Читать книгу Niall Mackenzie: The Autobiography - Stuart Barker - Страница 9

The aim for 1984 was to win the 250cc British title on the 250 Armstrong with the Austrian Rotax engine and to win the 350cc British championship on the 350 machine that housed Armstrong’s own in-line twin cylinder engine.

The downside of those commitments was that I would have to give up racing my beloved RD350LC that I had raced since the beginning of my career. I didn’t mind too much as the Pro-Am series had achieved its purpose as far as I was concerned, by getting my name known, and it was on the slide anyway. It had run its course, but the extra prize money would have been useful because it had become pretty easy money for me. It was great fun too but I needed to be more out of my depth again if I was to keep improving my riding and I knew I still had a long way to go in that department. Because Armstrong paid me £6000 for the ‘84 season I stopped working in the winter to supplement my racing – and I haven’t had a proper job since!

As well as contesting the British championships in 1984, I also took part in my first ever road race at the North West 200 in Northern Ireland. The organisers approached me about racing there and I had a spare weekend in the calendar so I thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t know much about the course but I’d heard that it wasn’t as dangerous as some of the other pure roads circuits even though the lap record averaged around 115mph. It’s mostly long straights and slow corners which isn’t as bad as having lots of fast corners lined with trees.

Although I enjoyed the NW200, I was never interested in doing the Isle of Man TT. I thought it was a great event but it just didn’t appeal to me as a rider. It’s not because it was dangerous because at that point in my career I honestly didn’t care about getting hurt – I never thought it would happen to me. It’s just that I wanted to get into GPs and I knew the TT wasn’t the way to go about it.

But the North West was great fun, or at least it was once the racing began as I almost spent the whole weekend in a police cell! I was walking down the street in Portrush when 1 spotted the guys from Dunlop tyres through the glass front of a restaurant. Instinctively, I dropped my trousers and pants and gave the boys a big moonie and then the whole world went dark. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but it turns out that the local Royal Ulster Constabulary police saw me mooning, threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into the back of a police car. I thought it was the Ku-Klux-Klan or something, until I got to the station. Eventually, the Dunlop boys came down (after wetting themselves laughing) and vouched for my character so I was released in time for the races.

I remember being really bored in practice because there was too much time to think on those long straights. It was getting tedious just holding the throttle to the stop and going in a straight line. But apart from being boring, it also gave me too much time to think about things that could go wrong. What would happen if the gearbox seized? What would happen if the engine seized and I couldn’t get the clutch in? I was thinking about all that sort of stuff in practice but the actual races were great fun, slipstreaming all the other riders for miles, flat out. I treated the course like a big, short circuit because I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know how you were supposed to ride a pure road race properly and I suppose I still don’t but I did all right, finishing second to Kevin Mitchell in the wet 350cc race then coming home fifth in the dry 250cc event. I had been in second place and was dicing with Steve Cull but landed in a hedge on the last lap and remounted for fifth.

But the best thing about the North West was the atmosphere. We practised in the evenings then we all went out and got drunk and slept in late in the mornings. It was brilliant and the Irish hospitality and the fans were just fantastic; everybody bought me drinks from the moment I arrived!

I got to know the king of all road racers, Joey Dunlop, that year too but it was at Snetterton and not at the North West. He was riding Honda’s new RS250 and we had a great battle until I fell on the last lap. Our paths didn’t cross very often but I had a few pints with him over the years and I think we had a mutual respect for each other. I certainly had huge respect for him.

It may have been my fourth year of racing in 1984 but I was still crashing quite a lot and we had some reliability problems with the Armstrong, which meant we didn’t get the results we wanted in the 250 class. I still wasn’t too hot on setting bikes up either, which didn’t help matters. But even though I was crashing, I never seemed to get hurt and I didn’t really miss any races because of injury right up until 1986.

