Murray Walker: Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

1 A Proud Brummie

2 Tanks it is Then

3 A is for Advertising

4 Starting at Masius

5 Goodbye Mars, Hello Wheels

6 My Second Life

7 The Rough Stuff

8 Hell on Wheels

9 You Name It, I Did It

10 A View from the Commentary Box

11 My Wonderful World of Formula 1

12 This is My Life

13 Every One a Winner

14 I Am Very Much Mistaken

15 Out With a Bang

16 A Full-Time Passion

Plates

Career Appendix

Index

Photographic credits

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Like everyone, I left my mother’s womb without a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life yet here I am, nearly 80 years on, starting to write about it. Why? Who cares?

Years ago I gave myself the answer when I was gossiping at a motor-racing gathering with some great characters that included Rob Walker, friend, mentor and sponsor of the great Stirling Moss. Rob, one of nature’s gentlemen, was a member of the Johnnie Walker whisky family and didn’t exactly have to worry where his next pay cheque was coming from. I asked him when he was going to write his life story. He seemed amazed. ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, Murray. It’s one thing reminiscing with a bunch of chaps like this but I’d just dry up if I tried to put it all on paper.’

‘Rob,’ I said, ‘if you don’t do it and go to your grave with everything you’ve said and done still in your head, you’ll be committing a crime against motor racing. You must do it.’

So I believe I have memories and stories to tell that might interest and entertain those many people who haven’t had the good fortune to be where I have been. But how Rob felt is how I feel right now, staring glumly at my laptop. So much done and so much to say, but where to start and how to go about it? All sorts of things motivate me to try though, one of which is gratitude. I’ve been both lucky and privileged, having had a fabulous life full of richness, variety and satisfaction, with hardly any setbacks. From as far back as I can remember I’ve enjoyed almost every second of it, basically because I like people and there are usually plenty of them around whose company and friendship I can share.

Normally I’m not much of a chap for looking back; to me the present and future matter more than the past. Life is about making things happen – planning, organizing and getting it done – and I like it most when anticipation turns to realization. But I must be getting old (well I am old, though I certainly don’t feel it) because I now want to remind myself about who I’ve known, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen and what I’ve achieved. So I’m writing this book primarily for my own satisfaction, not for the money!

Many years ago in my youth I spent a long time trying to persuade a particular girl whom I was very fond of to marry me, but she finally refused because she said I was too interested in security. We went our different ways, but to this day I have an unashamed horror of being insecure – having a mortgage I can’t keep up with, not being able to pay the bills, wondering what would happen if I wasn’t earning, or whether the pension would be enough. I’ve a theory that there are two sorts of people in life: those who work for someone else for a salary and, hopefully, the greater security that goes with it, and others who work for themselves, take risks and can potentially do better, though not necessarily. Well, I’m one of the former. I can think of few really big ‘risk’ decisions I’ve made in terms of my career development, and luckily for me those I’ve had to make all paid off. I’ve largely reacted to situations rather than initiated them, but things seem to have worked out pretty well. I’d love to be a bright spark who ducks and dives and comes out ahead – someone like Bernie Ecclestone, whom I greatly admire – but I’d hate to be the one who ducks and dives and falls flat on his face. Better to be at ease with yourself than try to be something you are not.

‘He’s obsessed. If it hasn’t got an engine he’s not interested,’ says my long-suffering wife, Elizabeth. This is not entirely true, but I confess that the groaning bookshelves in my study do not include the works of Shakespeare, selections from Chaucer or too many volumes of poetry. Talking of Elizabeth, incidentally, you are not going to hear too much about her in this book. It’s not that I do not love her dearly or respect and admire her, because I do all of those things by the bucketful, it’s just that Elizabeth’s attitude is ‘He’s public, I’m private’. We met at a London party when I was 34 and although it took me far too long to get around to the subject of marriage I really was smitten at first sight. She is a tower of strength and has an infinitely better brain than me, but whereas I love the limelight and positively revel in it, her idea of purgatory is to have her photograph taken or to appear in public. She wouldn’t welcome me banging on about her qualities here either, so I’m not going to do so. It’s a marriage of opposites I suppose, but just like it says in the old song: ‘We’ve been together now for 40 years [and more] and it don’t seem a day too much. There ain’t a lady living in the land as I’d swap for me dear old Dutch.’ I wouldn’t have been able to do what I have done without her and she’s the one for me.

