Tim FitzHigham - Try to Surprise

 

 

I received a phone call from somebody at the BBC. And they said, “Tim, we've decided we'd like to give you a shot at a documentary series.” I thought, brilliant, this is finally my time to shine. I'm going to be like a David Attenborough. This is going to be incredible. I'm going to get a real chance here. They said, “We're going to give you 10 episodes.” 10 episodes. 10 half-hour episodes of a documentary series. They said, “What we would like you to do is we'd like you to go around the world meeting 10 world record holders and we'd like you to challenge them at their own world records.” [audience laughter] I looked at the producer and I said, “So, what you're saying is you want me to lose quite badly 10 times?” [audience laughter] And she said, “Well, do your best.” [audience laughter] 

 

Now, the thing with this is that they didn't tell me who I was meeting, where I was going or what I was doing, because they didn't want me to be able to train, [audience laughter] because they thought that might help. [audience laughter] This led to me meeting the world record holder who has a very peculiar world record. He has the fastest reflexes in the world. [audience laughter] They decided I would challenge him to the sport of arrow catching. [audience laughter] 

 

They get world championship archers, they put them not much further away than the front row, they fire arrows at you [audience laughter] and you attempt to catch the arrows. The world record holder went up and he caught 8 out of 10 arrows traveling between 70 and 90 miles an hour. [audience laughter] Then it was my turn. Three arrows were fired, three arrows hit me and the paramedics were called. [audience laughter] 

 

Then they sent me off to meet the greatest free climber in the world, a man called Alain Robert. He climbs the world's tallest buildings without a safety net or a harness. And I'm afraid of heights. [audience laughter] I also can't climb. I've never been climbing. And so, they sent me for half a day on a climbing wall with Alain Robert. 

 

We then got flown out to Doha in the Middle East to climb up the outside of the Torch Building in Doha, which is one of the world's taller buildings. Dear goodness me, I'm from East Anglia. [audience laughter] We don't have any hills in East Anglia. It is famously flat. As an East Anglian, anything above one meter above sea level makes me nervous. 

 

I stood outside the Doha Torch Building, and I looked up at this building and this cheerful Scottish man walked past me. And I said, “Oh, wow, what do you do?” And he said, “Oh, I'm the head of health and safety for the entire BBC.” I said, “Oh, wow. Do you come on all of the shoots?” And he went, “No, just this one.” [audience laughter] And then, the safety team arrived. The safety team were all Royal Marines. 

 

I have a slight history with the Royal Marines. When I was rowing my bathtub across the English Channel, [audience laughter] there's a sentence you maybe didn't think you were going to hear, I got made an honorary Commodore in the Royal Navy. And obviously, it's quite a high rank. It goes First Sea Lord, Second Sea Lord, Princess Anne, me. [audience laughter] 

 

I was nervously shaking at the bottom of the building. One of the Royal Marines came over to me and said, “So, we're here to do the safety.” And I said, “Great. Well, I don't think I'll going that high. I'll probably just stay around the one-meter mark.” [audience laughter] And he said, “But you rowed the Channel in a bath.” And I went, “Yes. That's true.” And he went, “And you're a Commodore?” And I went, “Yes, but I mean, it's only honorary and we should be very clear about that.” [audience laughter] And he said, “You are going to climb this building. We in the Royal Navy do not fail.” [audience laughter] I said, “At sea. [audience laughter] We're in a desert.” And he said, “You are going to climb this building.” 

 

So, the instructions were really clear. I had to climb up the building on the outside using the anti-climbing grill. There's anti-climbing grill wrapped around the Doha Torch Building, specifically designed to stop experienced climbers from climbing up the outside of the building. [audience laughter] So, I thought, well, I'll just go for that one-meter mark and we'll take it from there. 

 

So, I started to climb up the building. Carried on climbing. I just kept focusing on just one finger at a time. The next finger, keep going. Just do your best. Don't give in. Keep going. I climbed up the building and I just kept going. And midway up the building, suddenly all the minarets went off. All over the call to prayer went off. I just thought to myself, if anybody needs prayer right now, it's definitely, I've got to be up there. I kept climbing up the building, climbing up the building. 

 

The extraordinary thing about this is that I actually made it up the building. [audience applause] 

 

That’s in just under two hours. Alain Robert, 34 minutes. The final thing I wanted to share with you is they sent me off to meet a man who has an extraordinary world record. This is the guy who has the highest resting tolerance in the world to G-force. This man is like a superhero. He has the highest resting tolerance to G-force. We all know what G-force is. It’s the stuff you experience on a roller coaster when you go really fast down in the roller coaster. But this guy has the highest tolerance to G-force in the world. 

