over the last ten years they have, in the most amazing ways.

“For everything the disease has taken something of greater value has been given. It may be one step forward two steps back but I’ve learned what is important is making that one step count.

“Parkinson’s Disease has taken physical strength, spontaneity, physical balance, manual dexterity, the freedom to do the work I want to do when I want to do it, and the confidence that I can always be there for my family when they need me.”

Happy Marriage

In a chapter on family life titled ‘Why I’m still with Tracy and Shaky When I’m Not’ Michael says “Some people ask me the secret of a long and happy marriage, just as they ask me about the key to raising children. My flip answer in the kid department is “love ‘em, feed ‘em and keep ‘em out of traffic.” As for marriage, I often reply with equal brevity “Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty.”

“Parkinson’s is always putting me in a box, and Tracy has become expert at folding back the flaps, tipping it over and easing me out.

“She’d tell you probably with a laugh, that the greatest challenge she faces isn’t having a Parkinson’s patient for a husband, it’s having me for a husband. And by the way, I am a Parkinson’s patient.”

Gains Greater Than Losses

“The more complicated our marriage has got, the more it seems to bring out the best in us.

“I was a big believer in my own PR: a happy-go-lucky lottery winner who had it all, a great career, a beautiful wife, a healthy son. I was struggling, though, with figuring out how to keep it all going. I was working more than I needed to, worrying more than I liked to admit, and drinking more than anyone should. I was, to put it mildly, not well positioned to deal with what was coming.

“The change that Parkinson’s has forced up me and Tracy and the family, pales in comparison with the changes we have brought upon ourselves. We give more to each other than Parkinson’s could ever take away“.

Optimists Enjoy Better Health

It seems life’s most public optimists – “Can Do” power houses like Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates and Michael J Fox – are onto something.

New research indicates being an optimist significantly cuts your chances of suffering a heart attack, and even helps you live longer.

In the largest study done on the effect of positive thinking on health, University of Pittsburgh researchers found that compared to pessimists, optimists had a nine per cent lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14 per cent lower risk of dying from any cause.

Bad Times Bring Good

Seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong credits much of his own success on the bike to his battle with testicular cancer.

“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that none of, none of my success on the bike would have been possible without that disease,” he said. “Life wouldn’t have been necessarily empty, but it would not have looked like this.” Armstrong also said his optimism is inspired by his mother, who overcame her own set of challenges as a teen mom.

“I give all the credit to my mom,” he said. “She’s really a survivor. She’s as strong and tough as they come and she never looks at anything in a negative light.”

Incurable Optimist Michael J Fox

Armstrong’s personal example, and the LiveStrong foundation he set up to support cancer survivors, inspired actor Michael J Fox to start his own Fox Team foundation for research into Parkinson’s Disease.

In his most recent book Always Looking Up – the Adventures of an Incurable Optimist Fox says that “for everything the disease has taken something of greater value has been given. It may be one step forward two steps, back but I’ve learned what is important is making that one step count.”

Bill Gates – Impatient Optimist

He’s in good company. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has characterized himself as an “impatient optimist.”  And for those that know him, both terms describe him well.

Gates has focused on his philanthropic efforts–which focus on areas where there is great suffering as well as the means to alleviate that suffering through attention and increased resources. But, too often, he says change is not coming quickly enough.

The University of Pittsburgh study – on post-menopausal women – found the positive benefits of being optimistic were independent of income, education, or “health behaviors like [controlling] blood pressure and whether or not you are physically active, or whether or not you drink or smoke,” says Dr. Hilary Tindle, lead author of the study. “I was surprised that the relationship was independent of all of these factors.”

Top Five “To Do’s” For Getting Over Heartbreak

As “Closing Time” by 90s alt rockers Semisonic reminds us, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

We’ve covered the “Top Five No-Nos” for relationship break up – now here’s the Top Five “To Do’s” for putting the past behind you.

1. Hang out with your friends

Let your friends give you a reality check on how your ex wasn’t all that great to begin with, and that there are more fish in the sea. Let them remind you of some of the irritating habits he or she had – like putting you down in front of them.

A little chick-bonding or male camaraderie can go a long way towards getting your head straight. Everyone has experienced disappointment in love at some time and probably will again, and most friends are happy to boost your spirits in the early stages.