I have to confess that I’m a workaholic. I’m absolutely useless at relaxing. I get irritated, bored and restless. For about 20 years Elizabeth and I didn’t have a normal holiday because I spent all the time either at my job or doing broadcasts. I really enjoyed both my work and what was then my hobby – commentating. Saving for security mattered more to both of us than spending now and maybe suffering later, but neither of us regrets it for we certainly haven’t been deprived. It’s different now, because we go on cruises to magnificent places and, in my last commentary year, we had a fabulous trip to Australia, Thailand and Malaysia with, hopefully, more to come.

‘For God’s sake, don’t ever retire,’ Elizabeth used to say. ‘What on earth are you going to do with yourself?’ Throughout my life I’ve had to be doing something all the time, whether it’s writing, researching my next race, going to it, beavering round while I’m there, talking about it, or travelling home eagerly to await the next one. And that’s still the case now that I’ve retired from full-time commentating. I always reckoned that writing this book was going to take me a good 12 months, after which something else would turn up. It always does.

I’ve managed to go from one thing to the next with little difficulty and have always made the best of my lot rather than dreaming up impossible goals. From my beginnings in Birmingham, with the wonderful influence of my parents (had my Dad not been obsessed with motor cycles I may not have had half the life I have); my childhood, passing through several schools; my time in the army, in both war and peacetime, from which I returned far more of a man than before; and jobs with Dunlop – at the time one of Britain’s greatest companies – and two major advertising agencies with whom I became satisfyingly successful; not to mention all my wonderful experiences in motor sport: through it all I have never been unhappy with the way things have turned out, whatever the change of direction. It’s all been worthwhile, enjoyable and good experience for the rest of my life.

What about the broadcasting though? I thought you were never going to ask. It’s difficult to know where to begin because it has been going on for so long now. In fact, it could be a question of heredity. I often wonder whether I would have been so passionately interested in motor sport had I not been born and brought up with it, whether I would have attempted to race motor cycles had my father not been so successful, or whether I would ever have picked up a microphone had he not been as brilliant and gifted a speaker, writer and commentator. It’s impossible to tell, but it looks as though I am a chip off the old block and that’s very much all right by me; I cannot think of anyone I’d more aspire to be like than my father. After a long and distinguished racing career – of which more later – he became editor of the failing magazine Motor Cycling. He turned it round by sheer ability, hard work and personality, matched the sales of the previously dominant competitor, Motor Cycle, and also became a much-loved broadcaster.

It must be in the genes: all his siblings were ‘arty’ in some way. My Uncle Eric was Professor of South African history at Cambridge and Cape Town Universities, my Aunt Elsie was a gifted painter and all the rest were good communicators. In 1935 when Dad had given up racing, the BBC asked him to do their radio commentaries (there was no television back then) for the Isle of Man TT, the Ulster Grand Prix and other motor cycle events. He took to it like a duck to water. In sport there are people who compete at the top level and people who can talk about it entertainingly, but there aren’t many who can do both supremely well. In my day James Hunt could and, more recently, Martin Brundle can, but my father was unique. He made you feel as though you were there, with an infectious enthusiasm overlaid by total knowledge of his subject, and he was the BBC’s top man on the sport for 31 years.

