Life after the Stig – and Top Gear: Ben Collins has changed his priorities

After eight years remaining anonymous on one of the most successful car shows on television, Ben Collins – better known as the Stig on Channel 4’s Top Gear – took a big leap into the unknown by leaving the show.

He says it was an incredible opportunity. It meant racing at Le Mans again in a 360km/h prototype and focusing on his own TV career. Collins has also been a writer since leaving college and wrote a book, The Man in the White Suit, about his time on Top Gear and other adrenaline-fuelled adventures, which he described as incredibly rewarding.

“The book was an international bestseller and meant I was able to publish another book, How to Drive,” he says, which was published over the summer.

A career change from full-time driver to full-time writer is a long way off. His work as a stunt driver hasn’t changed and Collins carried on working on the James Bond franchise with some of the best moviemakers and on action-packed movies such as The Fast and the Furious and Disney blockbusters.

“The biggest change in my priorities has come from having children,” he says. “They are the best thing that’s happened to me and I love their sense of humour, but the days of sleeping in or spending hours shooting aliens on an Xbox are over, for now, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Collins left his persona of the Stig nearly five years ago, but recalls that the line between Ben Collins and the Stig was always blurred. “My boss Andy Wilman was equally confused and kept calling me ‘Stig’ when I was wearing jeans and ‘Ben’ when I was wearing white, which was nerve-racking when you were trying to keep the whole thing a secret. I think the crew liked imagining a person behind the helmet and ‘Stig’ just became my nickname.”