Post by Eclair on May 5, 2008 11:33:57 GMT
Unfortunately there is not a lot of news about on the lovely Mr Wilman... 
...but here is an old article that a kind HH'er McMomo6 sourced - thank you McMomo6 and HH! 
Sunday Times 06/11/2005
The backroom boy who put Top Gear on top of the world
By: Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson reveals how a winning double act was forged outside a girls' school and in a grotty flat known as the vomitorium Andy is the world's hairiest man. The human carpet. Every time he goes for a swim in my pool I have to change all the filters. But I've known him since he was 12 years old. We were at school together.
I'm a couple of years older but he's extremely clever and kept jumping years and had damn near caught me up by the time I left. It's unusual to be friends with people younger than you at school but Andy is just incredibly funny. He has an astonishingly quick wit and we hit it off straight away.
We were extremely badly behaved. I know we were technically at Repton and I know our parents were paying fees to Repton, but we spent most of our time at Abbots Bromley, a girls' school 17A miles away. That was much more fun. I didn't study much and that was reflected in the fact that I got no qualifications, but Andy was one of those people who didn't really need to work and still did well. After school he went off to protest about, well, everything.
If there was a march he was on it. He strolled about with his Anti Nazi League outside the South African embassy. Then he decided that Margaret Thatcher was really good news. He was politically messed up.
We lost touch for a few years then met again at my 21st birthday party, which he gatecrashed, and we've been friends ever since. Andy was a regular visitor at a flat I shared with three friends in Fulham. It was a fantastic house, no doubt worth Pounds 84 trillion by now. But it was the "vomitorium" when I lived in it, that's true. If you stood on the carpet for more than five minutes you stuck to it. We lived there for three years and throughout that time nobody did any cleaning. Ever.
The first television work Andy and I did together was a spin-off of Top Gear called Motorworld. We did the series Extreme Machines and then we started to think about reviving Top Gear in a new format, with a track, special guests and the Stig -new boys at Repton were always called Stig -and we thrashed it out over a couple of years.
Then we went to see the controller of BBC2 (then Jane Root). She got it and said: "Go on, then, do it!" We couldn't believe how successful it was.
It was a partnership from the beginning, although Andy could do it all on his own.
He has no idea how good he is. No one works harder than him in the whole world. Richard Hammond, James May and I all just do what Andy tells us, really. We've got some real belters coming up this series. We just had a race back from Italy to see who would be the first to get a truffle back to London -me in a Bugatti Veyron and James in a private plane because he's just got his pilot's licence.
Andy lets me get on with the writing and he gets on with the "once it's been filmed stuff". It's a good relationship. He knows how to take my rantings about cars and make them work.
But he's not into cars himself. He claims that if you can get it round the Wandsworth bridge roundabout without crashing it must be all right. Top Gear is the biggest car show in the world now. He could borrow anything he wanted, any time. And the most expensive thing I've ever seen him in is a Mazda2.
...but here is an old article that a kind HH'er McMomo6 sourced - thank you McMomo6 and HH! 
Sunday Times 06/11/2005
The backroom boy who put Top Gear on top of the world
By: Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson reveals how a winning double act was forged outside a girls' school and in a grotty flat known as the vomitorium Andy is the world's hairiest man. The human carpet. Every time he goes for a swim in my pool I have to change all the filters. But I've known him since he was 12 years old. We were at school together.
I'm a couple of years older but he's extremely clever and kept jumping years and had damn near caught me up by the time I left. It's unusual to be friends with people younger than you at school but Andy is just incredibly funny. He has an astonishingly quick wit and we hit it off straight away.
We were extremely badly behaved. I know we were technically at Repton and I know our parents were paying fees to Repton, but we spent most of our time at Abbots Bromley, a girls' school 17A miles away. That was much more fun. I didn't study much and that was reflected in the fact that I got no qualifications, but Andy was one of those people who didn't really need to work and still did well. After school he went off to protest about, well, everything.
If there was a march he was on it. He strolled about with his Anti Nazi League outside the South African embassy. Then he decided that Margaret Thatcher was really good news. He was politically messed up.
We lost touch for a few years then met again at my 21st birthday party, which he gatecrashed, and we've been friends ever since. Andy was a regular visitor at a flat I shared with three friends in Fulham. It was a fantastic house, no doubt worth Pounds 84 trillion by now. But it was the "vomitorium" when I lived in it, that's true. If you stood on the carpet for more than five minutes you stuck to it. We lived there for three years and throughout that time nobody did any cleaning. Ever.
The first television work Andy and I did together was a spin-off of Top Gear called Motorworld. We did the series Extreme Machines and then we started to think about reviving Top Gear in a new format, with a track, special guests and the Stig -new boys at Repton were always called Stig -and we thrashed it out over a couple of years.
Then we went to see the controller of BBC2 (then Jane Root). She got it and said: "Go on, then, do it!" We couldn't believe how successful it was.
It was a partnership from the beginning, although Andy could do it all on his own.
He has no idea how good he is. No one works harder than him in the whole world. Richard Hammond, James May and I all just do what Andy tells us, really. We've got some real belters coming up this series. We just had a race back from Italy to see who would be the first to get a truffle back to London -me in a Bugatti Veyron and James in a private plane because he's just got his pilot's licence.
Andy lets me get on with the writing and he gets on with the "once it's been filmed stuff". It's a good relationship. He knows how to take my rantings about cars and make them work.
But he's not into cars himself. He claims that if you can get it round the Wandsworth bridge roundabout without crashing it must be all right. Top Gear is the biggest car show in the world now. He could borrow anything he wanted, any time. And the most expensive thing I've ever seen him in is a Mazda2.
- Eclair) 
;D I used to drink in pubs regularly that had similar carpets to the Vomitorium 
In fact, the only thing keeping me upright some nights was the fact that me feet were stuck to the floor with unmentionable stuff 
I held you, you felt me, I touched you, you kissed me.......
