It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I take a closer look at the life, achievements, and final record attempt of Donald Campbell, one of Britain's most famous pioneers of speed.

Joining me is Neil Shepherd, author of Donald Campbell and the Final Record Attempt, who shares his extensive research into Campbell's remarkable career and the events that unfolded on Coniston Water during his final run in the legendary Bluebird K7.

Together, we explore Campbell's relentless pursuit of speed, the engineering brilliance behind Bluebird K7, and the innovations that enabled him to break records on both land and water. Neil also examines the circumstances surrounding Campbell's fatal accident, challenging long-held myths and offering fresh insight based on historical evidence and modern analysis.

The conversation also covers the remarkable recovery and restoration of Bluebird K7, the discovery of Campbell's remains, and the efforts to preserve his legacy through exhibitions and education. We discuss how the boat continues to inspire engineers, historians, and motorsport enthusiasts, standing as a symbol of British innovation and ambition.

This episode is both a celebration of Donald Campbell's extraordinary achievements and a thoughtful examination of the risks, determination, and vision that defined his life.

___

Visit our sponsors

GAZ Shocks 116 Trophy

Hodder Tyres

Tarox Brakes

SAS Autos

Listen Now

https://pod.link/1656058575

Mentioned in this episode:

Visit the Backseat Driver Podcast Sponsors

GAZ Shocks - Home of the 116 Trophy and the 120 Coupe Cup. Find them at www.gazshocks.com | Hodder Tyres - Trusted brands, every season, every condition. Visit www.hoddertyres.co.uk | Tarox Brakes - The Art of Slowing Down, precision-built in Italy. Check out www.tarox.com | SAS Autos - Experts in high-quality servicing and classic car restoration. Discover more at sas-autos.co.uk

Donald Campbell was one of England's heroes, no matter what anybody says.

And given today's world, somebody might take offence at that, but I'm not remotely bothered about that.

But he was killed doing what he did the best setting speed records, in this instance, the water speed record in his famous jet propelled Bluebird K7 on Coniston Water.

He'd already done one run and more or less done the job, but they had to run the other way and it went a little bit wrong.

And the footage still exists of Bluebird somersaulting.

Everybody thinks he hit a piece of wood, but as time's gone by, that has been disproved, which means I'm delighted to welcome to the backseat driver Neil shepherd, author of Donald Campbell and the Final Record Attempt.

Neil, welcome to the Back Se.

Thank you very much.

Good morning.

How did you get into Bluebird?

What was the draw?

Yeah, when I was 8.

Yeah.

And they started reminiscing about it.

I just, my ears pricked up and I took an interest and thought I was quite amazed that something, someone driving a jet boat at 200 miles an hour along a lake which was five miles away from home was something that would happen close to home.

So, yeah, I got interested that way and I badgered my mum to, oh, can we see if we can go to the local library and get some books on this?

Because I'd like to read more.

And that's what we did.

And so that's where the interest came from.

And it sort of, it existed throughout my sort of school years.

I got told off by teachers for having, you know, reading books on Donald Campbell and nothing else.

And, you know, so my interest was always there.

And then I suppose, like most people, as time went on, the exploits of Donald Campbell sort of faded from people's memories.

And it also, I suppose because that coincided with the advent of social media and then I got to know a whole bunch of people that also had this sort of interest in Campbell and, you know, we sort of share knowledge and share photos, etc.

Etc.

So that sort of perked up my interest.

Yeah, it did, to a degree, if memory serves, raise a little bit of controversy, didn't it?

Raising the bolt?

Yes, because there were people that were of the opinion that because Campbell hadn't been found after the accident in 67, then effectively that was his grave.

So Gina Campbell Campbell, Donald Campbell's only daughter, was very much of the opinion.

Well, I'd like the boat left where it is.

But she was also advised by the.

The technology available to amateur divers versus what had been available to even professionals back in the 60s, had come on in leaps and bounds.

And the dive team leader, Bill Smith, said, look, if we leave it on the bottom, it will just get raided by people and eventually there'll be nothing left.

There'll be people hacking this off it and putting it on ebay.

So eventually they decided, well, let's raise the boat, but you must find my father as well.

Bill had already found Donald's body by the time these discussions became in the public domain.

And so the decision was made to raise the boat.

I mean, when they brought him up, don't mind me asking, was the body found near the boat?

