Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  But God chose to put some barriers in his path, and they were pretty substantial ones.

  Hunt was a hard-drinking, serial-womanising, heavily-smoking man, who also liked taking recreational drugs in large quantities. Because he possessed these defects, he was never destined to achieve all that he could have. The defects stopped him in his tracks and made some 12 years of his life after retirement a pure misery. Although their removal meant that his last three years were happy beyond anything he could have expected.

  In truth, I have to admit I did not believe Helen Dyson’s account of how James proposed to her over the telephone the evening before he died. It seemed too much like a fairytale. But it was true and, by luck, it was confirmed to me by an unimpeachable third party. So it would seem that by the final night of his life, he had achieved true happiness – until a few hours later when he was struck down by the heart attack or whatever it was that killed him.

  Fate intervened in Hunt’s life, just as it had so many times before, but this time to end it. He could have no complaints about fate. The fates that had led him directly to John Hogan and Lord Hesketh were as equally kind as they were cruel to James Hunt.

  I only met James once. At Brands Hatch in 1970 at the British Grand Prix, where he was competing in the supporting F3 race. I was 15 and still at school and he was 22 and an obscure race driver. He was leaning on a lamp post in the paddock with the inevitable cigarette in his hand. He was looking straight ahead but talking to someone on his left.

  No one recognised him at that moment. He was in dirty light blue denims, naked from the waist up with no shoes on. Although he looked like a tramp, the look on his face said it all. He was in deep thought about something, so much so that he didn’t notice me. I had my blue autograph book in hand, which Jochen Rindt had just signed, but I didn’t even think of asking Hunt for his autograph – who wanted that? He was a driver of no particular distinction. So why was I standing there staring at him? I really can’t answer that. Eventually, he said ‘hello’ to me and I mumbled something back to him.

  I can only remember two other images from that weekend: Frank Williams leaning on his awning with his foot on the front tyre of his De Tomaso car, eating an apple; and Mario Andretti in his day-glo orange March 701, looking rather overawed but still fascinated by the strange world of Formula One. It would take Frank Williams another ten years to win his first championship, Andretti another eight, and Hunt just six.

  This, then, is the story of James Hunt. As I wrote the last chapter, ‘Life After James’, I found tears were running down may face straight into the keyboard. It’s that sort of book, and he was that sort of man.

  I sold this work to the book trade on the basis that it was a non-fiction book that read like a novel. It truly is.

  Hunt’s story is that of an icon of the 1970s; he was without doubt Britain’s most iconic sportsman of that age. It is a truly remarkable story of a most remarkable man – and it is what is says on the tin: the non-fiction book that reads like a novel.

  Tom Rubython

  London

  8th September 2010

  CHAPTER 1

  Death - the unexpected

  “Dadda’s gone to heaven.”

  As the morning of Friday 11th June 1993 dawned, all was well at the sprawling Wimbledon mansion, owned by the 1976 Formula One world champion James Hunt. The house, situated next to the All England Club in west London, was quiet by normal standards. Earlier in the week, Hunt had packed off his live-in girlfriend, Helen Dyson, to Lesbos in Greece, leaving him free to enjoy a week of bachelorhood with his friend Mike Dennett.

  Dennett was a seemingly ever-present house guest in the Wimbledon mansion, especially when he was down on his luck – which appears to have been almost always. John Hogan explains it succinctly: “Eccentrics always have a permanent house guest.”

  Despite having been a loner in his youth, James Hunt now craved company and couldn’t bear to be alone. With Helen away, Dennett was on hand. His two sons, Tom and Freddie, were also due to come and stay with him that weekend, which would mean fun and games for all.

  Although he missed Helen, James was enjoying her absence. It was the first time in three years that they had been apart. He found he liked the taste of his brief freedom more than he cared to admit. He loved Helen, of course, but then he had loved a lot of women.

  The backdrop for her trip to Greece had not been straightforward. In early 1993, they had decided they would try to start a family together. With motherhood apparently imminent, 28-year-old Helen decided to spend a week in Greece with her closest friend, Christina, who was also planning to start a family with her boyfriend. It was to be the two girls’ last fling together, and they were determined to enjoy it. Hunt had agreed to pay for the holiday, which his rapidly improving finances could now afford.