2. Do lots of new things

You may not be feeling too much like venturing out without your partner, but take the plunge anyway. There’s a world of activities you can partake in that you were never able to enjoy because your “other half” didn’t approve.

So indulge. Travel. Build a model plane. Go hiking. Play video games on your computer. Watch TV all weekend. Go to a cooking school or start boxing.  Do anything you want. Ideally, you want to find an activity that allows you to release your anger and alleviate stress.

3. Do something for someone else

In The 30 Day Heartbreak Cure Catherine Hickland, soap diva, clinical hypnotist and businesswoman, outlines a month-long program for getting life back together that includes stepping outside your own soggy meltdown to help someone else.

Hickland – whose ex-husbands include actors David Hasselhoff and All My Children Emmy winner Tad (Michael E) Knight – does life skills workshops for a Prison Ministry in Texas. You may not want to get that involved, but at least get out and baby sit for a friend or take an elderly neighbour shopping.

It will give you a buzz and remind you others have needs – some of them much more desperate – than yours.

4. Set daily goals

Every set-back is a set up for an incredible comeback, says Catherine Hickland, who tells of wallowing in self pity for days before picking herself up and deciding on a date for “Heartbreak Cured”. She marked her calendar with daily activities and goals for the next month.

“A break up is really the first days for a life change,” she says. Do things that will make you feel more desirable, such as going to the gym or getting a new haircut. Walk on the beach. Start a journal. Buy a new outfit or go out to the club with your friends.

5. Avoid using alcohol, drugs, sex or food to cope

When you’re in the middle of a breakup, you may be tempted to do anything to relieve your feelings of pain and loneliness. But using alcohol, drugs, sex or food as an escape is unhealthy and destructive in the long run. It’s essential to find healthier ways of coping with painful feelings.

And although a “rebound romance” may take your mind off your ex for a while, it will also complicate your future and allow you to avoid looking at the way you do relationships – setting you up for a repeat breakup not too far down the track.

Flaunting Flings Not Cool

It’s official: Having over 10,000 sexual conquests has gone from having an “oooh!” factor to having an “ewww!” factor.

So says columnist Susan Toepfer at More.com about a new Warren Beatty biography which claims the actor slept with 13,000 women – still thousands short of NBA great Wilt Chamberlain who bragged in his autobiography A View From Above that he slept with 20,000 women.

“Tedious” Tally

But far from seeing it as something to boast about, 72-year-old father-of-four Beatty issued an immediate denial through his lawyer, describing the book as “tedious and boring.”

Apparently, flaunting your flings is no longer cool, when you’ve been married to Annette Bening for 17 years and have three daughters, writes Toepfer.

Devoted To Family

Beatty’s reign as Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor came to an end when he clapped eyes on his elegant Bugsy co-star,  and he said ‘I do’ for the first time at 53, marrying Bening two months after the birth of their first child.

“I was never divided on the subject with Annette,” the Independent quotes Beatty as saying. “I was never divided on the subject of having a child.

“And I was never divided on the subject of her integrity or intelligence or capacity to love.

“I think talent is energy and, let’s just say, she’s very talented! See, I think that there’s something in the unconscious that is the iceberg, and then there’s the tip of the iceberg, that’s the conscious. And when I met Annette, I thought, ‘Oh, I see’.”

Rake Reformed

Of course promiscuity is still alive and well – Tiger Woods is testimony to that. But Beatty, happily wed for nearly two decades and by all accounts devoted to his family, has changed.

With a wealth of experience between the sheets to go on, he declared monogamous sex best. And in keeping with the discovery, the serial boyfriend showered affection on whoever was on his arm, rather than simply adding them to the countless notches on his bedpost.

Said one of his lovers, Goldie Hawn: “Maybe he loved too many women in his early days but it wasn’t all about sexuality. It was about tenderness.

“Warren by nature is a caretaker. Yes, he’s maddening. Yes, he’s stubborn. But the bottom line is the nature of that animal is good. His intentions are pure.”

Perhaps that’s the difference between Beatty and Woods. While one never had any incriminating “sex tapes” or on-the –make porn stars peddling stories of time between the sheets, Tiger’s personal life has become a national joke despite his own monastic silence.