Looking back, the crowds were very poor at British championship meetings in 1984 but I hadn’t known any different so I didn’t particularly notice at the time. As far as I was concerned, winning a British title was another step forwards and that’s all I was thinking about. One figure that was banded about was that for every hundred people that came to see a race in 1980, only twenty-eight were coming in 1984. But there was a lot of unemployment and people didn’t have a lot of cash to spend on leisure pursuits like going to bike races. It shows how well the sport is doing in the UK now though with crowds of up to twenty thousand regularly turning out for British Superbike meetings.

However, one of the main reasons I have to remember 1984 is because I competed in my first Grand Prix at Silverstone on 5 August. The whole weekend was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and I went from highs to lows more times than I can remember. When I showed up at the circuit, I didn’t even have an entry to race so I sat in the organisers’ office all day and finally got an entry at the last minute when a foreign rider didn’t turn up. Back then, if riders didn’t show by 8pm on Thursday night they were disqualified so that was how I got my entry and that alone felt like winning the race for me. It meant I was actually going to be on the same grid as my heroes like Carlos Lavado, Martin Wimmer and Christian Sarron. I knew GPs were where I wanted to be, especially 500 GPs, but I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. All I could think was that if I kept telling myself enough times that it would happen, then it might just come true.

As well as being my first Grand Prix, it was also my first time at Silverstone so I had to learn the track as well. I remember being amazed that I was on the same track as the big boys but I had to force myself to concentrate and do the best job I could. I qualified for the race which I felt was an achievement in itself but joy soon turned to despair as I finished the race twenty-eighth and dead last. It was the one and only time in my twenty-year career that I finished last and I was absolutely gutted.

I knew the bike wasn’t nearly as fast as the others out there, and I was getting passed a lot on the straights. It didn’t help that Silverstone was such a fast track either but it was still demoralising even if being last wasn’t completely my fault.

After the British GP, I got an entry for the Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp on 12 August but I had to fund the trip myself as Armstrong would only supply the bikes but wouldn’t pay for the trip. It did my confidence a power of good though because I rode much better there than I did at the British GP. The circuit’s not so fast for one thing and I just liked the layout of the place. I qualified in twenty-fourth place and was on the pace in the race but my bike broke down after twenty-one of the twenty-five laps. Still, I had laid to rest the Silverstone demons by turning in a half decent performance and at least I didn’t finish last again.

The last Grand Prix of the year was at Mugello in Italy so me and my mechanic decided to drive down from the Swedish GP to Italy and try to get an entry. Bad move. Every racer had turned up so I was refused an entry, which meant we’d wasted all the time, money and effort it had taken to drive there. Still, at least it was a little warmer.

The riders’ representative at the event, Mike Trimby, just looked at me as if I was stupid (which I was) and couldn’t believe I had travelled all that way without an entry. It was a ridiculous situation and I was really upset. Then to make matters worse, I was plagued with a medical complaint below the belt that had been quietly incubating since the British GP weekend and decided to flare up while I was already at my lowest ebb. I suppose it was punishment for being a naughty boy.

I tried to solve the problem by dousing my privates with Old Spice but it was a pretty itchy trip back to England all the same. And when I did get back and went for a consolatory pint, I saw fellow racer Kenny Irons who gave me a knowing look that told me he was suffering with the same problem. After all, we had both liaised with the same girl – though on separate occasions I hasten to add!

When you ride in GPs, you realise just how much faster all the riders are compared to the guys back home in the UK. The plus side of that is that when you get back to racing at home you realise you can push that much harder than everyone else.

As a result of this new-found confidence, I won my first national title – the Circuit Promoters 350cc British Championship. Although the 350cc class wasn’t as prestigious as the 250 series, it was still a national title and proved I was still getting better and moving forward which was my main aim.

I didn’t have such good fortune in the 250cc class partly because I did a bit of crashing and partly because we were tuning the bike so much to make it competitive that it broke down too often. But strangely enough, my best result of the season, and in fact the best result of my career to date came on the 250cc machine at the Super Prestigio race at Calafat in Spain at the end of the year. Many of the top 250cc Grand Prix riders were entered including Sito Pons, Martin Wimmer, Juan Garriga and Carlos Cardus but I won the three-leg 250 event overall with a win and two seconds. The track was tight and twisty unlike Silverstone’s fast, flowing layout, which I liked and it also suited the Armstrong.

