by Tom Rubython
Donaldson reprinted some of that letter, in which she said, tellingly: “If we hadn’t treated you the way we did, if you hadn’t had the sort of upbringing you had, which you chose to fight, you might not have been world champion.”
Bubbles Horsley believes the problems in his relationship with Sarah caused the deepest pits of the black dog from which Hunt suffered. As Horsley was undoubtedly Hunt’s closest friend in life, his words have more resonance than most: “It was huge stress, emotional stress. He was desperate about the future. It was almost as if he had gone back to a fight for survival, like the fight he had in his early Formula 3 days.”
To her credit, his wife Sarah fought very hard to help him combat the black dog. But she could make little impact, and seeing her husband in such torment and being unable to help made her depressed as well. Eventually, she began to be affected herself and suffered severe weight loss. The couple saw a psychiatrist together but, as they had found with the marriage counselling, it was ineffective.
Somewhat surprisingly, it is perhaps Hunt’s youngest son, Freddie, now 23-years-old, who has the best handle on his father’s ten years of depression. When Freddie himself started racing in 2007, he gave several newspaper interviews, many of which inevitably strayed into the subject of his father. He talked about his own ambitions in racing and contrasted them with his father’s experiences.
Freddie, who, like his father, was not academically gifted, showed he had nevertheless inherited much of his father’s intelligence and thoughtfulness with his answers. He said of his father: “He basically got to the top of his ladder and then I don’t think he had given any previous thought to what would happen after that if he did get there. As a result, his depression and everything else he’s done, his spiral, which everyone knows about, I think was as a result of that. I don’t want to end up like he did. He got to the top, but he soon went downhill after he retired. And it took him a good few years to get his head back and to be happy again.
“Because you know what? You retire as a Formula One driver when you’re what – 30, 35, 38? There’s still a lot of life after that, and that’s what daddy really didn’t take into consideration. I don’t know exactly what was going through his head, but when you’re at the top, sometimes the only way you can go after that is down. Daddy drank a lot and took one or two substances he shouldn’t have, both of which possibly caused the bouts of depression from which he suffered from time to time. Because depression is often hereditary, it represents my greatest fear.”
These were thoughts and fears that his father had never examined in his own life. That his son had, and had already worked out the dangers, says everything about the strength of their relationship before he died. Freddie Hunt is, without a doubt, his father’s son.
CHAPTER 43
Separation from Sarah and financial disaster
He loses his fortune and his family
According to the Lloyd’s ‘Blue Book’, James Hunt was heavily involved as a member of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market for most of the 1980s. In that period, he may well have been a member of up to 40 syndicates. For the most of the years of his involvement, he made good money – except for the last year.
Lloyd’s of London was actually a market where individuals, traditionally known as ‘names’ came together. They were organised by brokers into syndicates to cover the risks of others for a premium fee. In the main, Lloyd’s members effectively reinsured insurance companies to spread their risk. Because the reinsurance was rarely called upon, the premiums paid were virtually all profit for its members. And this practice had gone on, with very little trouble, for hundreds of years.
The members had to put up very little cash and were able to share in very big rewards. The downside was that they were liable for all the losses personally. Other retired sports personalities, such as jockey Lester Piggott and boxer Henry Cooper, were also names at Lloyd’s.
There were also big tax advantages to being a Lloyd’s member and the profits were liable for much lower rates of tax.
However, after the experiences of his father as the victim of an unforeseen circumstance as an unlimited partner in 1981, Hunt might have been expected to be more cautious about effectively putting himself in the same position.
But Hunt enjoyed the profits as they flowed. After his retirement, he invested more and more heavily, and there was no real reason for him to be cautious. Lloyd’s of London was a centuries old institution and members had always made money.
Hunt’s two main investments were in Syndicate no. 745, run by a broker called David King, and Syndicate no. 895, run by Bryan Spencer. Spencer was a colourful character, as were many of the Lloyd’s brokers in those days. His nickname on the insurance market was ‘Nodding Donkey’.
Hunt had been put into the syndicates by his brother Peter, who set himself up as a Lloyd’s sub-agent and could therefore reap a commission on his clients’ transactions. It was sound advice at the time, when being a Lloyd’s ‘name’ was literally a licence to print money.
However, in the late 1980s the gravy train finally hit the buffers and Lloyd’s went through the most traumatic period in its history. Unexpectedly, large awards in American law courts for punitive damages led to large insurance claims. The main problem was the discovery of the long-term health hazards of using asbestos in buildings. There were claims dating as far back as the 1940s and the policies were designed to cover all liabilities.
Moreover, many brokers did not behave honourably. They recruited more names, Hunt amongst them, after they knew about the emerging problems. They withheld their knowledge of the potentially ruinous claims until they could recruit more investors to take on the liabilities that were still unknown outside a small circle of people. Hunt was caught in the trap.
From reaping big dividends, Hunt suddenly found himself getting cash calls for hundreds of thousands of pounds. He was not alone and many names who couldn’t pay stopped paying, and the names that could pay, such as Hunt, picked up their share of the losses. Hunt had no choice but to pay, and soon all his liquid cash was gone.
