The only crash I have had in a car was when someone went into the back of my BMW X5 while trying to overtake me. His car disintegrated but there wasn’t a scratch on mine; it’s like a tank with eight airbags.

However, I have had one on a scooter. In the late 1970s we were filming a Christmas special of Citizen Smith in Portmeirion, the Italianate-looking village in Gwynedd, Wales.

The storyline was about how my character, Wolfie, goes to visit his girlfriend in Rimini on his Lambretta scooter.

We had to do a long helicopter shot as we drove through the Welsh countryside, which was supposed to stand in for Italy. It was a fantastic atmosphere while we were filming because they were playing the George Harrison song, Here Comes the Sun, on the soundtrack.

The helicopter was following us along a country lane and my co-star Mike Grady was riding the Lambretta with me as the pillion passenger. We hit a bump and both of us fell off.

We ended up in hospital, suffering from shock, very scuffed up and picking bits of gravel out of our knees.

It didn’t put me off, though. I have owned a Vespa for years. It used to whiz me in and out of central London from my home in Buckinghamshire, but recently I have had to get rid of it: I realised that I had lost my nerve.

I just decided the A40 was a little bit crazy, and my brother, who used to build bikes from scratch and had a very serious accident some years ago that left him with a few bits of metal in his system, told me to get rid of it.

You’ve got to be a pretty confident human being to ride a motorbike — if you wake up with even a slight hangover or have the flu, don’t even think of getting on one.

Robert Lindsay is best known for his roles in Citizen Smith and GBH

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