Unknown to me at the time, my performance pretty much ensured I would get a factory Grand Prix ride with Armstrong the following year. Former GP racer and multiple TT winner Chas Mortimer was to manage the Armstrong effort in 1985 and he had a big influence over my career over the next few years, helping me to improve my riding and making me more streetwise too. He asked me before the last leg in Calafat what I was planning to do in the race. When I said ‘Finish second and take the overall win’ he realised I had finally matured from the crash-happy win or bust merchant he had seen me as and I think that persuaded him to sign me for ‘85.

Speaking of Armstrong, I have a confession to make regarding their three-cylinder, carbon-fibre-framed 500cc project bike. As I said before, the 500 was the real reason why the firm was getting money from the government and because of that, there was a lot of pressure to debut the bike before it was ready. I wheeled it out into the pit lane at Donington in 1984 and posed before the TV cameras. I did actually ride the bike in practice but there was no way it was going to be competitive in the race so we actually stuck yellow number plates (the designated colour for the 500 class) on the 250cc machine and raced that! Even the TV commentators were fooled into thinking it was the 500.

I did a few laps at Brands again at the end of the season on the 500 and that was the last time it was run. It’s in a shed somewhere just outside Preston these days. Shame really, because it was a fantastic looking motorcycle and technically very interesting. Incidentally, it was designed and built by Barry Hart who was the guy who’d built the bike for the 1980 movie Silver Dream Racer starring David Essex.

Anyway, Armstrong’s money was limited after 1984 but they had won a big army contract to make bikes so they decided to rearrange their racing set-up and handed over the team to the owners of the Silverstone racing circuit. The team was then called the Silverstone Armstrong GP Team, and Armstrong supplied the bikes and spares while letting Silverstone run the team and cover costs. The circuit put up about £25,000 which was a lot back then and they also supplied premises for the team so it was a good arrangement. The idea was to contest a full season of 250cc Grands Prix and fit in whatever British championship rounds we could as well on both the 250 and 350cc Armstrongs.

The team’s other sponsor, Dalmac, was a Scottish plant hire firm run by Ali McGregor, Willie Dalrymple and Jock Gibb – the Scottish plant hire Mafia, as we used to call them. They were the best sponsors to have because win, lose or draw, they always insisted we let our hair down on a Sunday night and went out for a few drinks. Well, with those boys it was usually more than a few and dancing on tables was normally compulsory too. Suffice to say there wasn’t much time for feeling depressed on a Sunday night if I’d had a bad result.

My team-mate was to be Donnie McLeod who had gone well in 250 GPs on a private Yamaha. He was also a fellow Scot so I knew we’d be able to have a few laughs along the way and I couldn’t wait to do more GPs as I loved all the travelling.

Everything was a laugh apart from the time I spent on the bike, which I took very seriously. I kept thinking I was going to be ‘found out’ by someone. I mean, I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to play on bikes and have a carry on. I was always waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say ‘Right, the game’s up mate. Time to go back to a real job. We know what you’ve been up to.’ All the way through my career I thought I was going to be rumbled. Even when I put my serious head on to ride the bike, I was still doing it because I wanted to go faster than everyone else so even that didn’t feel like work.

The first Grand Prix in 1985 was the South African at Kyalami and I was twenty-fourth from twenty-eight which wasn’t the best start to the season. I thought I was doing all right in the race because I was with some pretty good riders but then Freddie Spencer (who went on to win both the 250 and 500 titles that year) came past me about half way through the race. I thought ‘Bloody hell, he must have had a bad start’ but then Anton Mang and Mario Rademeyer came past too and it was only then that I realised I was actually being lapped! It really demoralised me. There were no blue flags to let me know I was being lapped and I started getting depressed in the remaining laps but again, it was a really fast circuit so I shouldn’t have let it get to me so much.