Just at the same moment, the UK property market crashed and prices were dropping like a stone. As Hunt liquidated his property investments, prices dropped and his net worth fell alarmingly. All the businesses he had set up in the aftermath of his retirement had also closed or collapsed. The nightclub in Marbella named after his dog Oscar had shut and cost him over US$100,000.
He was threatened with bankruptcy by Lloyd’s if he didn’t pay – so had no choice. And the liability was unlimited. It was a truly frightening time. Hunt went from being a very rich man with unlimited spending power to being a pauper in six short months.
The luxurious holidays on yachts stopped. The Mercedes 6.9-litre car was put up on blocks as Hunt could no longer afford the insurance, the tax, the maintenance or the petrol. Winston took a pay cut.
He was in such financial trouble that he tried to make a racing comeback at the age of 41. He had seen Niki Lauda come back in 1982 to earn US$12 million before he retired again. The top racing drivers were then making as much as US$8 million a year and he thought he could come back and do the same in order to solve his own pressing financial problems. But he had left it too long to make a comeback.
He arranged to test a Williams car at Paul Ricard circuit. But he was two seconds off the pace and Williams weren’t interested in him. But Hunt felt he could still do it and approached John Hogan for help. He confessed to him he was broke and needed the money and begged him to help him find a drive. But Hogan thought he was crazy to consider it and wrote him a letter telling him so.
He even asked his friend Tony Dron, who remembers: “He said he thought he might try and make a return to Formula One and I just remember saying to him: ‘Is that what you really want?’ There was a long silence and that was the end of that.”
Very soon, Hunt realised that the avenue was closed to him, and as the Lloyd’s cash calls subsided, he learned that he still had a net wor
th of some US$3 million – enough to live on comfortably for the rest of his life if he was careful. He also had an annual income of over US$150,000 a year from his BBC and Marlboro contracts.
But he hadn’t factored in his next calamity. His relationship with Sarah couldn’t survive under these circumstances and, in October 1988, the façade of the happy marriage and family life finally cracked wide open. In a press release, James and Sarah Hunt officially announced they were separating, although there was no mention of divorce.
For the sake of their young children, Hunt and Sarah decided to live separate lives but to stay under the same roof. Predictably, that arrangement wasn’t successful. As Hunt took up his role as a bachelor, Sarah found it unacceptable to be in the same house.
So he spent UK£350,000 of money he didn’t have and bought her a house nearby, within walking distance so he could see Tom and Freddie. By then, the children were both talking and walking, and he was starting to really enjoy their company. He nicknamed them his ‘little men’, and indeed they were. He loved them deeply and was a very proud father and a perfect parent.
But Sarah was devastated by the official split. According to Gerald Donaldson, she told him that “she had only ever wanted a husband, children and a home of her own, and the prospect of a failed marriage was devastating.”
Hunt was relieved when the split was made official but also upset as, despite his own marital failings, he had hoped that marriage and parenthood would bring him peace and contentment. But it hadn’t and he had simply chosen the wrong woman with whom to spend the rest of his life. While many of his friends already knew the two of them were totally incompatible, it had taken the couple five eventful years to find out. They eventually found they had nothing in common other than their children.
When they had married, Sarah described herself as “24 going on four” but the responsibilities of motherhood had now made her more responsible. But her husband hadn’t change at all. Stirling Moss, for one, wasn’t at all surprised when the marriage went wrong: “I wouldn’t liked to have lived with James.”
In November 1989, 13 months after they separated, Sarah was granted a divorce in the matrimonial division of the high court on the grounds of adultery by her husband. Sarah didn’t want the divorce and would have been quite happy for them to have stayed as man and wife – albeit living separately.
Up to the moment when Hunt pushed her for a formal divorce, it had been a relatively amicable separation. But his insistence on a divorce meant things turned nasty, particularly when she hired herself a solicitor to handle it – and a very good solicitor to boot. Conversely, Hunt hired one that he came to believe was less good.
The solicitor turned Sarah’s head, and persuaded her to go for the jugular by insisting on receiving half of Hunt’s net worth as a lump sum for herself and a big monthly allowance to bring up the children. And that is precisely what she ended up getting.
The eventual terms of the divorce were ruinous, and Sarah took whatever was left from Lloyd’s until Hunt was left in considerable debt. Her settlement was in excess of UK£1.25 million in cash and assets, and at least half of his annual income also went to her and the children.
Her solicitor wiped the floor with Hunt’s solicitor, and even threatened to apply for a court order that would have allowed Hunt to be in the presence of his children only with another neutral adult present.
The solicitor claimed he was unfit to be alone with his children. It was a wholly ridiculous allegation and personally humiliating, but the lawyer played on Hunt’s well-known drinking and drug taking habits, of which Sarah had plenty of evidence.
It was a smoking gun, and Hunt had absolutely no defence. Sarah’s solicitor wrote to him asking for details of exactly what had happened on the flight to Adelaide, to the Australian Grand Prix in 1985, the month after his eldest son was born.