No nasty stories. No tell-all revelations to tabloids, or calendars like the one in the NY Post of “Tiger’s Babes,” or embarrassingly “wise-after-the-event” cover story in Vanity Fair.

Is it because being a roaming Lothario when you’re a single “hot” Bad Boy is one thing. Cheating on your wife and young children with a string of synthetic “hostesses” is seen as something entirely different?

What do you think? Let us know.

Testosterone in Golf

While rampant testosterone seems to have got Tiger Woods into all sorts of trouble at the top of the PGA tour, a golfer with low testosterone at the bottom of golf rankings is facing quite a different problem.

Doug Barron is suing the PGA after he was suspended for failing a dope test. Since 2005 he has been receiving monthly shots of synthetic testosterone, after struggling for years trying to understand why he was chronically fatigued and had absolutely no sexual desire.

The golfer’s natural testosterone count when he was prescribed the shots was 78 nanograms per deciliter of blood. Most healthy men his age have a testosterone level between 300 and 500.

CNN quoted Barron as saying “I was a 35-year-old man who, you know, wants to be living like a 35-year-old man. I was kind of embarrassed in a way. It wasn’t easy on me or my wife.”

Testosterone Didn’t Turn Him Into Tiger

Barron is far from a rock star in his sport. He reportedly earned about $33,000 last year, and during the previous eight seasons on the PGA Tour, his top finish was a tie for third place at the 2006 Byron Nelson Championship, one year after he began testosterone therapy.

Testosterone, banned in professional sports because it promotes muscle mass and strength, amongst other things, obviously hasn’t transformed him into Tiger Woods.

Barron got into trouble after the PGA introduced drug testing in 2008.

When the ban went into effect, Barron told the Tour that he was on beta blockers (for chest pain) and testosterone. He requested a therapeutic use exemption, arguing that he needed them to live normally.

Couldn’t Function Without It

PGA Tour physicians say they measured Barron’s testosterone levels at 325 in November 2008 and 296 in December 2008, according to court records. The Tour ruled that that Barron’s testosterone count was within acceptable range. He had to get off the drugs.

But Barron’s attorney said the testosterone levels were within acceptable range because Barron was receiving the shots.

He “just couldn’t function at all,” Barron said of his attempts to get off the medication. Without the testosterone, he was listless. Without the beta blockers, he was having chest pains.

He ignored the warning and had his monthly shot anyway. “I took a risk I should have known better than to do, and I got a shot of testosterone” in July just before the St. Jude Classic in Memphis, where he failed a random drug test.

Good Sex Life a “Major Life Activity”

His year-long suspension started in September, so he sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“The definition of a disability is something that impairs a major life activity, and intimacy with your wife is a major life activity,” said Barron’s attorney Jeff Rosenblum.

Doug Barron isn’t the first to run up against the issue of testosterone. Golfer Shaun Micheel, who was granted a therapeutic exemption for abnormally low testosterone by the Tour in 2005 and was allowed to use synthetic testosterone.

In August 2006, Micheel was runner-up to Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship — a major tournament he won in 2003 — and defeated Woods in the first round at the 2006 HSBC World Match Play Championship. According to the PGA Web site, Micheel has earned $8 million since he went pro in 1992.

2009’s Most Influential Men

In a list heavy with lightweight TV performers – Iron Chef Mario Batali and survivalist Bear Grylls amongst them –  I guess it should be no surprise that the male who won top place as Ask Men.com’s  “most influential man of 2009” isn’t a real man at all, but fictional philandering adman Don Draper from the  Mad Men series.

Half a million of the lifestyle portal’s 11 million monthly visitors apparently voted for this fantasy figure of the hard drinking, heavy smoking, 60s “hardass male,” ahead of real men making a difference like President Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Steve Jobs, who came in at 3, 30 and 7 respectively .

Way We Want to Live?

According to AskMen, their Top 49 Most Influential Men list is about the men who “best embody the way men aspired to live in 2009.”

No 1 man Don Draper is a “post-war archetype, both a brilliant career man and a temptation-swayed philanderer who sincerely wants to be a family man,” the like of which has vanished in the 21^st century, according the editor’s blurb.