At Kyalami, the Armstrong was giving away about 15-20mph to the top bikes, which is a hell of a lot over a full race distance.

I was also in a great deal of pain because of my pale Scottish complexion. I had gone from a freezing Scottish winter into thirty-five degrees of sub-tropical heat in South Africa and my pale blue skin just couldn’t take it. As Billy Connolly says, it took me a while in the sun to go from blue to white and then I just seemed to go lobster red in a matter of minutes. Come race day, I could hardly get my leathers on because of the pain of the sunburn and I was shedding skin like a snake all over the garage floor. I could probably have had an extra set of leathers made out of my own skin! Real Mackenzie reps!

Again, I was out of my depth racing against the GP stars just as I had been when I started racing in British championships but I still knew it was the only way to really improve my riding. But at the next race in Jarama, it started to pay off because I qualified in tenth place, by far my best performance in a GP to date. Then the bike broke after just fourteen laps in the race itself so it was disappointment time again.

At that stage in my career, neither the team members nor I were technically minded enough to have debriefings after a race so we just accepted our result, whatever it was, and packed up the kit. We’d have a quick bitch and a moan then just go for a beer. I was still too young and happy about life to let it get me down and be miserable. I always tried to keep a smile on my face, even when there wasn’t a lot of personal space to be had in the little caravan I shared with my team-mate Donnie McLeod.

I suppose to some people, Donnie could be quite a difficult person to get on with but I tend to get on with most people so we never had any real problems. The pair of us lived in that little caravan for the best part of two years and never had a proper argument so that must say something. He kept his cards fairly close to his chest but he was a level-headed person and very serious at the racetrack although he liked to have a few beers when the racing was over.

But when I first got to know him he would piss me off because he’d finish fifth in a GP and I’d say ‘Fantastic result mate’ but he’d just moan that it wasn’t good enough. I’d have been ecstatic at getting fifth in a GP back then but as I got older, I started thinking like Donnie and was never happy with my results either, always thinking I could have done better so now I know what he meant.

I learnt a lot from Donnie because I was young and daft when we met and I was still treating racing as a bit of a laugh. He was a lot more experienced and serious about his racing and some of that rubbed off on me.

I had to watch my step in the caravan though as Donnie lived life by the clock and he’d have strict routines such as eating lunch at exactly twelve noon and stuff like that. He’d also do things like cut a tomato in half, eat one half, then wrap the other neatly in silver foil and put it back in the fridge. He was very particular about those sorts of things. In the early days, I’d just waltz into the caravan and eat whatever was in the fridge, which used to really annoy him. But I soon realised that I wasn’t allowed to eat his half tomato or his quarter egg because he had very specific plans for them and they didn’t involve me!

However once I knew what the rules and boundaries were we became best mates. It just meant I had to find another food source. Donnie’s now managing a glass fibre company back in Scotland and he lectured at Napier University in Edinburgh for a while too. He’s a smart bloke. I respected him as a rider just as I respected Alan Carter who was another Brit doing 250 GPs. But I figured that if I was beating Alan in the Pro-Am series the year before then the only reason he and Donnie were going so well in GPs was because they were more experienced than me. I thought that once I’d gained more experience I’d be able to beat them.

I’ve never really been one to suffer from negative thoughts; there were a few times when I thought maybe I should have been doing something else but usually I looked at things in a positive manner and worked hard at improving my weaknesses. Some riders are beaten before they get to the start line because their thinking is just so negative.

I didn’t know too many people when I first started on the GP circuit. But I hung around with Alan and Donnie and I soon got to know people like Ron Haslam, Wayne Gardner and Rob McElnea who had all raced in the UK at the same time as me so the paddock social scene became quite good.

Before the first GP in South Africa, a group of us went on a safari, which was awesome, not least because my hero Randy Mamola came along too. Just being in the same paddock as Randy was an honour and there I was on safari with him! I must admit I was a bit star-struck with it all.

