by Carl Fogarty
‘I am not going to that fucking thing because of your bastard brother. I’m going to kill him,’ I shouted. ‘And if you’ve got anything to do with it, you can fuck off as well.’
Dad was obviously upset with the way I had spoken to him. But I thought that he’d taken Brian’s side. I didn’t speak to dad again until Christmas Day, when he turned up with presents for the kids. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. ‘There’s a present for you. That should cheer you up,’ he said and off he went. The Blackburn event was eventually cancelled using the legitimate excuse that the council hadn’t even checked whether I was available for that particular night.
Actually, I had already decided to switch to Action Performance for the year 2000 before all this blew up, as they handled a lot of World Superbike and Ducati merchandise. There is the potential to make a lot of money on the back of my name but, in the wrong hands, there is also potential for a lot of people, including the public, to be ripped off. So my lawyers, and those of Action Performance and Ducati, were on the case in an increasingly complicated battle. ‘Brian said you would let us do this and Brian said we could do that,’ a guy called Warren Cox, from Motorsport Enterprises, moaned before backing off and offering to try and come to an amicable arrangement, claiming that no one would benefit in the long run. ‘I don’t give a fuck what Brian said, you’re getting nothing out of me,’ I said. I couldn’t understand how anyone, least of all my own uncle, would have the nerve to sell my stuff without my consent.
Out of the blue, towards the end of January, dad phoned up and asked if he could come round so that I could sign some posters. He turned up, I signed the posters and, again, he left with hardly a word said between us. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Dad rang again a couple of weeks later but this time to say that he had been in contact with Barry Marsden, a Blackburn businessman who had a history of being involved with failed companies. Marsden said he was something to do with a company called Harvest.
This company had offered to buy the agreement off Motorsport Enterprises. Harvest claimed to have offices in Blackburn, Texas and Singapore and dad told me they had great ideas to make all sorts of products like a Foggy Plug, Foggy Flex and a Foggy Watch.
‘I want nothing to do with them,’ I said. ‘You haven’t been around for the last four months, so how would you know how far this has gone and how much trouble Brian has caused.’
‘Well you said all those bad things to me,’ he replied.
At last we had started a conversation and it was clear that dad had no idea of the scale of the problem. He went mad and went straight round to Brian’s and told him to stop it all. Brian refused and whined that he hadn’t been able to sleep for four months. It was obvious that Brian had misled everyone and dug himself into a big hole. I’ll never speak to him again and he has also pissed off the people he got involved with, as they had spent money on the back of his promises.
Meanwhile, some of my people had been doing some digging on Harvest. Apparently, it wasn’t until they had read a story in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph that they realised my uncle was acting without my consent. So I spoke to their main man, a Cheshire-based businessman called John H Gee, to try and make some progress. He seemed nice enough but, by then, I didn’t know who to trust. I told him that, if he had commercial ideas, I was prepared to listen to them as long as they had nothing to do with Motorsport Enterprises or Brian Fogarty. But, after another story in the Telegraph, Harvest quickly disappeared out of the equation.
By then I didn’t care if I never sold another piece of merchandising. I was determined not to let these people make any money from my name. At one stage, just a month before the season, I was considering not racing in the year 2000. The previous four months had been a living nightmare. It had caused tension between me and Michaela because, as is often the case, you take things like this out on those closest to you. And that wasn’t fair on her. I told Ducati, ‘I really don’t want to race this year. What’s the point in me racing when all this is going on. I’m not riding round a track and risking my life when these bastards could make money out of me.’ That pricked up Ducati’s ears and they sprang into action. A crisis meeting was called between their lawyers, those of Action Performance and my own legal team, when it was agreed to take Motorsport Enterprises to court.
In the end, it didn’t come to that as we agreed to settle out of court by paying Brian and his mates £20,000 to get out of my life. Ducati agreed to foot half the bill and it was probably the best £10,000 I have ever spent because I never have to deal with the man again. The money would probably not have even covered their legal fees, so at least they were not making any profit out of me. And, while there’s no doubt that we would have won a court battle, there did not seem any point spending so much money on lawyers. The whole thing taught me a valuable lesson, never to trust anyone in the future. Even Action Performance let me down, by cancelling three quarters of my merchandising contract with them because of the crash and the fact that I hadn’t been racing.
At least everything was cleared up with dad. He had played a big part in my career and was always there to support me in the early years. Before all this blew up, he’d always been easy-going, laid back and, apart from the odd row at race meetings in the heat of the moment, we had never really fallen out for any length of time before. He has obviously been very proud of me from the day I was born – you can tell that by my middle name, George. Personally, I think middle names are snobby and cannot see the point of them because you’re never going to lose your first name so our two do not have them.
Generally, he doesn’t have a bad word for anyone and nobody seems to have a bad word for him. That wasn’t always the case. While he was building up his business, dad and Phillip had a reputation as being pretty ruthless. Dad is certainly not the type to let anyone stand in his way if he wants something badly enough. Throughout their early life, all four brothers were in trouble for one thing or another like fighting.