Those that can, do; those that can’t, talk about it, so maybe that’s why I ended up where I did. I was reasonably good at trials riding on my 500T Norton – I won a Gold Medal in the 1949 International Six Days Trial at Llandrindod Wells and various other awards – but it was at racing that I wanted to excel. I’ve always believed that if you want to do anything enough you will succeed, so I couldn’t have wanted to race that badly because in 1949 I decided that I was far more likely to get somewhere in business than by trying to set the world’s racetracks alight. I retired at the peak of my inconsiderable form after I’d won a 250cc heat at Brands Hatch. Thereafter I confined my lack of two-wheeled talent to weekend commuting between Dunlop in Birmingham and my home in Enfield, on my Triumph Tiger 100.

At heart I think I’m a bit of a ham, for I’ve always enjoyed public speaking and was therefore delighted when I got my first chance at broadcasting – albeit on a public address system. The Midland Automobile Club asked me if I’d like to do the PA commentary on a combined car and bike meeting at their world-famous Shelsley Walsh hill-climb in Worcestershire. My father had been due to commentate for the BBC but had to drop out at the last moment, and was being replaced by the man who had been booked to do the PA. The Club asked my father, who’d caused the situation, to recommend someone to take his place.

‘Why not try the boy?’ he said. ‘I think he’ll be all right. Even if he isn’t it won’t be a disaster because he’ll only be talking to the spectators and they’ll be able to see what’s going on anyway.’

I suppose it was nepotism, but I wasn’t going to say no. You have to grasp your opportunities where they are offered in this world. And never mind the spectators: as far as I was concerned I was talking to one man at Shelsley – Jim Pestridge, the BBC producer. There was no way he was going to miss me for my voice was blasting out of a battery of loudspeakers right by his side. Now, the way you do a PA commentary and the way you do a radio commentary are quite different. With the former there’s no need to talk non-stop as your role is more to give information and announcements than to commentate on the action, which the punters could see for themselves. The hell with that! I thought. For Jim’s ears I submitted the poor devils on the hill to a non-stop barrage of facts, figures, hysteria and opinion. (Not much has changed!) And it worked. The next week Geoffrey Peck, one of the BBC’s senior sport producers, invited me to an audition to commentate at an imminent Goodwood car meeting. And I got the job.

One thing led to another. ‘We’d like you to do the second position, Stowe Corner, at Silverstone at the 1949 British Grand Prix,’ said Geoffrey after my successful Goodwood stint. Yes! I was on my way for what was to be a half-century-plus career doing what I wanted to do, travelling the world, going to wonderful places, working with stimulating people, satisfying my ego and, moreover, being paid for it!

For the next 13 years, in addition to my developing advertising career, I would be my Dad’s number two as the only long-term father-and-son sports commentary team the BBC has ever had. That was entirely to do with motor bikes but, as the years rolled by, I would also cover, for both BBC and ITV, anything to do with motor sport: motor-cycle trials, scrambles and races of every type and class, truck racing, power boats, touring car racing, sports cars, rallycross, Formula Ford, Formula 3, Formula 3000, Formula 5000 and, of course, the pinnacle of them all, Formula 1.

It was here that I developed a reputation of being an enormously excitable chap who used colourful phrases but didn’t always get things right in his enthusiasm to communicate what he was seeing. Inevitably people remember my amusing ‘mistakes’ more than the factual comment, but importantly they found them endearing – and that didn’t do me any harm! Not so for others though, given my entirely justified reputation for the ‘Murray Walker Kiss of Death’. I would confidently predict something was going to happen and, dramatically, it wouldn’t. At the 1986 Australian Grand Prix Keke Rosberg came up to me and asked if he could have a word – a highly unusual move for an F1 driver.

‘This is my last race, Murray. I’m retiring after it.’

‘I know that, Keke, I’ve been talking about it for ages.’

‘Well, this being my last race I’m particularly anxious to do well in it.’

‘Of course you are, good luck to you my friend.’

‘Murray, if I am doing well, for Christ’s sake don’t say anything about it!’

He was leading the race, I said he was going to win his last event, and he got a puncture and retired.

Similarly, in 1993 the BBC did some technical fiddling that allowed me to talk to Damon Hill while he was actually qualifying on the track. I wasn’t going to risk breaking his concentration while he was working but right at the end of the session he took pole position and on his run-down lap I shouted out, ‘FANTASTIC Damon! POLE POSITION! Well done! You must be delighted!’