We had a lot of non-finishes in 1985 and when the bike did keep going, it was pretty slow. Having said that, we did manage to score quite a few top fifteen places which these days would net a rider some decent points. Back then though, points only went down to tenth place so we weren’t rewarded for our efforts.

As I said before, the good thing about doing GPs was coming back to race in the UK because I felt so much more confident than before. I was right up there with Donnie and Alan Carter who were the best 250 riders in Britain at the time and I could pretty much beat anyone else on the scene. I put in just as much effort when I raced in the UK because I wanted to be as impressive as possible to get noticed and I tried to break the lap record wherever I went.

It was a two way thing because when you compete in GPs, you’re more confident when you get back home, then when you win at home by a distance, you feel more confident about the next GP. One big difference was the time actually spent on a bike at a GP meeting; it was far more than at a domestic event, which really helped bring my riding along. The other thing is that you’re pushed to the limit. You see riders doing things that you don’t think are possible and you wouldn’t attempt if you hadn’t seen them being done. That sort of thing really stretches you as a rider.

Consistency is another thing that marks out the top foreign riders from some of the more erratic racers at home. I learned to have markers at every point on the circuit so I was accelerating, braking and cornering at exactly the same points, lap after lap after lap. For me, racing was never a seat-of-the-pants affair like it was for some guys – it was all about being precise. It was like doing a connect-the-dot puzzle and just joining up all the points.

A lot of people over the years have commented on the fact that I seem to ride very smoothly and I suppose I did work at that, even if I didn’t quite realise it. I had always admired Eddie Lawson and they don’t come much smoother than ‘Steady Eddie.’ Having said that, he could still hang it out with the best of them when he wanted to. Eddie was the only guy in 500s that I felt I could model myself on since I didn’t think I could ride loose and sideways like Mamola or Spencer because I didn’t come from a dirt bike background as they did. I had never ridden a Superbike either, which helps to develop a loose style. Just look at Jamie Whitham and Chris Walker when they’re riding.

Some riders are happy to stick with 250s and I feel that I could have done well on them if I’d stuck with them. But I always wanted to move to 500s – it was another challenge and another step upwards.

Anyway, at the Austrian GP in June, I finished fourteenth beating both Donnie McLeod and Alan Carter for the first time. It was really nice to finish because we’d had another three non-finishes in the last three GPs in Spain, Germany and Italy. It was also a few more quid in my pocket because there was prize money for all finishers. A win back then was worth about £3000 in the 250 class and about £6000 in the 500s but I was still a long way off that kind of cash. It’s a different system now as the team gets the prize money and they do with it what they will. But if a team now has two 500 riders having a good finish, they’ll get around £25,000.

In the next four GPs I scored a sixteenth in Yugoslavia, fourteenth in Holland, had another DNF in Belgium and another fourteenth in France, then it was time for the big one – the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Obviously it was a big race for us, especially since my team was sponsored by the circuit we would be racing on! Talk about pressure. It was really wet for the race and I guess the pressure must have got to me because I only lasted four laps until I crashed out. Alan Carter, was leading the race by miles but then he fell off too at exactly the same spot as I did. It was cruel for both of us because I had been running in the top ten when I fell and Alan looked on for a home win.

At the next round in Sweden however, I managed to score my first ever point in Grand Prix racing with tenth place. It turned out to be my only point of the year, and was scant reward for all the hard work and travelling we had put in. But it was a point at last and meant I featured in the final championship results, even though I was in twenty-eighth and last equal place with none other than Joey Dunlop. Joey had scored his solitary point by finishing tenth in a one-off ride at that wet British GP, showing he wasn’t just a pure road specialist.

The 250 GP class had an incredible depth of field so there were some very good riders finishing between tenth place and twentieth places unlike the 500 class which had just a few brilliant riders up front and many lesser ones down the field. I knew I was riding quite well and it was a learning year for me so I couldn’t be too disappointed with myself. Of course, I would have liked more points but the bike was outclassed and I was still relatively inexperienced at GP level.

