Mr Bean's Mclaren F1 Prang Lands Rowan Atkinson Motor Insurers with £1m Bill

A piece of Mr Bean-style driving by comedian Rowan Atkinson has cost his insurers nearly £1m.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder comic spun out of control while driving his Mclaren F1 supercar on a main road outside Peterborough in 2011.

The car, capable of hitting 240mph, ploughed into a tree.

Atkinson was treated for a fractured shoulderblade - and now his insurance company has a headache too.

Repairing the car cost £910,000 but footing the bill for getting the motor back on the road was not what the insurers initially intended to do. They had planned to replace it - despite only 64 F1s ever being manufactured.

But they got a shock last year when a Mclaren F1 went up for auction and fetched £3.5m.

That forced the firm into a change of heart and to cough up for the repair work. Mechanics at Mclaren spent a month totting up an estimate.

Atkinson declared his delight at getting back behind the wheel of his car, which he bought with earnings from the lucrative first Mr Bean film.

Getting back behind the wheel was like "putting on a familiar sweater", he said.

"I'm not a collector, I don't like the 'toy cupboard syndrome' because that causes so many cars to evaporate," he said. "The McLaren is just so usable it's a crime not to use it."

The F1 can go from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds and its 6.2 litre engine has a top speed three times higher than the UK speed limit.

Atkinson's prang was not the first time he has come to grief in his powerful car. In 1999 his vehicle was involved in a collision with a Mini Metro.

The comic, 58, holds the record lap time on BBC's Top Gear for Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. He completed the 1.75-mile circuit in just 1 min 42.2 sec.