‘Thanks, Murray,’ came Damon’s reply, which was going out to the BBC’s vast worldwide audience, but as he went on to say how happy he was and how much he was looking forward to starting from the front in the race, I was horrified to see the word PROST appear above HILL on my timing monitor. In my excitement I had failed to spot that Alain had passed the start just before the flag went out and could therefore still do a hot lap that would count. To my acute embarrassment The Professor beat Damon’s time by a tenth of a second and snatched pole position from his team-mate.

‘Damon,’ I said. ‘That was the good news. The bad news is that you are now starting second. Alain’s just beaten you.’

I conveniently cannot remember what Damon said in the car but he came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Murray, do something for me will you?’

‘Anything, Damon. What is it?’

‘In future just keep your mouth shut, will you?!’

Another Williams success, Portugal 1990, was even more embarrassing. After a brilliant victory ahead of Senna and Prost, Nigel Mansell made his way to the interview room standing in the back of an open car, waving to the crowd, and hit his forehead on a steel beam. He staggered in and sat down as the cameras started rolling. ‘Nigel,’ I said. ‘First of all, will you carefully and slowly take your cap off. You’ve got an enormous bump on your head. Can you let them see it? Right up there’ … and stuck my outstretched finger right into the middle of it. It’s a clip that’s been shown dozens of times and it never fails to raise a laugh. I hope my life story is even half as entertaining … and rather less painful.

CHAPTER ONE A Proud Brummie

People think of me primarily as a commentator and yes, to my continual amazement, I’ve been one for well over half a century. But for the first 59 years of my life it was very much a second string to my ‘proper job’ in advertising and to be honest I sort of blundered into it, partly out of desire and partly because of circumstances at the time. Did heredity play a part or was it just the environment in which I was brought up? It’s impossible to tell. But of one thing I’m sure. A lot of my characteristics come from my mother and maybe even more from my father.

My mother was the daughter of Harry Spratt, a well-to-do draper and gents outfitter (as they used to call them in the 1920s) who owned businesses in the market town of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. She had a pretty idyllic upbringing amidst a loving atmosphere in a fine home with servants, horses and stables, and she seems to have wanted for nothing. She was an extremely attractive woman, both physically and personally, had a very strong personality, was very much the belle of the local ball, very feminine and great fun. But she was also extremely bright, pragmatic and good with money, being a very nifty operator on the Stock Exchange. She created a wonderful home for me to grow up in, I loved her dearly and suspect that her influence resulted in me marrying as late as I did.

Into her life in the 1920s came Sergeant Graham William Walker, despatch rider, Royal Engineers, then convalescing at Leighton Buzzard after having been injured in France in World War One by a German shell. The son of William Walker of Aberdeen, Company Secretary of the Union Castle shipping line, and his wife Jessie, this young, attractive man (most attractive, even in hospital blues, according to my mother) was potty about motor bikes. He was also personable, had a highly developed sense of humour and couldn’t have done a dirty trick if he’d thought about it, so it’s not surprising my mother fell for him. His father, Grandpa Walker, I remember as a kind, gentle man with a fine white beard. His wife, who produced four sons and two daughters, was a dominant woman who ruled her family with a rod of iron and adored my father, her youngest son, probably because he was the only one who stood up to her. Sadly she seemed a rather unhappy woman, and after her husband’s death she spent most of her time wintering in Madeira and restlessly buying, moving into and then selling numerous expensive houses.

When my father set about wooing Elsie Spratt it wasn’t long before they were wed. And, the way these things happen, their marriage was followed by the arrival of 9lb 12oz Graeme Murray Walker on 10 October 1923. I was born at home at 214 Reddings Lane, Hall Green, Birmingham, for at that time my father was working there – so, like Nigel Mansell, I’m a Brummie and proud of it. I nearly killed my poor mother: at one point during her immensely long labour the doctor told my father, ‘They can’t both make it. One of them’s got to go. It’s the mother or the child. You’ve got to decide.’