Hunt, remembering the highly publicised incident on the aeroplane, realised that in the face of such evidence a judge might easily grant such an order. And so he capitulated to virtually all of Sarah’s financial demands, as unreasonable as he considered them to be. At worst, there was a possibility that the judge might not give him any custody rights. Hunt felt absolutely defenceless, and every time he raised any sort of objection, Sarah’s solicitor brought up the issue of the custody of the children. They used the children as a weapon to nail him, and it was very successful.
Mark Wilkin, his producer at the BBC, was very close to Hunt as the divorce reached his climax. They saw each other every fortnight at races and Wilkin provided a willing proverbial shoulder for Hunt to cry on. He remembers: “James was very direct, he never really beat about the bush with anything. He’d often greet me at a race with: ‘Do you know what they’ve done now?’ He was talking about his wife’s solicitors and there’d be absolute anger. The divorce was clearly ghastly for him and he would often spend the first hour of a meeting just unloading the last two weeks and you had to sit and listen and ‘err and umm.’ He just needed to unload it on someone.”
Ian Phillips, who had never been in favour of the marriage, remembers the ordeal: “He was very bitter about the whole thing. One night in a restaurant, we were having dinner with John Hogan and Graham Bogle and he was absolutely raging about the legal system and lawyers. He was quite obviously distressed.”
Bubbles Horsley remembered: “He appeared to hit bottom when threatened with losing his share of custody of his two sons.”
In many ways, Hunt had only himself to blame. The aeroplane incident had severely damaged his image and reputation just at a time when he needed a good image with which to earn some money.
And at one point, he almost cracked. With people he didn’t know, he completely lost his confidence and was walking around in a haze. When they came up to congratulated him on his success, he felt a complete fraud with his life in such a mess. He suddenly shied away from physical contact. He avoided eye contact and was just so embarrassed at the state in which he found himself.
But Hunt was grateful for the support and encouragement of friends like Wilkin and Phillips, and he didn’t take it all lying down. He threw all his energy into defending himself. He got together comprehensive files chronicling the marriage woes and the deficiencies of his wife. He was forced to attack her personally in order to defend himself. She was by no means perfect, and the files were huge, including all the letters they had written each other and receipts and invoices detailing the money he had spent on her during the marriage. But it was all fruitless because of the aeroplane incident, and he was wasting his time.
The main battle went on for three months, and, to rub salt into his wounds at the very last minute, Hunt was presented with Sarah’s solicitor’s bill and had to find another £30,000 to pay for the time of the man who had tormented him. By this time, he had mortgaged the house and was in serious financial trouble. But he had no choice but to keep paying until all his money was gone. In the end, he almost gave up and stopped fighting. Every time he fought, it cost more money in legal fees, his and hers, and he was getting nowhere. His own legal bill was £40,000. In the end, he paid more than UK£15,000 in VAT on the legal bills alone.
But his main problem was discrepancy between what he considered to be the poor quality of his own case and the extraordinary quality of Sarah’s. Hunt eventually sued his own solicitor in the high court. He was so impoverished by this stage that he was actually granted legal aid to do it. The granting of legal aid showed just how far he had fallen.
As mortgage rates rose at the start of the 1990s, he found his debts had peaked at UK£800,000, which at its was costing him more than £2,000 a week in interest to service. Even when interest rates dropped, it was costing £1,000 a week.
When the dust settled, Hunt owned his house in Wimbledon but was UK£500,000 in debt via his new mortgage. His net worth dropped to less than £400,000 and he had no cash other than what he was earning. From having had unlimited money he was now living on £500 a week and paying all his bills out of i
t, including Winston’s salary. But it was the price of his freedom and, in the end, that freedom was very important to him.
The end of his marriage was very painful, and afterwards he considered writing a book on divorce as a guide for suffering ex-husbands. But when he looked at the confidentiality clauses Sarah’s solicitor had built into the various agreements he had signed, he realised it was not possible.
He also knew he couldn’t afford the time. He had been screwed financially and, as Sarah put it later and very succinctly to her husband’s biographer: “James was a victim of the three ‘L’s: love, lawyers and Lloyd’s.”
But although Sarah may have come out of the marriage with no financial worries and seemingly set up for life, she was also scared of facing up to life on her own, as she said: “I was totally dependent on him, emotionally, financially, in every possible way.”
With custody sorted out, his two sons came to stay with him at his Wimbledon home on a regular basis. Although very young, they knew what was going on and had the normal split loyalties of children of a broken home. As Sarah confessed: “They found it awfully hard to be equally loyal to both of us after we separated. It used to tear them apart. But Sarah proved to be an excellent mother and, despite her own feelings at the time, didn’t carry it over to her children as many parents do. She encouraged them to talk about their father all the time and she responded very positively. It helped the process of adjusting to the separation.
But privately, she remained frustrated, as she said: “When I met people after we divorced, all they wanted to know was about James. It really got me down. I used to say: ‘Here’s his phone number, ring him up and ask how he is yourself – I don’t live with him so how should I know how he is?’” It would take her at least two years to get past it.