by Tom Rubython
She told people that Hunt’s enforced immobility meant he couldn’t work off his frustrations physically. He also began to suffer from chronic insomnia exaggerated by the heat of Spain. The insomnia, a new experience for him, would afflict him for the rest of his life.
To relieve the boredom, he drank through the day and night and was continually high on marijuana. As he withdrew into himself, Jane Birbeck’s life began to fall apart. They both believed a baby would rescue them, but that baby was destined never to come.
But there had been some bright spots: Hunt had very successfully started a broadcasting career with the BBC, launching a second career after racing. But, when the season ended, melancholy set in once again, as did the bleak British winter.
By the end of the year, they were spending most of their time at the London house and were thoroughly miserable. Donaldson described their domestic situation as “far from blissful.” Just before Christmas, Birbeck had yet another miscarriage. As she said later: “At Christmastime, we couldn’t have been more depressed. The whole of 1980 was a wretched year.”
It would get worse before it got better.
CHAPTER 38
Fleetwood Mac, the BBC and all that 1980
A television great emerges
James Hunt predicted exactly when he would retire and also predicted that there would be a second act to his career, saying: “As [motor racing] winds down, I’ll wind myself into something else.” And that is exactly what happened.
From that point of view, the timing of his retirement proved to be perfect. Television sport was in its infancy in the mid-1970s and Formula One was almost an afterthought in British schedules. But that was about to change, and the catalyst for the change had been Hunt himself. His world championship victory at the Japanese Grand Prix in Mount Fuji in 1976 had awakened interest in the sport around the world. Like every other broadcaster, the BBC had carried it live and had cleared the schedule to do so. It had been rewarded with huge ratings. The ratings woke up BBC bosses to the potential of the sport and, for the first time, they took it seriously. So 1976 was a big watershed globally, when Formula One and television finally found each other. Before that, the BBC only covered a few races a season, cherry-picking the British, Monaco, Italian and, sometimes, Belgian Grand Prix races.
Raymond Baxter was the BBC’s motor racing commentator at the time. But Baxter was more famous for presenting a science programme called ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and he didn’t really know much about Formula One. In truth, Baxter’s racing programmes weren’t very good, as he sometimes only had silent pictures to commentate on and no source of oral information.
Murray Walker says now: “It wasn’t Raymond’s fault because he sat in the presenter’s seat doing the best job he could in circumstances beyond his and everybody else’s control.” Nevertheless, as Walker points out, the black and white images and Baxter’s distinguished tones made the programmes absolutely memorable in their own way.
In 1976, a producer called Jonathan Martin oversaw the BBC’s motor racing coverage. Martin, who at the time edited ‘Sportsnight’ and ‘Match of the Day’ would later be responsible for producing the highly successful ‘Ski Sunday’ programme.
After the Mount Fuji ratings success, Martin got the green light for a regular Sunday evening programme he called ‘Grand Prix’. ‘Grand Prix’ was a 30-minute highlights programme which was broadcast on BBC 2 at 9:30pm after every Formula One race from 1977 onwards. The initial budget was minuscule and Martin managed to secure exclusive F1 rights for the BBC from Eurovision. At the same time, Martin launched ‘Ski Sunday’. Just as Hunt had made Formula One popular, Franz Klammer had done the same for skiing. Martin called skiing and Formula One “sit in your armchair admire-and-marvel television.”
Bernie Ecclestone, who ran FOCA, the team’s commercial operation, was delighted to see Formula One get a regular slot on the BBC, although in those days he did not control the European TV rights, which remained firmly held by Eurovision.
The two new programmes were also the result of a dramatic increase in the quality of sports event broadcasting around that time. Martin says the quality before that was terrible, and only the Americans and Italians could do it properly: “In those days, I only dared broadcast Monaco and Monza live.”
Martin co-opted Murray Walker to be anchor commentator right from the start. Raymond Baxter was thought to be too busy to take on the commitment, but it was more likely that Martin didn’t want him, which was a surprise given that Baxter was then in his heyday and a big television personality.