‘No question,’ said Father, ‘it’s the child.’

Fortunately both of us survived, but my parents never tried for another. ‘I lost the blueprint,’ said my father. He subsequently told me that, while he certainly didn’t mind being a father, it had never been one of his great aims in life. My mother had always made the running and was keen to have another, but the fear of losing her had well and truly put him off.

I worshipped my father for he was a wonderful man. I called him ‘Daddy’ to his dying day, when I was in my thirties, but I frankly feel a bit of a twit doing so now. He was kind, generous, as honest as the day is long, a brilliant communicator and an immensely hard worker. Not a demonstrative man but a pillar of support if ever one was needed and never deviating in his loyalty to his beloved wife and son. But he was a terrible worrier. My mother used to say, ‘Tim worries if he hasn’t got something to worry about because if he hasn’t there must be something wrong.’ (‘Tim’ was her nickname for him – don’t ask me why.)

His passion was motor bikes. He joined the Royal Engineers as a despatch rider in World War One because of it and they dominated his life. But motor cycles were looked on very differently in those days. Incomes were vastly lower and so was the general standard of living: no central heating, no washing machines, no fridges, no fitted carpets; homes with telephones were highly unusual and television didn’t even exist. Cars were rare and for the wealthy. There were no interesting and exotic foreign foods, no wine-drinking and no credit cards. You were somebody if you had a motor bike and very much somebody if you had a motor bike and sidecar. So, as my Dad made an increasingly successful living through racing them and tuning them for others, I grew up in a very comfortable atmosphere dominated by motor bikes.

It was certainly an unusual childhood. Where the fathers of other children went to work in the morning, came home in the evening and were home at the weekends, mine was forever disappearing to race on the Continent, soon to reappear with some massive trophy, for he was very much one of the top men of his day. That being so you’d think I would either like or loathe what he did, but in truth I was pretty much unimpressed by it. When I think back on it I’m quite ashamed by my apathetic attitude, because he was a great man who achieved an enormous amount in what was far too short a life. He wore himself out editing a motor-cycle magazine and recruiting despatch riders for the army in World War Two, smoked too much and died in 1962 at only 66 years of age.

Conversely, my mother lived until she was a spirited 101. She had a home in the New Forest fairly near us and not long before she died I went to see her on one of my regular visits.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said, looking disapproving. ‘It’s time you had your hair cut.’

‘But I’ve hardly got any left, Mother.’

‘Well, what you have got is too long!’

So what did I do? I had it cut.

I’d give my eye teeth to have been with my father at an age of understanding and appreciation when he was racing but as a young and developing child I just didn’t realize how lucky I was. To the extent that I thought about it at all, racing motor cycles was what he did for a living. Whereas some boys’ fathers were plumbers and others were solicitors or doctors, mine raced motor cycles. But I thought it was great when, as a result of it, I went to places like Holland, Spain, Germany and France to be with him at one of the Grands Prix. None of my friends did that. All this was at a time when ‘The Continent’ was somewhere that very few people in Britain had ever been. France and Germany were more foreign then than Russia is now. People had neither the time nor the money to travel far from home. Very few had been out of the UK, hardly anyone ‘abroad’ spoke English and communications were comparatively archaic. There’s no doubt that travel broadens the mind and it surely broadened mine.

When I was born my father was a works rider for the fabled Norton motor-cycle company with its legendary Bracebridge Street address which, in truth, was anything but inspiring, being a typically drab 1920s Birmingham factory site. But because of its riders’ achievements, its image among racing enthusiasts was all-powerful. It was the start of my father’s career and his day was yet to come, but he won countless awards for Norton, including second place to the great Freddie Dixon, about whom volumes could be written, in the 1923 Isle of Man Sidecar TT. In its day the TT was more important than all the rest of the world’s races put together so this was quite a feat. In my study I have the actual piston from his side-valve engine. It makes me feel quite spooky when I look at it.