No, when the boat crashed, it was quite a violent crash.

It did crash at about 185.

It impacted 185 miles an hour.

And then the boat didn't carry on going straight, it sort of tumbled off towards the east of the lake.

Yeah.

And that distance was about 600ft.

Right.

And so they looked at film, they identified all the splashes from as the boat broke up and they dived on those areas where there'd been a splash impact.

And they found various parts of the boat, the boat completely disintegrated ahead of the air intake.

So the cockpit where Campbell was sitting just broke up on impact.

And they found various Parts of the boat were recovered at the time, including the steering mechanism, his safety harness, et cetera, et cetera.

But they never found Campbell.

The trouble was they were working on a slightly incorrect assumption about the line of travel because the boat had tumbled off towards the east.

If they'd carried on a straight line from where the impact point was to where they found the forward spar, which had effectively ricochet off the boat as it hit the water and just bounced almost like a stone off the water and then flew through the air and eventually landed in the water some 600ft forward.

Campbell's body was basically found along that line of travel, fairly close to the impact point.

Right.

So the Royal Navy, they sort of sectorized the bed of the lake because it's very dark down there, it's silty, visibility is zero.

So they sectorized the bed of the lake and searched for the impact points of all these parts of the boat that had broken off as it was disintegrating.

But because they, the way the boat had traveled, which was off to a tangent of the line of travel, they missed searching this particular area.

Right.

Now, you commented that the boat broke up quite badly, but from what I could see when it was brought up from, say, the cockpit backwards, things did seem to be relatively intact.

Yeah.

I mean, the boat was very, very substantially over engineered.

Yeah.

The Norris Borers in terms of its specification, and it was stressed to.

So the frame itself split at the air intakes and the forward frame broke into a number of large pieces.

Everything from the intakes back the intakes affect acted as an enormous break.

Yeah.

So when the, when the air intakes impacted with the water, they blew out because of a massive ingestion of water almost immediately.

And that slowed the boat down.

The main hull of the boat, in terms of its tumbling.

So the impact was at 185 miles an hour that the boat kept to a halt after about four or five barrel rolls.

And because it was so substantially built, it sank in a relatively, considering the, you know, the force of the impact in a relatively intact hole.

Yeah.

And when the boat fell, you know, sank to the surf, to the bed of Coniston, it sort of sank into this anaerobic mud which sits on the bottom of the lake.

Yeah.

And that further preserved the bodywork.

But it was the fact that the engine had magnesium components in it.

So the engine as a sacrificial anode, and the casing around the turbine basically spent the next 34 years on the bed of the lake deteriorating.

Not the main hull.

Right.

So when the boat was recovered, they found that the engine, certainly the turbine casing, had more or less disintegrated.

There wasn't too much of it left over a few years on the lake bed, that would have totally, you know, dissolved.

Yeah.

And then the nature of corrosion, etc.

Would have started to work on the next sort of set of metals in terms of, you know, which is the metal which is going to next dissolve.

Yeah.

So that basically was fortuitous in terms of meaning that the hull itself remained relatively in good condition.

And certainly that gave Bill Smith and the Bluebird project something that they could then preserve and rebuild from.

So K7, as we see it now, Bluebird, K7, how much of it is original?

How much were they able to salvage, preserve and use again?

Yeah.

So if you look at K7 and you take the engine out, because the engine, that was beyond redemption.

But if you look at.

If you're talking the pure, all, even the.

The elements of a frame.

So the total frame of K7 was a front of it which had disintegrated or broken off.

Those parts were found on the bed of a lake and they were reunited with the frame in the main hull, if you like.

So the frame was made whole.

Yeah.

Various items of bodywork were found and they were incor in the rebuild.

The spars.

So they are the arms, if you like, that link the sponsons of K7 with the main hull.

They're original.

One was thrown off in the impact, the other one remained intact with the main hull.

So the overall percentage is probably somewhere in the region of 75% that the sponsons, which are the forward planing surfaces, they were recovered at the time.

They basically floated on the lake after the impact and were towed back to the pier cottage slipway where Campbell had his base.

And they were recovered.

They were subsequently taken to the Norris brothers premises in the south of England, and they were disposed of sometime later.

And no one's exactly sure in what way they were disposed of, whether they were sold as scrap or whether they were buried, but they were lost.