Walker was born into motor sport commentary and his father, Graham Walker, was a successful motorcycle racing commentator for BBC radio in the thirties. Both father and son were also successful motor cycle racers. Murray Walker started commentating in 1949. But it was always a part-time occupation until 1977. A former military man, Walker graduated from Sandhurst and served in the Royal Scots Greys during D-Day. He ended the war with the rank of Captain, commanding tanks. After he was de-mobbed, he entered the nascent adverting industry and became a highly successful copywriter and was credited with penning the famous line: ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’, although he always denied it. He became a principal in the Masius agency for which he worked, and was part of the team that built it into 54 offices around the world. Walker, along with his partners, made a great deal of money when they sold the agency in 1982.
In between, Walker became the voice of motorcycle racing and expanded into car racing second string to the famous Raymond Baxter, and used to commentate on the BBC’s Saturday afternoon motor cycle scrambling broadcasts, which had a sizeable cult audience
Walker was an unknown when Martin plucked him from obscurity, but he was to prove an inspired choice. As was the choice of music for the introduction to the new programme. Martin’s assistant producer, Bob Abrahams, chose the first 40 seconds from a Fleetwood Mac instrumental called ‘The Chain’. It became the show’s theme tune, which endures to this day. Martin remembers: “Bob had a good ear for music, and I wanted something that reflected motor racing. The first time I heard it, I just jumped at it – it was absolutely right. The first few seconds are threatening in anticipation of the start (as they are sitting on the grid) and then it bursts into life as the cars go off – it just explodes.” Martin adds: “It has stood the test of time.”
The opening title sequence was also stunning for its time, and featured the helmeted headshots of Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter and Mario Andretti followed by the team principals Ken Tyrrell, Bernie Ecclestone and Colin Chapman, and action sequences. When the 40-second sequence stopped, Murray Walker burst into action. As he says: “Every time I hear that music, I get butterflies because I know that, when it stops, I start.”
For Formula One fans, Martin’s Grand Prix programme on a Sunday night was a little piece of heaven on earth. It just didn’t get any better than that for the 800,000 or so people who used to tune in.
Initially, Murray Walker did not travel to the races, as everything was done in the BBC studio at Television Centre at Shepherd’s Bush. But he soon received permission and the expenses allocation to be able to attend all 16 Grand Prix races. He was in the Formula One paddock from Thursday to Saturday, and back in the studio by Sunday morning to watch the live broadcast carried by the Eurovision satellite. Eurovision was the amalgamation of most of Europe’s public broadcasters, and had an overall deal to broadcast Formula One in Europe at the time. It had signed a deal with the FIA years before.
Walker remembers: “The race was edited to 30 minutes and shown in the evening, with me doing a live commentary to the edited version.” A journalist called Mike Doodson was always at the track to tell him what was going on over the telephone. By modern standards, it was ramshackle; but it worked extremely well, as anyone who can remember those programmes will testify.
Many Formula One fans at the time tried to avoid hearing the results of the race until they watched the highlights programme. It w
as brilliantly edited by Jonathan Martin, and fans got an absolute treat sitting in their armchairs. When James Hunt retired midway through 1979, Martin immediately wanted to hire him. But Martin, aware of his reputation as a hedonistic rabble-rouser, wondered if it would work. As a precursor to that, he invited him to be a guest pundit during the live broadcast of the 1979 British Grand Prix. Hunt didn’t feature much, but, when he did, Martin found his contribution enthralling. Whatever the potential problems, Martin resolved to pair Hunt with Walker for the following season.
Martin was attracted by Hunt’s manner of speaking and his clear and precise diction, which was tailor-made for television. The authoritative public school accent he had acquired in his five years at prep school commanded instant respect. He says: “It was easy to listen to his voice. He had clear diction and a good vocabulary.”
