Williams Page #8

because he'd taken

a direct blow on his head

when the roof had come down like that.

Soon as I undid the belt,

of course I fell on my bleeding head,

right on my neck again.

The only thing I could remember

was to try to stabilise

his head and neck

and try to pull him out

by holding him under the armpits

and then he started to say,

You know Peter, I'm a Roman Catholic

and if anything happens, I want to see

if you can get the last rites.

We were just looking at packing up

when a French youth

arrived on a moped asking for me

and he explained that

Frank Williams had gone off the road

and wanted some help.

But Nelson said Oh sh*t,

that's a twisty road, I know the road,

"let's go down and see."

We didn't know exactly the damage

but uh...

Uh... we knew it was

something very dramatic.

We raced to the scene

as quickly as we could

and at that time Frank's life

was in the balance.

And that's when Nigel

delegated himself really

to go in the ambulance with Frank,

basically hold Frank's hand

and be with him.

Uh... I had a tremendous fear

for Frank's safety and,

and his wellbeing and life at that time.

So certain people needed to be energised

to do the right thing, quickly.

But by then it was pretty clear

that there was a very good chance

that he's broken his neck.

When I phoned Patrick Head I told him

that it looks like, from the x-rays,

that Frank's spinal column's been cut

and it was pretty, I think I said to him,

I think he's' f***ed,

like you know he looked really bad.

The next day Ginny

and I flew down to Marseille

and she was pretty shattered

but she was a brave woman.

The first time that I knew

that things were gonna be really serious

was when the doctor in charge

of the intensive care unit

called Ginny and I into

his office and said,

"When do you wanna move

Frank back to England?"

Which I immediately

took to mean they think he's gonna die

and they don't want him

to die in their hospital.

At that stage,

when Ginny got the message

that the frogs

were gonna let Frank die,

she organised a plane,

flew him back to Heathrow,

an ambulance took him

to the London hospital

and 20 minutes later he was

hooked up to English machines

and he was in

a shocking state, shocking state.

The first thing

that happened to Frank

was that he had a tracheotomy operation

in the London hospital

and the operation went

well in the sense that

suddenly Frank had

relief and he could breathe,

he could get the fluid out of his lungs

and I remember Ginny learnt how

to operate the extraction of the fluid

and would help the nurses

and was able to do that

on her own within a day or two.

Her approach was I'm gonna manage

these nurses around Frank's bed here

the way Frank runs a race team.

Ginny was literally his guardian,

he clinically died three times

and without Ginny jumping on top of him

and pumping his lungs out

and resuscitating him,

not the nurses and the doctors,

but Ginny herself,

um he would've been dead.

I remember I was off one day

and Ginny was on duty as she called it.

The head of the unit came out and said,

Normally Mrs Williams,

in this situation,

"we would turn the life support off,

but we need the family's permission."

Did you ever doubt whether

Frank should be kept alive?

Yeah.

Yeah and um I actually said to him,

Frank, I'm your best pal

and I'd do anything for ya,

you want a bag over your head,

I'll do it for you",

I promise you I said this,

I said but you'd have

to convince me first

"why your kids wouldn't

want you around in any condition"

and I said,

So don't ask me to do anything

"that your kids wouldn't approve of."

So he said, I won't do that David",

that was when he was speaking,

he said I'll never do that."

So this is a book

I wrote when I was little.

I wrote that

I thought it would be a good idea

to start a kind of scrap book

all about my father.

Above all I wanted somewhere

to write down all my memories of him

before my mind had

the chance to forget them.

Hopefully I will never forget what

he used to be like before his accident.

Everyone thinks their father is the best.

I'm not an exception.

"I worship my father.

It sounds silly but he's my hero."

I started taking CDs

and things like that

for him to listen to,

to fill in the time a bit,

because you have to remember

he was a marathon runner,

you know he used to run 12 miles

every day and felt bad if he didn't

and it was a spectacularly

big change of life for Frank

when he had his accident.

So what, what kind

of music did you introduce him to?

Bach.

Erbarme dich

Johann Sebastian Bach

I mean I thought

that my pal Frank was indestructible,

you know he got away with everything,

Frank'll be alright

but he wasn't on this one

and Pd go and see him

three or four times a week,

I always gave him a kiss, I had to,

lean over and give him a kiss

on the forehead

and say

"Your old mate Brode's here, mate."

and he used to flicker his eyelids

at that, he couldn't speak,

stuff in his mouth, up his nose,

oh it was a horrible sight.

Oh there was

a lot of discomfort

and pain in the very early days,

that's inevitable,

when such a major part of your body

gets a kick in the arse

but um I can't say "Oh it was terrible",

it's not in my mind,

I don't remember much of it.

Body's got a great

many ways of protecting itself,

when it's in a bit of pain or bother.

First thing they said,

Broken your neck, long recovery period,

how much you'll recover isn't sure,

of course they knew

I wouldn't recover uh...

but you don't quite tell a person

"when he wakes up

You're f-ed mate, for good."

Probably for the first time

in front of me,

Virginia, she lost it,

it was a sort of an awful moment

and I remember putting my arms

around her and she was saying.

Frank's gonna be, he's quadriplegic,

"he can't walk Jamie,

he can't do anything."

And I was saying, It's gonna be ok

but I had this sort of feeling,

I wasn't sure at all that

it was going to be ok.

For a long time, maybe three,

four months after the accident,

there was no real certainty that

he'd ever be able to leave the hospital

and to all intents

and purposes he was dead to the team.

And you know there we were

with the fastest car,

we were gonna win all the races,

we got two fantastic drivers

and everything was going

and then all of a sudden the boss,

the figure head, the main man

had had this horrific accident

and it really was a massive change.

I think then it sort of dawned on us all,

um, where do we go from here?

What's gonna happen in '86?

We await the start of the.

Brazilian Grand Prix

and the 1986 season.

Sadly, Frank Williams,

boss of the Williams team isn't here

after a major road accident in France.

But for the whole team,

that's an added incentive to do well.

Well they went to work

with a vengeance,

instead of them all

moping about, they said.

You tell Frank you don't have to

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