But Will Smith was able to obtain from the Noyce brothers fusional drawings, and he was able to obtain the original materials of the same specification that had been used originally.

And so the forward sponsons were rebuilt as exact replicas of the spons which were lost.

And the sponsons themselves have aerodynamic fairings on the top.

So the aerodynamic fairings are not load bearing.

A lot of that bodywork was found on the bed of a lake and was able to be reincorporated in the rebuilding of those sponsons.

And there's various elements around the cockpit that were found and were able to be incorporated in a rebuild.

Right.

Just out of interest, do the original plans for K7 still.

Yes, they do, yeah.

All right.

Right.

K7 was substantially modified throughout its life to basically give it a higher speed capability.

As the speeds went higher, then Campbell needed to have more widening the envelope, if you like, of the safe envelope adapter could operate in.

So various changes were made throughout its life.

And those changes were not really documented in engineering drawings.

They were very much so.

The drawings of the original boat inform the overall hull.

And then to make K7, a rebuilt K7 look as genuine to the boat that existed on the morning of 4th of January 67, that was done through photographs.

And I provided Bill Smith with thousands and thousands of photographs for Ihad of K7 and you know, down to the most minute detail.

Yeah, so that was basic.

That's basically no disrespect.

That's your involvement in the recreation in the restoration of Bloomberg Case.

My involvement in the, in the, in the recreation of K7 is very much being able to advise Bill.

Yeah, that's correct.

That's not correct.

And being able to sort of inform him of the history and the history of changes that were made when they were made and why.

Why they were made so he could understand and incorporate that.

Yeah.

Into Bill.

K7.

Right.

So I mean, we said before we went on air, the books that have been written on Campbell are incredible.

It's like you said, they way outnumber books on people like Jimmy Clark and other people like that.

What inspired you to write the final record attempt and what did you find out that others didn't or others haven't?

Let's just go back a little bit in history.

So obviously Bluebird K7 is the most successful record breaking hydroplane in existence.

And before its untimely demise, it broke the record seven times.

First time in 55 mils water at 202.

And then those speeds were gradually increased over the next few years as Campbell got more comfortable handling that boat and as modifications were made to that boat to give it a higher speed potential.

And that was the same year that he set his only land speed record of 403.

That feat is unlikely to be repeated.

So that's, I think, when Campbell became the legend.

And probably in retrospect, that's when Campbell should have stopped.

But because there was a desire from the Americans to build jet cars to go towards the speed of sound, Campbell wanted to build a rocket car to keep Britain in that.

Yeah, race you like.

And the only way that he could think to actually raise interest in doing that was to have another crank up a water speed record and try and do 300.

And that was to try and up his profile again and show that Campbell was still relevant and he was still a force to be reckoned with from a record breaking perspective.

But by that time, most of the oil companies and the potential sponsors that Campbell had had sort of seen their interest move away from record breaking, which had been there in the 50s, to, oh, we've got motor racing now, and Britain's dominating motor racing.

So the likes of Dunlops and, and BP and Shell and Lucas and Castro, they had another outlet and so record breaking was of no interest to them.

Yeah.

So Campbell's sort of 66 attempt became, you know, with a benefit.

I think it's a story that's been rewritten.

He'll probably do it in two or three weeks and then that'll all be it and he'll get his record whether he does 300 or not.

Maybe not, he might do 290, but he'll definitely get another record.

Yeah, and that would take as a given that he would get another record.

So there was relatively little interest in that 66 attempt.

Campbell didn't really have any backing and, and it was very much on the shoestring and it was a complete contrast to what had gone before at coniston in the 50s when Mobil and BP and Dunlop's and Lucas were heavily behind him.

And then what had gone in Australia in the 60s, you know, when you're breaking records in sort of sunny, hot environments.

I mean, Campbell, when he broke his record in 64, the last day of 64, Dec, 64, 276, he actually broke his record in a pair of swimming trunks and a polo shirt because the temperature out there was so hot.

And so I think Coniston in 66 was just a total contrast in terms of what had gone before in terms of the environment, the Lake District in the autumn, straight winter, and the amount of support for Campbell.

But to get back to your original question mark, the genesis for me writing the book was twofold.

I was very lucky a few years before I wrote the book to buy a film on ebay.

A color film of the last two runs.