But hiring Hunt was easier said than done. Both he and his manager, his brother Peter, valued his services very highly. When the three men met to discuss a deal, Martin reputedly offered Hunt US$30,000 a year to do the 16 races. He only wanted Hunt for the race, so it was effectively 16 days’ work. At US$2,000 a day, Martin thought his offer reasonable. But the Hunt brothers just laughed. Peter Hunt told Martin it would have to be a six-figure number. Martin remembers: “James came in with all this film star stuff.” Hunt had told Martin that he could easily earn between US$5,000 and US$10,000 a day opening supermarkets, and wanted a comparable figure from the BBC. He vaguely hinted US$100,000 a year might do it. But the hint was big enough for Martin to know that a deal was his if he wanted it. This was an unprecedented salary demand for BBC Sport, and Martin had to use all his persuasive powers to get approval from Alan Hart, then BBC head of sport. Hart had to go the controller of BBC1, Bill Cotton. Luckily, Cotton was a motor racing fan and soon agreed to pay. The eventual fee agreed to was nearly US$70,000 a year. Martin had put his career on the line for Hunt, and he had to make it work.
Martin was attracted to Hunt because he knew it was his win in Japan that had started all the excitement. He describes him as “abrupt, focused and friendly all at the same time”, and recalls his impressions at the time: “I didn’t feel it represented a risk in the sense that we could already see from his interviews that he was a natural communicator.”
But Martin was naturally worried about Hunt’s reliability. He had heard all the stories, and knew Hunt was a playboy who liked a drink. He was also worried about his long-term commitment. But the money on offer made it attractive enough for Hunt to take it seriously and be reliable.
And these were misnomers Hunt had inherited; contrary to his reputation, he was in fact reliable. When he contracted to do something, he was meticulous about turning up on time and giving it 100 per cent. But that wasn’t his reputation, and once the deal was announced, it seemed that everyone Martin bumped into had a Hunt horror story to tell him. But somehow Martin’s instincts told him it would be alright on the night.
After Martin had Hunt’s signature on a contract, he told the news to Murray Walker. He thought it would be welcome news. But Walker had established his own comfortable and solitary niche on the show and clearly liked it that way.
Walker says it came as a “bombshell” when Martin told him what he proposed. He recalls: “Jonathan told me that there would now be two commentators and that the other would be James Hunt.”
Walker was shocked and had to sit down. When he left Martin’s office, he says his reaction was a mixture of “fear and resentment” – fear because he thought he would be fired and replaced by Hunt; and resentment because he didn’t much care for his new partner.
Walker really believed that Hunt’s appointment was a precursor to him being fired, and he suspected that Martin was simply letting him down lightly. He remembers thinking to himself: “The next thing that’ll happen is that they’ll be saying: ‘Thanks for all you’ve done, Murray, but we want a younger man who has actually done it.’”
But nothing could have been further from Martin’s mind, and he didn’t realise he had upset Walker until he read about it in Walker’s autobiography years later.
The fact was that a new era of twin commentators was beginning in televised sport, and Martin was using Formula One as an experiment to see how it worked. But Walker couldn’t see that, as he says looking back: “I feared I would lose a job I loved.”
Walker hardly knew Hunt at all. He was not his sort of person, and they had had only what Walker calls “casual conversations” in the past.
Hunt said Walker’s fears, which he learned about later, were baseless as he never had any designs on his job and Martin had no intention of firing him: “The last thing I wanted to do was handle a whole race because that would not give me time to look around, to assess, come out of the commentary box door and have a listen with my own ears to hear what the engine’s doing.” In fact, Hunt revealed later that he would not have taken the job if Walker had not been the main commentator.
Initially, Walker didn’t have much time for Hunt and was very frank about what he thought of him in his autobiography, published in 2003: “As a person, he was arrogant, rude, overbearing, drank too much and was certainly not my idea of someone with whom I wanted to share the microphone. I was totally incompatible with him.”
