Jamie Whitham recalls 'freaky' encounter with hero doctor at Lee Johnston's hospital bedside who revealed NI racer 'died twice' after North West 200 crash in 2023

Northern Ireland’s Johnston sustained life-threatening injuries in a crash during qualifying at the event in 2023, when he came off at Church Corner on his Ashcourt Racing Yamaha Supersport machine.

Johnston was airlifted to hospital and ultimately survived the incident, but it was touch and go for the NW200 and Isle of Man TT winner, who “died twice” on his way to hospital in the Air Ambulance.

Whitham, who is good friends with Johnston, and fellow BSB pundit Matt Roberts decided to fly over to Northern Ireland to visit the stricken racer in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

Speaking when Fermanagh man Johnston was a guest on The Outside Line podcast, which Whitham co-hosts with commentator Jack Burnicle, Whitham revealed a fascinating encounter at Johnston’s bedside with the on-call doctor who treated him as he was being airlifted to hospital.

“He fell off at the North West,” Whitham said. “I know the North West, I've ridden there myself. And we, me and Matt Roberts, went to see him. So we flew over to see him at the Royal Victoria in Belfast.

“He was just about out of intensive care and was in a high dependency unit and still in quite a bad way. We were in there chatting with him and everything’s great, and he couldn’t remember much about the accident.

“Then this woman, a nice woman in normal civilian clothes, just walks in, sits down, pulls a chair up and sits right beside him at the right-hand side of his bed.

“She took over the talking and asked him how he was feeling, and said, ‘you weren’t like this the last time I saw you’.

“So we’re listening, just a weird thing, and we’re thinking ‘is she maybe a relative or something?’ But it turns out she was the doctor on call on the helicopter, there’s only one for the Northern Ireland area – the Air Ambulance – and she’s the doctor on call on the ambulance.”

Whitham explains how the doctor revealed Johnston required “several litres of blood” in the helicopter, describing him as a “lucky lad”.

“They got a call to go to the North West because there’d been a big accident and her first contact with Lee, he’s got a screen around him, he’s in the road and he’s in a bad way,” Whitham added. “She said, ‘yeah, you were a lucky lad that day’, and he said, ‘yeah I know, thank you’.

“She said, ‘no, no, no – you died twice on the way to the hospital and we had to give you several litres of blood’. She said they’d only just got the money to put the machine in the helicopter a year ago to condition the blood, which goes off really quick.

“She said, ‘if you hadn’t had that, you were done’. And then she said, ‘and we got another call at the same time which we figured was just a bit less serious, so we left that to go to you, so if we'd gone to him (the other injured person) first, you’re done’.

“There were four or five ways he would’ve been finished if it just hadn’t worked out, and she was one of them.

“Two hours later we were outside looking for an Uber to get us back to the airport and she comes past, the same doctor, asks where we’re going and says, ‘get in’.

“She’s taking us back to the airport, telling us about this and that, and she stopped and we got out, and she drove away.

“It was like an angel, and Matt said, ‘do you think her car’s going to disappear into thin air!’

“It was just freaky and it was a hell of a trip that.”

Johnston eventually returned to racing and competed at the Classic TT in 2024, finishing on the podium in the Lightweight 250cc race.

He competed in the British Supersport Championship this year after deciding against returning to road racing for the time being.