“In a turbulent 2009, men are seeking the stability of tradition in the masculine qualities that they imagine their fathers and grandfathers to have had,” says James Bassil, Editor-in-Chief of AskMen.com. “The character of Don Draper brings all these traits together, and in doing so speaks directly to the modern man. He’s a man whose time has come.”

Is This Teenage Fantasy?

To which you can only say, what a load of old cobblers. If the choice seems puerile – a 15-year-old’s fantasy about what being a man means – then perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

As blogger The Last Psychiatrist commented, the type of person who wants to be Don Draper is squarely in AskMen’s target group of “perpetually pubescent males.”

“What they want is to live in Draper’s world: where it is almost acceptable to have affairs; where they can drink all day and not get drunk; where they can say whatever is on your mind and not have it offend people; where creative men have some outlet for their ideas, and at least get paid really well instead.

All Fun, No Consequences

“Where they can eat any kind of food they want and not get fat.”  (And we might add, smoke like a chimney and never get lung cancer)

“Where you can act like you want to act, act like what you think a man acts like, and people will admire you.

“In other words, what you want is to be the main character in your own movie.”

What Do You Think?

So what’s you view? Is Don Draper worthy of the No 1 spot in a list of the world’s 49 most influential men? And if so why?

For a quick check on who he beat out in the 48 other spots, see http://bit.ly/4zHN7X.

The Stig Revealed

Sydney and Auckland get to see the Stig and his much hyped indoor loop-the-loop stunt in February, and you can bet the crowds who flock to Jeremy Clarkson’s hugely popular Top Gear World Tour – whether at Homebush or Ellerslie – won’t leave disappointed.

The show that now attracts 350 million viewers world-wide and has made Clarkson a rich man continues to shock and entertain, even after the identity of the mysterious Stig, the “superhuman” test car driver, was revealed by British newspapers earlier this year.

The Daily Telegraph claimed in January that the secretive part-man part-machine, whose identity is always obscured by white Alpinestars racing coveralls and matching Simpson racing helmet is in reality 33-year-old Ben Collins, a Bristol-based former American speedway driver and stuntman who doubled for Daniel Craig in the latest James Bond film,

He’s Really Graham Hill

In true BBC style the show’s producers say they couldn’t possibly comment – it would be like “outing Santa Claus” – but then have proceeded to have fun by suggesting the Stig was actually dead legendary racing car driver Graham Hill, who they said been hiding out in the bush since the 1970s.

To add to the fun in a recent show Clarkson “unveiled” Michael Schumacher as the Stig, adding him to a list of possible Stig stand-ins that includes former world Formula One champion Damon Hill. The Stig has a cult following around the world.

Most Asked Question

“Who is the Stig?” was the reportedly most-asked question on the internet in 2008, to the extent that online and text-answering services, agencies that employ armies of freelance researchers to find the answer to any question, rated it one of the most popular questions of all time, along with the meaning of life.

The name Stig originates from Clarkson’s former school, Repton, and was the moniker by which new boys were always known.

The cult surrounding the character has grown because he is routinely introduced on the show with a humorous reference to his alleged non-human faculties. Introductions include “Some say his voice can only be heard by cats”, and “Some say one of his eyes is a testicle”.

Stig Trivia

It is said of the Stig:

• He never blinks, and he roams around the woods at night foraging for wolves
• He appears on high-value stamps in Sweden, and can catch fish with his tongue
• He naturally faces magnetic north, and all his legs are hydraulic
• His heart ticks like a watch, and he’s confused by stairs
• His voice can only be heard by cats, and he has two sets of knees

James May (Captain Slow) claims that there is a clause in the Stig’s contract that should his identity be exposed either through his own willingness or via a member of the Top Gear staff (including the hosts of Top Gear), he has to be fired.

Clarkson has written that the Stig is not permitted to talk on screen because “any opinion he might voice on cars would be rubbish.”

The men in the helmet

Perry McCarthy
The original “Black Stig” made 22 episodes before being killed off. He’s threatening to return.

Ben Collins
“Outed” as the White Stig in early 2009, Collins is a 33-year-old racing driver from Bristol

Julian Bailey
The former F1 driver stood in for McCarthy as the Black Stig and was named in McCarthy’s book, Flat Out Flat Broke.

Dan Lang
The snowmobile champion played the White Stig in the stunt where he drove a Mini off a ski jump.