Guy Martin: Top Gun is airing on Channel 4 on Sunday and the documentary sees the ex-motorbike racer build a jet engine in his shed. He hopes to gain an understanding of the technology’s original creator, Sir Frank Whittle.
With jet travel heavily impacting climate change, Guy hopes to find less damaging alternatives, before heading off to the Swiss Alps to fly a fighter jet through the mountains. Guy has always lived an adventurous life with his curiosity over motors beginning when he was just 12.
As a child he was fascinated by engines, and would take apart lawnmowers to find ways of increasing their speed. While completing his apprenticeship as a lorry mechanic, he started racing motorbikes in his spare time.
When he was just 18 he moved to Ireland to join Team Racing and went on to become a household name in motorsport. The 42-year-old from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, was named Guy in tribute to Guy Gibson of No. 617 Squadron RAF.
Wing Commander Guy Gibson was a distinguished bomber pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
(Image: Channel 4)
Guy’s dad, Ian, was a successful privateer motorbike racer competing in Isle of Man TT events, but he needed a way to make more money and took on work as a lorry mechanic and bike salesman.
His mother, Rita Kidals, was Latvian with her father having come to Britain in 1947 as a political refugee.
Guy also has two sisters and a brother, Stuart, who is a truck mechanic and motorbike racer. Meanwhile his younger sister, Kate, was the first female mechanic in the BSB paddock.
All three siblings attended every Isle of Man TT racing event from their births as a family tradition, however they stopped after their father crashed during a race in 1988.
(Image: Channel 4)
After recovering from a broken hip, his father did not race again. Yet Guy attributes his strong work ethic to his father.
Guy now lives near Grasby, North Lincolnshire with his partner Sharon and their daughter Dottie.
Inside his best-selling book, We Need to Weaken the Mixture, he said he and his partner did not agree on Dot’s career path.
He joked: “I keep telling people I would like Dot to be a welder, because women are supposed to make better welders than men. Shazza doesn’t agree with my career plans. She says Dot will be whatever she wants to be.”
Guy Martin: Top Gun airs on Channel 4 on Sunday, August 25 at 9pm
