“Unlike London or other big cities, there’s a great tolerance for motorbikes in Ireland. The roads were terrible, but me and my neighbour Kaz used to fill a spare petrol tank and just ride into the mountains until we ran out of petrol, then fill it up again and ride down. Ireland was, relatively, a third-world country.

“I had a wonderful childhood, looking back on it,” he says, quite wistfully. Much of it recalls his childhood in Co Wicklow, where he found his love of motorbikes. The only positive is that the free time and the period of reflection paved the way for the biography. “If I’d broken one leg, it would have all been straightforward because I could have gotten up on my other leg and carried on, but because I broke both my legs and my hand, that’s what made it so difficult.” Time to write “I’ve had lots of crashes before, but this was just brutal because of the way I hit the ground,” he says. Deep pockmarks dot the rest of his calf, charting where cage wires went through his leg to keep a metal rod in place. The bolts that need removing appear as taut bumps under the skin. The area where his tibia broke and tore through the skin is a smooth, angry pink. Upon request (call it morbid fascination), he uncovers his scars by peeling up his jeans to his knee. I’d feel awful, I’d think why me? What if I had left two seconds earlier or two seconds later? What if I’d hit the hedge instead of the wall? But I quickly realised you don’t get anywhere by thinking that.” With rehabilitation, you take one step forward and two steps back so sometimes I’d wake up at four or five in the morning, and get depressed.

The worst time was at night, after a particularly sh**ty day.

Charley boorman long way round