Yeah.

And it was a very high quality color film.

And Bill Smith from Bluebird Project knew that I had this film.

And he came to an agreement as Bluebird was being rebuilt, that sky would make a documentary about the crash and that they would use computer sort of early AI if you like, to try and recreate the accident for a brief documentary that they produced.

So, yeah, I went to a.

A company to do that and Bill said, oh, and you know, somebody that's known to the Bluebird project has a color film over the last two runs.

And so sky contacted me and said, can we see your film and could we potentially use it in a documentary?

And I said, yes, Jan. And.

But I said, what I would like is when you digitize the film, I'd like a scan of each individual frame of a film, a high resolution scan.

So we went to a post production studio in Soho in London, and they cleaned up film and they digitized it and they improved the saturation and the contrast.

So you could really see some quite nice detail in it.

And I ended up with about 4,500 individual scans of the last two runs at 24 frames per second.

Yeah, about 2,900 of them were basically Bluebird on the last two runs up to the point of the crash.

Yeah,.

Once I have these scans, I started looking at them and you could certainly realize that it was detail in these scans which hadn't become apparent before.

And we could see the behavior of the boat and we could see what was going on.

And we could see that the boat was airborne on the first run for 0.6 seconds.

So the accident could have happened on the first run.

And then we could see the precursor to the accident on the second run.

It started eight seconds Before Bluebird actually left the water.

Right.

So we thought, well, hang on, that means that the story as it's been written before, hasn't recognized these facts, hasn't recognized the fact that the boat is literally bouncing out of the water.

And so I decided, well, that would be quite nice to document in a book.

And then about the same time, a Ruskin Museum and put me in touch with somebody who had taken a roll of 36 color photos of Bluebird in December.

They thought they'd taken them on the day, but they haven't.

Yeah, but it was in December.

But these photos were beautiful, beautiful quality photographs.

And then there was a press photographer from Warrington, a guy called Eddie Witton, who covered sporting events in the Northwest for local newspapers.

And he always used to take two cameras with him.

Take his black and white camera for the newspapers.

Yeah.

And he took his color camera or his camera with color film in it for his own personal use.

Yeah.

And we'd been up to coniston twice in December 66, and rolled off 40 absolute masterpiece images of Bluebird on Coniston and Campbell.

Yeah.

And I got in contact with Eddie and said, yeah, I've got an idea for a book.

Would you allow me to use the images?

And he was absolutely delightful.

He said, of course I would talk at all.

How do you want to do it?

He said, I've got some scans.

And so he said, I'll send you some scans of those images, but if you want high quality ones, just let me know.

Yeah.

So I got some scans and I took them to a company called Metro Imaging in London and said, you know, are these guns of good quality?

Said they are.

Okay, but we could do a much better job.

Yeah.

Because Fizzy have a company that basically does.

It does photographs for all the big magazines and for displays and galleries, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah.

And it just so happened that the owner was a big Campbell fan, a big Bluebird fan, which I didn't know.

Yeah, I had no idea.

So pure coincidence.

So I called Eddie back and he said, oh, yeah, no problem.

I'll lend you the original slides.

He said, can you come up and get them?

Yeah.

And I actually met Eddie at a motorway junction on the M6.

And he just handed me the slides and said, let me have them back when you finish with them.

Yeah.

It was that level of trust.

And these slides were works of art.

So I took him back to Chris at Metro and he.

They produced some wonderful scans of these slides.

And I got overset from Carl and I got those Scanned as well.

And then I started contacting all the press agencies and said, can you go back through your back catalog and look at pictures that you haven't digitized?

Yeah.

That which you took from the period May 66 to January 67th.

And I got loads of images that had never been published before that were taken by the Daily Mirror or taken by the Times or taken by the sun or the Daily Express.

And I just thought, I've got the genesis here of the book, which is to effectively deal with Campbell's final record attempt.

Yeah.

And explode the myths about what happened and actually explain what really did happen.

Now, one thing I have found out, whether it's true or not, he didn't hit a piece of wood.

The engine flared out, didn't it?

The engine flamed out, definitely.

And it flamed out on both runs.

Yeah.

It isn't clear that he didn't hit wood.

It's unlikely that he didn't hit any wood because the lake had been combed on the 2nd and 3rd of January, and there had been no change in the weather to potentially bring any further driftwood potentially onto the lake.