While the bike may have been slow, the Silver-stone Armstrong squad had a pretty civilised set-up in the paddock. We had a new truck for the bikes, spares and tools and the little caravan to stay in when we were at the circuit. No one had big flashy motor homes back then so we didn’t look too out of place.

The mechanics would often pick up female hitch-hikers in the truck on the way to circuits and they’d help cook and clean all weekend. At least that’s what they said they were all doing when they disappeared into the van for hours on end. The rest of us called those girls skunks because they always had blonde streaks and always smelled. Of course, Donnie and I had no interest in such shameful extra curricular activities. We were too busy with the racing.

I remember there was always a big fight for the power points in the paddock because there were so few. Paddocks were pretty basic up until about 1987 and even water wasn’t readily available. We desperately needed a power point because we had no generator so we had lots of fights, pulling other peoples’ plugs out and plugging ours in! But the paddock was more friendly back then and everyone socialised and had barbecues unlike now when riders just lock themselves away.

Donnie and I would go to all the European races in the car with Chas Mortimer, the team manager, while the mechanics drove the van to the races. We only flew to the far off, non-European races but I quite liked driving anyway; it was a real adventure for a little lad from Fankerton who hadn’t seen much of the world.

I didn’t do so well on the food front in the paddock though. After being apprehended nicking Donnie’s carefully halved tomatoes, I got a notion in my head that if I didn’t eat at all, I’d be much lighter and so the bike would go faster. It was a new version of the Mackenzie fitness regime that had started with the duffel coat sauna technique. This time, I completely stopped eating and just lived on slimming drinks until I lost so much weight that I became really ill and developed pneumonia. It sounds really stupid now but we didn’t have any dieticians to advise us back then and all I thought about was the power to weight ratio of myself and the bike. What was the point of fighting to make the bike lighter when I could just lose weight myself? I had developed a dark shadow over my lungs by the time I got to Mugello in Italy so Dr Costa, the GP doctor, X-rayed me, told me I had pneumonia, put me on a course of antibiotics and told me that I would have to start eating again. Pretty sound advice, I suppose.

Still, whenever I returned from the GPs to race in the UK in 1985, I won just about everything I entered. In the Circuit Promoters 350cc Championship, for example, I won every round that I raced in except one when I finished second. That was enough to give me the title for the second year running with one round still to go, even though I had missed some rounds because I was racing abroad.

I won the 250cc British Championship as well for the first time in 1985 but I had to employ some cunning to make sure I did. The title was between Alan Carter and myself and there were only six points between us when we went to the final round at Oulton Park. There were two races but basically we just had to beat each other and ignore everyone else. In the first leg on the Saturday, it was raining and Carter was leading me when I fell off. I realised immediately that he didn’t know I had crashed so I hid my bike and myself behind the hay bales before he came round on the next lap. The theory was that if he didn’t know I had crashed, he might still think I was right behind him and be pressured into making a mistake. If he saw me with my crashed bike, he could easily have slackened the pace and cruised round to victory. So he came back round and I hid there watching him and sure enough, within three or four laps he slid off! It worked perfectly. All’s fair in love, war and bike racing. I

remember after the race, Scottish bike racing journalist Norrie Whyte said to me: ‘Aye, ye tried tae gee the championship tae Carter and he gave ye it right back!’

I told Alan Carter what I had done because we were good mates and he just laughed about it. On the Sunday, I needed to finish third in the final race to win the title and I actually finished second to my team-mate Donnie McLeod with Carter third, so I won the championship fair and square-ish.

Racing aside, 1985 was a year that marked another major event in my life as that was when I met my future wife, Jan Burtenshaw (I think she only married me to get rid of her surname!) even though it was under pretty strange circumstances. She was working as secretary to Robert Fearnall at Donington Park and I was a very good friend of his. I first met him in 1982 and ever since then he has helped me as a genuine friend. Every year he did something major to help me whether it was with financial advice or just really useful information about what was going on with racing at the circuits. We’d meet up now and again and exchange info; I’d tell him all about what was happening in racing with teams and sponsors and he’d fill me in with what was happening with the promoters and organisers.

