More Unscrambled Eight

A third motorcyclist (who shared David's love of sidecar motocross) who found work with David, was Steve Lewis, known to everyone at Bickers Action as ‘Lou’. Lou had worked with Dick Todd previously and joined the team in 1987, his first job involving a trip to Spain to work on an Indiana Jones film.

‘One of Dave’s problems was he just couldn’t do anything slow. Do you remember when we did that job in the desert in Israel for the Ford Mondeo and we had those two cars that had to merge together? The director would shout, ‘OK. Action!’, and he (David) took off so quickly the other guy (Jim Dowdall) couldn’t catch him up. Once he heard ‘Action!’ he was gone!’

Although David may have made the stunt tricky for him, Jim Dowdall remembers being grateful for David’s ingenuity as he struggled with the heat in the desert. ‘I had to wear this kind of ‘baking foil’ suit. He kept bringing me bottles of water to drink and then, very surreptitiously, he found a little fan, God knows where, and installed it in the shell of the car. He painted it silver so it wouldn’t show, and he made absolutely no fuss about it, but he could see that I was being cooked in this suit. It was such relief, just to get some air!’

Lou was reminded of the 'Unimog saga' when he got caught out by David – the Unimog being a German, short wheelbase 4X4. ‘Oh Christ, yes! Dave had got this Unimog and we went on this film with it, and he said, “Whatever you do, don’t take it in the sea.” So, we’re on this job and we had to tow this wind machine, a crop drying thing, and the tide came in and the only way to get out was to go just into the surf, round the block and then up onto the beach. So, I did it and I washed it all off afterwards and thought that was the end of it. Anyway, we get back and he gets sent a ‘Making of’ tape and he says, “Look at this. I told you not to go in the sea!”, and he never let me forget it!’