Yeah.

But.

So it's unlikely that he hit anything in terms of the engine flaming out at the end of the first run.

As Campbell lifted off the throttle, it would appear that the boat effectively put itself into idle and then flown out.

He was able to reignite that in five seconds.

That wasn't picked up by anybody observing at the time.

So the only person that was aware at the time that the engine had flamed out in the first run was Campbell.

Campbell didn't disclose the fact that.

Well, he did disclose the fact that he'd lost the engine, but he did that in his commentary.

Yeah, his commentary in real time probably wasn't really followed and certainly wasn't analyzed in real time.

Yeah.

So it wasn't a case of Leo Villa, who was the court martial, sort of saying, I heard you say the engine of Flamedale tr.

What happened?

You know, I don't think we should do the return run because the commentary that Campbell gave on all his record attempts was very much the commentary of a test pilot.

Yeah.

So be very much speaking about what was happening at the time it was happening, and it was effectively just streaming of consciousness.

So Campbell made reference to the fact that the.

It had to relight the engine, but didn't make reference to the fact that that had caused in.

In any way any sort of dangerous situation involved.

In any sort of dangerous situation.

Yeah.

In retrospect, if you were to analyze it you'd probably say, well, that should or could have been a cause of.

Why did that happen?

Yeah.

But it looks like the engine just went into an indent on the fuel system, which as he throttled back the engine, it just flamed out.

Yeah.

And that would, of course, I realize as well that the throttle was actually a pedal, an accelerator pedaling.

For a basic description, to lose the engine would cause Campbell to slightly lose control of the bolt, wouldn't it?

Yes.

I mean, in normal sort of operating circumstances, because the thrust line is above the cog, when you step on the gas, so to speak, that tends to push the nose down.

Yeah.

And then you lift off the throttle, or when the throttle is cut, that has that moment of pushing the nose back down, is removed.

And therefore the boat is only going to be reliant on the static weight of the boat to keep the nose down.

And that's being countered.

That's been countermanded, if you like, by the hydrodynamic lift caused by the planing surfaces and also any suction lift as high speed air is traveling over the bodywork of the boat.

Yeah.

So the Norris brothers always designed Campbell's vehicles to be as aerodynamically neutral as possible.

So they didn't generate downforce, but they didn't generate excess lift, certainly in terms of aerodynamics.

Yeah.

So to operate K7, you're basically, you're threading along a line, which is where it operates at its best.

So the forward plane, the planing surfaces, both two at the front and one at the rear, have to generate hydrodynamic lift to lift the body of the boat out of the water.

So it just rides on its planing surfaces.

And then you get aerodynamic suction lift that you want to mitigate as much as you possibly can, because like any fast moving vehicle, they generate lift.

And because water, you can't generate downforce because you can't push down water.

Because if you push down, at the very least, it would mean that you would cause excess drag, which you would then not be able to overcome, come with power to break records, or potentially you could get into much worse situation where the boat could actually submarine.

So from an aerodynamic perspective, the Norris brothers wanted to have as efficient a bodywork as possible to minimize suction lift, which is why the bodywork of K7 was constantly modified throughout its life.

Then, from a hydronomics perspective, you have efficiency planing surfaces that allow K7 to continue to operate and plane as intended throughout its speed range.

Yeah.

To move forward now to a few weeks ago, when K7RE emerged onto Coniston, I mean, it's made various appearances at places and it made an appearance near to where the boat was built, at Saundersbury hall near Preston in Lancashire.

But what did it feel like when you saw it take to the water once again?

I suppose the thing that's most striking is because Coniston, as you may be well appreciate, like most, most of the Lake District, it's kind of the environment of the Lake District in terms of its physical environment.

It never changes.

Yeah.

The same landmarks will still be there.

They haven't changed.

So to put K7 back into its sort of classic environment, if you like, of Coniston and K7 being on Lake Coniston, that was quite something.

Yeah.

Obviously.

Now, the logistics that you have to put in place to allow an event like that to happen are much, much more stringent and restrictive to the ones that Campbell had to put in Place in 66.

When Campbell came to Coniston in 66, his initial intention was to attempt to start in September.

Yeah.

And he thought it'd be a constant for two or three weeks.

It didn't work out like that because the refit of the boat took longer and so it didn't get to constant until the beginning of November.