That business developed into a very successful haulage and storage business with huge clients like Star Paper Mill, the Thwaites brewery, and Walkersteel, run by the late Jack Walker. It became a bit of a goldmine, especially when they moved to a site nearer to the town centre and right next to a rail link.
Phillip gradually lost interest and, in 1989, they decided to sell out to a company called Gilbraith’s. Dad stayed on as a consultant for another five years before packing up altogether. But he isn’t the type to sit around kicking his heels and helped a lot with work on our last two houses. Even now he helps a couple of people with their gardens, always wearing his Carl Fogarty T-shirt!
In fact, everything he walks round in is the old stuff that I’ve thrown out. He begrudges buying anything for himself, and thinks it’s disgusting if I buy a pair of pants for £60 or £70. Dad is much happier going to some cheap shop and picking up a pair for £10.99. He’s not tight, because he loves to buy the kids stuff. It’s back to the work ethic thing. He hates thinking he is making someone else well off, without them doing anything for it. So he will always try and repair something rather than call in an expert, which usually results in it costing him more money in the long run when it breaks down again. If, for instance, he wanted a new tennis racket, he’d pay £14.99 thinking he has got value for money even if it only lasted a few games. So I’ve tended to buy him things like that for Christmas.
I was also sick of seeing him driving around in a heap of a car, a Land Rover, that he had bought from the auctions. It was always breaking down and, whenever dad went into a garage, he tried to flog it in part exchange for another ‘bargain’. So, one Christmas, I bought him a Land Cruiser Colorado jeep from a dealer in Northampton (because I wanted one as well!)
It was a £30,000 turbodiesel automatic and a gorgeous deep blue colour – and I threw in an 8 FOG number plate. On Christmas Eve I made an excuse that I wanted to borrow his heap to pick up some presents for the kids, but took it away and flogged it for around £7,000. That
evening I told him that it was too late to return his car and that he could pick it up when they came for Christmas dinner. When they arrived on Christmas Day I said, ‘Can you go and get your bloody car out of my garage. I can’t get that pile of shit to start.’
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with it. You’ve just got to turn the key the right way,’ he muttered as he trudged off to the garage.
When he opened the door he saw this brand new jeep, all carefully wrapped up with ribbons and a big message ‘Merry Xmas Dad’. He thought I had bought it for myself, and couldn’t figure it out that it was for him. ‘It’s yours, you daft git,’ I told him. It is the only time I have seen tears in his eyes. And I’ve got the moment on video to prove it. It made me so happy because he had done so much for us down the years. My relationship with mum, who was an orphan and has two brothers living in South Africa and the States, has never really been that close.
Mum and dad split up around July 1998. Until a year or so before that they used to follow me all over the world, supporting me. Or, if it wasn’t possible to travel, they would stay at home and look after the kids. Mum would be very nervous watching me and I’ll always remember one videotape shot of her, after I had fallen at the other side of the Daytona track in 1990 and word had not reached the pits whether I was okay. She went off on her own to gaze through fencing, obviously worried sick.
It was not a bitter divorce and didn’t affect me at all. They were just two people who had grown apart and out of love. The only thing they really had in common as a couple was mine and dad’s racing and that had obviously finished. When their kids left home they realised there was no real reason to stay together any longer. But they are still on friendly terms and, at Brands a couple of years ago, dad turned up with his new girlfriend, Bev, and mum didn’t bat an eyelid.
Mum has actually just moved into Georgina’s old house. Me and Georgina were always fighting as kids and nothing much seems to have changed. She was an annoying little sister and I probably picked on her a bit. I’m not sure that many boys get on well with their younger sisters as a general rule. But it was probably quite cool for her to have an older brother, although she would probably not admit that. There were the obvious benefits for me in meeting her friends but that worked both ways because she went out with a couple of racers, Nigel Bosworth and Darren Dixon, while I was riding 250ccs. Now she seems to copy everything we do. She married Simon Bradshaw, who runs a car valeting and dry cleaning business in Blackburn, seven months after we were married. She had children soon after we had children and seems incapable of doing anything on her own.
Mum and my sister can both be a bit childish and have caused a few problems down the years. Perhaps they have always been a bit spoilt because dad did too much for them. They are constantly falling out with each other, their own friends, and Michaela. That’s because they don’t seem to realise that Michaela leads a busy life and likes to see her own friends. But, out of the blue, they will ring up and say, ‘You haven’t rung for ages. I find that really annoying.’
This has gone on for about 10 years and there’s no need for it. Maybe my sister in particular is a little bit jealous of our lifestyle. I’ve tried to help financially where I could, lending Georgina and her husband some money to set up their business and helping mum to buy that house. I would now rather help my mate Howard, who works his balls off day in, day out, to buy a tractor for his farm rather than help some members of my own family. There are more important things in life than tittle-tattle gossip, or moaning about your hair, weight or clothes, not to mention other people’s hair, weight and clothes. I’m sure that they don’t realise that their comments upset people a lot of the time.