  So after Helen’s return, Hunt was anticipating that she would soon become pregnant and yet another new chapter in his life would commence. As with all his major life decisions, however, Hunt was not entirely convinced this was what he truly wanted. After all, he already had Tom and Freddie. While he thought he wanted children with Helen, in the back of his mind was a nagging thought to the contrary. But in the few days in which she had already been away, he missed her deeply. And by Friday afternoon, he resolved to finally ask her to marry him.

  But that weekend, Hunt also had some work to attend to. As it was a Grand Prix weekend, he was due to commentate on the Canadian Grand Prix with Murray Walker on Sunday. His responsibilities to the BBC were important to him. They paid him US$200,000 a year and he needed the money. Although he had recovered from his financial meltdown of two years prior, he still owed the banks UK£800,000.

  He made his regular Friday afternoon phone call to Mark Wilkin, a sports producer at the BBC. Hunt always called on Friday afternoons to discuss the upcoming race and his syndicated newspaper column, as Wilkin remembers: “He used to write a column for the Daily Telegraph and he’d read his column out to me and say: ‘What do you think of this? Is it alright? Can I say that? Is it okay?’ I would always reply: ‘Well, if it’s your opinion James, then it’s okay.’”

  Wilkin had been a close friend ever since he became producer of the Grand Prix programme five years earlier. Coincidentally, they had both attended Wellington College, although not at the same time. Hunt always found it easy to confide in Wilkin, and that day he wanted to talk about more than just the column.

  Wilkin was the first person he informed about his decision to marry Helen. Looking back, Wilkin now refers to it as the ‘my life starts from here’ conversation. As Wilkin recalls, Hunt told him that he had decided to propose to Helen: “James told me that everything was finalised. ‘I’m going to ask Helen to marry me,’ he said, ‘I really feel that my life starts today and that a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Everything has to go forward from here.’” Wilkin was very pleased for his friend, having witnessed the extraordinarily tough times he had been through over the previous four years. He and Hunt agreed to meet for lunch the following Tuesday to discuss it properly.

  When he put down the phone, Hunt couldn’t have been happier, and the scene was set for a brilliant weekend. A few hours later, his sons arrived in Wimbledon just in time to go to bed. Together, they thoroughly enjoyed the bedtime rituals of baths, stories, prayers and lights-out. His ex-wife Sarah may have had limitations as a wife, but Hunt had never failed to acknowledge, even in the darkest days of their relationship, that she was an excellent mother and that he couldn’t have wished for better for his boys.

  When they boys were safely asleep, Hunt and Dennett began playing snooker into the early hours of Saturday morning. Snooker had recently become Hunt’s major obsession and he played it at every opportunity. They went to bed at around 2am.

  On Saturday, it was a day of fun and games with his boys, seven-year-old Tom and five-year-old Freddie. In the afternoon, they all settled in front of the television and watched the rugby match between the British Lio
ns and the New Zealand All Blacks. That evening, after the boys were safely tucked in and Winston, Hunt’s Jamaican houseman, was babysitting, he and Dennett attended a party at the house of their friend Chris Jones. The event was a reunion of old friends and had been arranged by Jones’ wife, Suzy.

  It was not a late night, and Hunt and Dennett returned to the house at around 11:30pm. According to those present, Hunt had not consumed any alcohol.

  On the morning of Sunday 13th June, Hunt woke up and cooked the children’s breakfast. As on most Sundays when his sons were in residence, they all then went down to Wimbledon Common to walk the dogs, Jackson and Muffy, and to feed the ducks in the pond.

  After that, he made lunch for his sons and got himself ready for the trip into London to meet up with Murray Walker to do the commentary for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. According to Mike Dennett, Hunt was in excellent spirits. The time away from Helen had been reinvigorating. For the first time, Hunt could see his life story unfolding in front of him, and he liked what he saw.