But in terms of the permissions that he had to actually ask for, he just wrote a quick letter to the chairman of Coniston Parish Council saying we're due up in Coniston in the autumn to conduct high speed trials as a precursor to having another attempt at water speed record.

Yeah.

I trust that you can lay on the appropriate filthy stroke permissions.

And that was it could have to be an inquiry with the Lake District National Park Authority or any planning board or anything.

So that was a totally different environment.

Yeah.

And certainly not just anything approaching its ultimate performance capability.

That was the biggest difference, if you like.

But it drew the crowds and it showed that there's still enormous interest.

And then you look at this big blue boat on the water and then you realize that it's 72 years old and it's almost 60 years since you the tragedy.

And yet this boat is still.

It still looks modern and purposeful and it looks beautiful.

Yeah.

And it looks like nothing else that's gone since.

And because it's absent, it's not covered in sponsors logos and it's very tasteful.

And all it has effectively of a Bluebird logo, its K7 registration number, and a pair of Union Jacks on the bow and a pair of Union Jacks either side of a tail fin.

It just has this wonderful sort of patina of being of its age.

This happened 60 years ago.

This is still a tremendously beautiful looking piece of machinery.

Now the book Donald Campbell on the Final Record attempt and Bloomberg K7 itself.

Where do listeners get the book from?

So the book's available on Amazon, it's published by the History Press.

We reprint it on a reasonably regular basis.

So the History Press, we reprinted it in April, so it should be available on Amazon.

If people want signed copies of a book, they're usually available at the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, which is the home of Bluebird K7 now.

So those are the two sort of immediate sources, or people can just order it at their local bookstore.

They pop into our local bookstore and just say, book by Neil Shepherd, Donald Campbell, Bluebird and Fan and Record Attempt published by the History Press.

It should all appear on the bookstore's systems and they can order it in.

So it should be readily available in terms of reprints.

And if people want to see Bluebird K7, it is at the Ruskin Museum, which is at Coniston, isn't it?

Yes.

So the Ruskin Museum of the custodians of bluebird K7.

And it's on permanent display there.

And you know, it's well worth a visit because they have lots of Donald Campbell memorabilia from 66, 67 and from his previous attempts.

And they also have Donald Campbell's sort of private runabout boat that Campbell used in 66 boat Paul Jetstar, which was his own sort of little ski boat that he could use out on the lake to, you know, check conditions, etc, etc.

It's a treasure trove of sort of Don Campbell Bluebird, you know, genuine articles, if you like.

Will it go out again?

What lies in store for Blooburg K7?

I think Mariska Museum would like to have the option of it going out again.

I don't think they want to make it necessarily an annual event.

Yeah, I think the event in May proved that it could be operated safely and it was a large draw in terms of crowds.

And so I think over the next months, various interested parties will look long and hard at this question and then, you know, look at the appropriateness of when Bluebird might want to be, you know, launched again on the lake and maybe have a similar sort of event.

Yeah, I think we'll learn from their experience in May.

Undoubtedly there'll be elements that they will want to improve on.

But the Le Corbe did well, and look at the fact that it was safely operated and the National Park Authority appeared very comfortable with everything that had been put in place and also recognized that it was a unique draw to quality Coniston.

And it's a unique draught of electric because you have this engineering icon which has its home in the Lake District that, you know, can operate on its original Runway, so to speak, and operate safely and draw the crowds.

And so I think the fact that they were successful in doing what they're doing gives the Risker Museum an option that if it's felt that they want to go down that route again, they can successfully and safely do so.

It will be nice to see it out.

It's like they say about classic cars, the worst thing you can do with a classic car, or any car, is just leave them parked up and ultimately.

The environments that it's operating in and the speeds that are being attempted and the world within the Cape built is a VAT boat.

Yeah.

There's very little risk to the boat or to anybody else if that boat is operated by the appropriate team doing the sort of speeds that they're contemplating.

Neil shepherd, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you.

I haven't realized that Bluebird K7 had already set numerous water speed records.

I think a lot of people tend to think that's the only thing it did on Coniston back in the late 60s, but fascinating to find out.

But once again, Neil shepherd, thank you very, very much for joining me on the backseat driver and get out there and get the book bought.

But once again, Neil shepherd, thank you very much indeed.

Thank you very much.