Because we were good friends, Robert always asked me to phone him to let him know how I’d done in every race and when he wasn’t in, his new secretary called Jan answered the phone. We were both twenty-four at the time and I remember thinking she sounded really nice on the phone but I’d been caught out with that old trap a few times so I didn’t want to pre-judge her. After all, she might have been a bit rough! Anyway, I got chatting to her each time I called and said ‘Tell Robert I won again’ but I don’t know if it impressed her. I suspect not. Then on one occasion Robert said he and Jan were travelling up to the Ingliston circuit near Edinburgh (it’s just a small, armco-lined track more like a Go-Kart track) and asked if we wanted to meet up and have a chat. I was very interested to see what this Jan looked like so me and my best mate Wullie McKay decided we’d go along and have a look from a distance without actually introducing ourselves. I watched her walking around and thought she looked all right so we went up and introduced ourselves. I liked what I saw and I met her again at some of the British meetings towards the end of the year and we went out on a date.

I still can’t believe what a plonker I was on that date. I was wearing horrible clothes (including a really naff Renault jumper as Jan still reminds me) which I got free from sponsors and I remember actually telling Jan that I had washed my hair especially thinking that would impress her. What a nobber! I may have won the 350cc championship that day but I was still obviously still lacking in the ‘What women want to hear’ department. The other thing I thought would impress her was having my Rod Stewart tape on in my white Ford Fiesta XR2 but I don’t think that quite did the trick either. Sorry Rod. And to make things worse, I took her to a hotel called The Rodney! If only I’d seen Only Fools and Horses…

Anyway, it can’t have been that bad because we met up again a few times afterwards but it was a bumpy ride for those first few months. I’d never really had a proper girlfriend before and I didn’t know how to act so I appeared really selfish. It wasn’t intentional, but I’d only make one cup of tea or one sandwich when we were together because I’d been so used to fending for myself and I forgot that I was supposed to make two of everything! I was completely clueless.

Another big mistake was chatting up other girls at parties when Jan was there, which didn’t go down too well but again, it was just what I had always done and I didn’t know any differently. As a consequence of this, Jan dumped me several times but we always made up and saw each other again which is surprising really because her mum Bet had always told her never to get involved with anyone in the army or with a Scotsman! But Bet and her husband Derek seemed to like me straight away when we met so I think her mum changed her mind.

All in all, 1985 was a pretty good year for me. I’d seen a bit of the world, met my future wife and improved massively as a rider. But my biggest disappointment was not meeting Andrew Ridgeley from Wham!

He was flirting with car racing at the time and Jan knew him through her job at Donington Park. So at the end of 1985, I was invited to a Christmas bash in Ashby de la Zouch (where I now live) and Ridgeley was going to be there too.

Problem was, by the time Andrew showed up, I was completely drunk and everything was just a blur so all I can remember of Andrew Ridgeley was a big sheepskin jacket. I was gutted the next day when I realised I had messed up my chance to meet a real, live pop star.

Incidentally, I messed up again in 2001 when I did a charity Go-Kart race with Neil Primrose, the drummer from Travis. They’re my favourite band at the moment and I would love to have spoken with him but no one told me who he was and I didn’t recognise him! Still, Simon Le Bon came to the Cadbury’s Boost Yamaha team launch in 1996 along with his supermodel wife Yasmin so at least I’ve met one decent pop star!

The other major mess-up I made at the end of ‘85 was losing my driving licence for drink driving in Edinburgh. Drink driving wasn’t the big social issue back then as it is now so I stupidly decided to drive back home from Edinburgh after attending an awards ceremony. I was stopped by the police and lost my licence for a year – again.

But apart from the Andrew Ridgeley disaster and my run-in with the law, things had gone well in 1985 though what I didn’t know back then was that my big break was just around the corner. Well, two big breaks actually. One was to my left leg and the other was the chance to ride a 500 in the British Grand Prix.