Edd China - Grease Junkie: A Book of Moving Parts

Edd China is a television presenter, mechanic, motor specialist and inventor. He co-presented Discovery show Wheeler Dealers for 13 years, and has also appeared on Top Gear, Scrapheap Challenge and Fifth Gear. He currently hosts his own channel at www.YouTube.com/EddChina. As an inventor, Edd set or holds Guinness World Records for the fastest furniture, shed, bathroom, bed and milk float, and largest motorised shopping trolley, fastest electric amphibian and fastest electric ice-cream van. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, Imogen, and this is his first book.

This book is for Mum

A mirage shimmers as the hot Californian sun of June beats down on the winding tarmac of a clear mountain road in Idyllwild. A light breeze caresses the surface of a lake; the faint buzzing of insects and the chatter of birds fill the air. This is a beautiful and rugged part of the world.

Action!

The calm is shattered by the deep roar of a V8 engine on song and the mercy cry of tyres losing their grip. Mike Brewer, my Wheeler Dealers co-presenter, shifts to a lower gear and crushes the throttle pedal into the thick new carpet of a bright red 1973 Chevy Camaro. The stainless-steel exhaust system sounds fantastic; the unrepentant bark reverberates off the boulders and pine trees that line the road. We tear down a hill and turn into a tight left-hand bend narrowly missing a pair of over-enthusiastic on-lookers pinned against a wall of rock, grit and pine needles blowing into their faces as we pass

And cut!

The command to pull over and wait in the designated rest area crackles through the radio. Mike turns to me and says, This is the last Wheeler De He corrects himself. This could be the last Wheeler Dealers episode we film together. I almost dont notice his odd turn of phrase at first but it seems to hang in the air for a moment. Mike has been in an odd mood all day, like a kid who is annoyed that the fart he gleefully produced, stinks. He is clearly frustrated that nobody seems interested or aware that the occasion should be noted or celebrated.

* * *

It was the last day of filming on series 13 and it had been a very difficult year.

On top of everything else, our 1916 Cadillac adventure, the Peking to Paris rally, had just been cancelled by the channel, a week before the car was due to fly out to China. So, rather than going straight to Beijing for the start of an epic adventure, my wife, Imogen, and I stayed on for a couple of extra weeks in our rented house in Newport Beach a wonderful place to take a well-earned rest. We relished the easy living, did a bit of tidying and then packed our belongings into a storage unit, ready for our return in the autumn. I heard or saw nothing of anyone from the production during this time, or Mike, as he had said he was travelling. So, when I went to catch up and say goodbye to a friend who had worked on the previous series and he said that the production company had been really busy screen testing with some guy from the UK called Ant, I thought nothing of it.

However, as the time for our usual return to filming approached and I still had not heard anything from the production team or the channel, I started thinking something wasnt right; by now we should have been well into pre-production of the next series and I needed to know when I was required back. So, I reached out to the network and requested a meeting.

The next contact Imogen and I had was a conference call with the production company Velocitys boss, Bob Scanlon, the production management and their lawyer.

After the requisite pleasantries and chit chat, they got down to business by saying they were pleased I had requested the meeting as they had wanted to discuss some changes to the production going forward. This was fine by me: in fact, Id been looking forward to it.

What I wasnt prepared for was the producers announcement that the show was too difficult to make at the current level, so they wanted to halve the number of episodes filmed per year and, consequently, halve my annual fee. I was (for once) lost for words. Sure, it was difficult, but our previous production company, Attaboy, had managed more episodes with less than half as many staff and, though it was extremely pressurised at times, we had always managed to get a great programme made.

Later, once the reality had sunk in, Imogen and I pointed out that by reducing my pay they had breached the option clause in my contract, thereby rendering the contract null and void. They responded that the smart thing to do would be to just sign a new contract anyway, as they had already been screen testing my potential replacement with Mike and were ready to sign a deal with him if I did not comply. I didnt even hesitate. I had been under an option contract for 13 years, which means I could never have quit even if I wanted to, except for in one, single circumstance: if the company attempted to reduce my fee.

Regardless of the circumstances that led the producers to make the choice they did, and that I might have loved to make more episodes of the show, I had to go for my freedom. I declined Velocitys offer, after which I got an email from Bob Scanlon on 31 August, confirming that there would be a 100 per cent push on Anstead.

So, rather unexpectedly, I was now free to Make My World Bigger, as Discoverys slogan has it. However, the exclusivity obligation in my existing contract meant that I couldnt yet actually act on it or even tell anyone.

At 1pm GMT on 21 March 2017, Velocity/Discovery released the following statement on their social media channels:

After 13 memorable seasons, Edd China has decided to depart from the Wheeler Dealers series in order to pursue other projects. Wheeler Dealers will continue for a fourteenth season with Mike Brewer, who will be joined by established automotive expert and master mechanic Ant Anstead.

We waited until we had seen both Mike and Ants video statements before we recorded mine in our tiny home workshop studio that we had been frantically building and dressing for most of the previous week. We knew the fans would be shocked and wanted to be sure that they understood my underlying reasons for choosing to leave, without going into any of the toxic politics or dropping Mike in the mire.

I felt it was important that I cut through the emotion and addressed a number of obvious issues, and so the wording had to be very specific. I owed it to the audience who had been so supportive and by whose grace the show had become a long running hit. It had to be just right.

The upshot of this process was that it took a number of takes for us to be happy with the statement as a whole I say us as Imogen plays a huge part in everything I do, and in important times such as this we are both particularly critical of my performance. We ended up with several takes and addendums which all needed to be stitched together in some edit software which I suddenly realised we didnt have.

So, I rushed through a load of app reviews online and eventually found some software I thought would be ideal for the job. Twenty quid later, I was busily learning how to feed the video clips from my phone into the app, stick the clips together, ready to finally upload the video onto my YouTube channel. I didnt have time to learn any whizzy editing tricks to make it look even slightly professional, and anyway, we both felt an honest, even slightly raw, hard cut approach was most appropriate. This was direct communication, from me to the fans no gloss, mood lighting or PR spin required.