 

He’s a Wing Commander. He’s in the Royal Air Force. He was chosen, because of this G-force tolerance to break the world land speed record. He’s the only man in the world to drive a car at over 700 miles an hour. He’s a phenomenal human being. They sent me to [audience laughter] challenge him to G-force. So, we got sent to a top-secret government facility. This is where every single Royal Air Force pilot takes the G-force test. 

 

You’ve probably seen it if you’ve ever watched Moonraker with James Bond. It’s the big iron girder with two flight cockpits at either end. It’s inside this bunker. It’s an extraordinary building which was built in the 1950s. There’s big signs going, Danger, G-force testing in progress. There’s sirens that go off in that classic 1950s way of [imitates the sirens] it’s amazing. There’s phones that come down from the ceiling, and you can pull them down, you can say stuff into them. And in the middle of this entire bunker is the senior Royal Air Force scientist who has glasses, a squint, a comb-over hairstyle, a beard that he’s pulled bits out of in exciting moments of G-force testing over the years. [audience laughter] 

 

I got into this facility. And the test is really pretty simple in terms of G-force testing. What they do is they stick you in the cockpit of the plane on the end of the big iron girder and they speed the thing up going round and round and round. You have to do various tests, bit of maths, a few light tests. They spin round and round, they get faster and faster. And at the moment you pass out, [audience laughter] that’s the end of the test. [audience laughter] That is your G-force tolerance completely established. At the moment, you lose your conscious mind, that is the test. 

 

Now, I’m quite tall, so normally tall people aren’t very good with G-force. The doctors thought that my G-force tolerance would be about three, maybe three and a half perhaps. Wing Commander’s is 6.1 G. It’s the highest ever tolerance measured on a human being, 6.1 G. I got into the cockpit and the RAF scientist, sirens went off, the lights were going, Danger, G-force testing in progress. I was in the cockpit of the plane whooping round. 

 

He said, “Take it up to 2 G, take it up to 2 G. Now start doing some tests. Here's a light. Can you see the red light and the white one and what's three plus four?” It was whipping around at 2 G. “Take it up to 3 G. 3G. 4, 4 G. Take it up to 4.” It's an incredible feeling. You're going round and round and round. It feels like something is pushing down on your entire body. My eyes began to just pop out a tiny bit. I was still doing all the light testing, “Oh, there's the red one, there's the white one. Two plus two is four. I can do that. That's great.” We're going around at 4 G, that's the most you'll ever have felt in your life for a very short time in a fun fair, because that's the law. You can't go above 4 G.

 

“Take it up to 4.5.” The thing with this test is the G is constant. It keeps going. “5 G. Take him up to 5 G, 5 G.” He left the microphone open. I heard him turn to the producer. I was still doing the light test, the maths test. He said, “I don't know when he's going to pass out. [audience laughter] Take him up to 5.5, 5.5 G.” This is an incredible experience. I felt like there was some giant animal sitting on top of me, crushing me down. My eyes are sticking out on stalks. I'm still doing the light test. I'm still doing two plus two. I'm still, amazingly, conscious. 

 

Then I heard, “Take him up to 6, 6 G, 6 G.” No. Not only does he seem to be showing no visible effects of G-force at all, he actively seems to be enjoying it. [audience laughter] 6.1, 6.1.” Even I knew at this point that I was the joint highest G-force tested person in the world. Still doing the lights test. Still doing the maths test. “6.2, 6.3. Stuff it, take him up to 6.5.” Whipping around faster than anything I’ve ever known in my life. He carried on going. He went, “Take it to 7, 7 G. Let's see what happens. [audience laughter] 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, this is incredible.” Still doing the lights test. Still doing the math test. At 7.3, things began to slow down. I could see it all slowing gently and we stopped. I thought, well, I must have failed the test. I didn’t pass out.

 

I got out of the G-force testing machine and I should have weaved over to the Wing Commander [audience laughter] who was still standing there, looking at the test, his record in tatters. [audience laughter] I said to him, “That’s quite an experience, isn’t it?” [audience laughter] He looked at me and went, “Oh, you are a freak.” [audience laughter] 

 

Now, then the RAF scientist ran downstairs. His hair, what was left of it, just going everywhere, his glasses suddenly on the side. He looked at me and said, “That’s the highest resting tolerance to G force ever recorded.” I said, “But I didn’t pass out.” He said, “I know. We had to abandon the test, [audience laughter] because we don’t know the effects of 7.4 G even on a dead body.” [audience laughter] 

 

I said to him, “What can I do with my new superpower?” I said, “Can I fly a plane?” He said, “I don’t know. Can you fly a plane?” [audience laughter] I said, “No.” He said, “Then no. No, you can’t fly a plane.” [audience laughter] And so, I tell you this story, because if you try things that you have never tried before and you push yourself and you give it a go, sometimes just occasionally, your own self will astound you. Thanks for listening.