As Walker recalled in his book, Unless I’m very much mistaken, which sold 1.1 million copies: “Two people could hardly have been more different in terms of age, temperament, background and attitude. James was a free spirit, with a highly volatile and forcefully opinionated personality and a fearsome temper, who did not think or act like other people. And how about me? At 57, I was more than old enough to be his father, and unhappy about being paired off with someone I thought was lazy and unprofessional and whose private life I did not admire. We were a seemingly ill-matched couple with a potentially disastrous future.” He added: “I was pretty averagely cross with James for a lot of the time. I didn’t admire his lifestyle and his arrogance, and it wasn’t just me.”
The first programme they did together was effectively a dress rehearsal at the Daily Express International Trophy race at Silverstone. By then, the event was a shadow of its previous self and was no longer a Formula One race. It was exclusively for Formula 5000 cars and was won by Eliseo Salazar, the Chilean driver. Walker remembers it well: “I summed it up as brightly as I could and turned to James and said: ‘And what did you think of it, James?’ ‘What a load of rubbish,’ he replied.” Walker was audibly shocked by his bluntness, but had to agree with the initial assessment.
It was the sixth race of the season by the time Martin had finalised his new deal with Hunt, and the partnership proper, which would endure for nigh on 13 years, began at the 1980 Monaco Grand Prix. The BBC’s Monaco commentary box was effectively on the pavement opposite the pit lane. Hunt and Walker sat on deck chairs just behind the temporary steel Armco barrier, which was sheltered by a canvas top in case it rained. The canvas was more to protect the equipment than the commentators. Jonathan Martin sat behind them with a cardboard screen to shade the sun from the screens. A few feet away, the cars blasted past on the warm up lap and the noise was deafening. Walker was wearing an earpiece for the first time so Martin could tell him how to interact with Hunt if he needed to. It’s probably fair to say that Martin was quite nervous about the pair’s first outing together.
Five minutes before the race was due to start, there was no sign of Hunt, and Martin was getting anxious. As for Walker, he was praying Hunt wouldn’t turn up at all. But with two minutes to go, Hunt arrived. He was a mess and it didn’t appear that he had been to bed. Unshaven, barefoot and drunk, he was wearing a dirty t-shirt and a frayed pair of cut-down jeans. But worst of all, he arrived swigging directly from a bottle of French rosé wine.
For good measure, he was on crutches and his leg was in a plaster from a skiing accident the month before. Mouthing apologies for being late, he immediately sat down and rested his long plaster cast on a horrified Murray Walker’s lap.
Walker
was totally stunned and cast Martin some very dirty looks. With no confidence in the situation, Walker couldn’t believe Martin had been stupid enough to hire Hunt and feared what would happen in the next hour and forty minutes.
As Hunt polished off his wine, a friend handed him another full bottle and Walker looked on in disbelief. In truth, Walker thought Martin had lost the plot that day, and he couldn’t have been more disgusted with his producer and new co-commentator.
But Walker needn’t have had any fear as, to his absolute astonishment, Hunt was brilliant from the very first moment Walker handed him the microphone. In those days, there was one microphone which was shared so that the two men could not talk over each other. Martin insisted from the start that there be one microphone. Walker, who commentated standing up, would cue in Hunt and hand him the microphone when the action demanded an expert comment. Whatever his personal feelings, Walker was generous with the microphone that day and Hunt could have had no complaints on that score. Walker remembers: “I stood up during the race, going berserk with excitement; James sat down and was calmly authoritative in that wonderful public school voice of his.”
As soon as the race was over, Hunt astonished Walker again. When the chequered flag dropped, Hunt was gone. Monaco had established a pattern that would endure for 13 years: Hunt would arrive at the very last possible moment and would then desert the commentary box the moment the race ended.
Jonathan Martin was absolutely delighted when the race ended, and remembers: “James’ essential broadcasting characteristics were there from the start. He was on air because he had been there and done that and was speaking with authority, and therefore the public listened. It’s no good having expertise if you can’t communicate it, and James could. His use of language just flowed, and of course he had a broadcasting voice.”