My dad and Michaela’s dad, Alan, are two very different people. But we would be knackered without Alan and Pat. Whenever we’re away they move into the house and keep the ship afloat. We don’t even have to ask them to help out, fixing and organising things and even cleaning up. Without their help and support Michaela wouldn’t have been able to travel to the races because we would have to pay someone to look after the kids. They are also always babysitting and the girls love it when they stay. So that’s another reason why it has made sense to stay in Blackburn, as the girls mean everything to us.
Danielle and Claudia are like chalk and cheese. Danielle is the prim and proper lady and has to win at everything she does. She was competing in a running race at a village fete a few years ago and was winning until another girl passed her shortly before the finishing line. Danielle stopped dead in her tracks and started crying. I asked her, ‘What did you do that for?’
‘I wasn’t going to win. That other girl was,’ she said.
‘You can’t just do that, you have to take part,’ I lectured.
Michaela sniggered in the background, ‘I wonder who she takes after?’ She was right. I would never take part in individual school sports that I didn’t think I was any good at. And, like Danielle, I used to be quite shy and guarded with strangers.
She also seems to have been born with my inability to concentrate for long periods of time at school. She is not bad at any subject, although they are both having private maths lessons during the week, but tends to be middle of the class rather than excelling. The other kids at her school, a private school for girls in Blackburn, are at the age when they see me on telly and realise that their friend’s daddy is famous. That tends to make our two both pretty popular in the playground. Neither of them would bat an eyelid if I appeared on the screen out of the blue. In fact they would probably look the other way!
My fame has helped bring Danielle out of her shell to a certain extent. She can see that being in front of the cameras is not unusual and at the end she was happier joining me on the rostrum, whereas a couple of years ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of it. When I did the double in Misano, the two of them became separated after the first race and Claudia was plonked in front of the cameras wearing a silly red crown while Danielle was trapped behind the barrier. It would have taken an army of stewards to prevent her from squirming between the legs, under the cordon and into the limelight.
In contrast to Danielle, Claudia is a bit of a tomboy and they react so differently, even to very ordinary situations. For instance, one day Geoff flew us all up to Lockerbie for Sunday lunch and the waitress asked the kids what they wanted to drink. Because it was a nice place, Danielle ordered a cup of tea while Claudia went straight for the Coke. She tends to be much more open and comfortable with other people, especially strangers.
There is a portrait photograph of the four of us hanging over the mantelpiece in the living room, taken by a photographer from the Lake District called Annabel Williams. It captures the difference between them perfectly. Claudia has her arms draped around Michaela’s neck, while Danielle sits like a grown up next to me. Claudia is much more loving, like her mum, and will always remind you of how much she loves you. But she is also very clumsy (like her mum). If there is anything to break or knock over, Claudia will find it and there are very few days that go by without something coming to grief. But she will have a go at anything because she has no fear of losing. The worrying thing is that she already drinks like a fish (again like her mum). Even at four years of age, she can down a glass of wine or beer in the blink of an eye and not show any effects (unlike her mum). Danielle would never go near the stuff.
A lot people had the impression that, because I was away racing all the time, I might not have been able to spend enough time with the girls. In fact, the opposite was true. During the season I was often abroad from Thursday to Monday. But, for the rest of the time, I was at home a lot and could take them to school and pick them up. Many dads leave for work before their kids are out of bed and get home after they’re in bed. I actually probably spent more time with them when they came to watch me race, because they realised I was the centre of attention and they wanted a piece of the action. They wanted to ride on my scooter and help out in the garage. They loved to hand out posters in front of the hospital
ity area and serve people with drinks. When we were back home, their attitude was ‘Dad’s here again. I’d rather play with my toys.’
I suppose I can be quite strict with them, perhaps more so than Michaela, and it drives me daft when they fight. More often than not it’s because Danielle is bossing Claudia, trying to stop her being a pest. If sending them to their rooms doesn’t work, then they know that a slap is on the way. But the result is that we can take them anywhere in public and they will be as good as gold. There are perhaps not that many parents who could say that with confidence.
It’s just a shame that the same can’t always be said about some adults. We were at Donington for the race in 1998 and had arrived a day early for the Thursday press conferences. I went up to the track, while Michaela took the kids into Nottingham city centre. She had just parked up on the multi-storey when a bloke approached her and asked her the time. She immediately didn’t like the look of him and thought he was going to try and snatch her Rolex watch.
But as she was looking at the time, he whipped open his coat and said, ‘What can you do with this?’ Michaela panicked a bit and just dragged the kids out of the way and ran off. If she had been on her own she’d have probably shouted, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’, kneed him in the balls and knocked his head off. Luckily the girls did not see anything and did not know what had gone on. But I was livid when I found out. Michaela reported it to the police and the bloke had apparently done it a few times. He was picked up that afternoon and later sent to prison.
It just goes to show that you can never have a totally safe environment for your kids to grow up in. There was even an incident this year, just down the road from our house in the middle of the countryside, when shots were fired at one car from another. Of course, because we lived nearby, it made the front page of the paper. Police initially thought it was rival drug gangs but later told us that the whole incident had been staged so that one of the gangs could gain some street credibility.