  So it was with a very happy heart that he readied himself that Sunday afternoon. As usual, he was bare-chested but had decided to wear jeans rather than shorts for the bicycle ride into London. He strapped a haversack to his back, and cycled the six miles to the BBC Television Centre. He left Wimbledon at around half past two and was at the studio an hour and a half later, in plenty of time for the start of the race at five o’clock. On the way, he stopped off at McDonald’s, as he always did, to buy three Big Macs.

  As he rode past the barriers at the front of the building and into the BBC Television Centre, Hunt waved to the gateman as he flew past. He stopped right in front of the main doors and leaned his bicycle on the wall, where it would be guarded by the BBC doorman until he returned a few hours later. No one else was allowed to park their bicycles by the front door, and there was a bicycle rack at the back of the building. As Wilkin remembers: “Nobody else ever parked a bicycle there, but that’s just what James did.”

  Before he went inside, James pulled a dirty, old, crumpled, red polo shirt from his haversack and put it on. He went through the front doors and walked around the corridor of the circular building until he arrived at Studio 5, which was permanently occupied by BBC Sport.

  Immediately, he sat down, put his brown McDonald’s paper bag on the table and lit up a cigarette. The BBC floor manager came up to him and, as usual, said: “You can’t smoke in here James,” and then placed an ashtray down on the table in front of him.

  Hunt had special rules at the BBC pertaining to his bicycle, his dog and his cigarettes.

  Murray Walker, who was already at work, turned round to him and said: “I hope you’re not going to talk to your public dressed like that.”

  “No, I’m not, Murray,” he said, and changed into a fresh set of clothes.

  Seeing that Hunt had arrived, Wilkin descended the spiral iron staircase leading to the gallery in Studio 5 and sat with him. He remembers: “Hunt picked the gherkins out of the Big Macs and wolfed them all down in seconds.”

  There wasn’t much time for chitchat as Hunt and Walker moved into the studio, where the race was being fed in live via satellite feed and projected onto a big screen in front of them. Mike Doodson was on the telephone from the press room in Montreal providing live information, and a lap chart was being kept in the studio.

  Remarkably, Hunt and Walker rarely attended races outside Europe and tended to do all their commentary from within the studio. Long haul trips were sometimes funded by the host broadcasters, but the Canadian broadcaster, CBC, preferred to use retired drivers Jackie Stewart and Brett Lunger for the Montreal Grand Prix.

  But providing a commentary from the studio that day proved to be just as good, and viewers were never made aware that they were in London instead of Montreal.

  Up in the gallery sat Wilkin, who, with his eye on the lap chart, fed instructions through to Walker and Hunt on headphones. As always, Walker stood up for his commentary while Hunt sat down. The scene was very intense as the race started, with both men absolutely concentrating, with no distractions, exerting every sinew in their brains to bring the viewer the best possible commentary. As Wilkin says: “Murray described what happened and James interpreted it; James told you why, Murray told you what.” After two hours of racing, Alain Prost’s Williams-Renault had beaten Michael Schumacher’s Benetton-Ford by 14 seconds, with Damon Hill’s Williams-Renault third.

  Both Hunt and Walker were mentally exhausted by the end. They turned round, looked at each other and smiled. They were very good at their job and right at the top of their form. Long gone were the days when Hunt didn’t take the job seriously. They were now arguably the best sports commentary pair in the world, and Mark Wilkin knew it.

  When the race was finished, Walker moved on to record opening and closing sequences for the BBC2 highlights show later that evening. As Hunt changed back into his scruffy clothes, Wilkin descended the stairs to bid him farewell. As he recalls: “I can remember I was in the gallery, which is upstairs, and it’s like an iron fire escape that comes down into the studio. I remember clearly walking down the stairs and James walking round the side. I shook his hand and said: ‘See you next Tuesday’ and that was it. I never saw him again.”

  By the time Hunt returned to Wimbledon, at around nine o’clock, Sarah had arrived to collect Tom and Freddie. It was getting late but the two had coffee and chatted. Hunt confided in his ex-wife that he was going to marry Helen. The relationship with Sarah was still close, and she told him she was delighted by the news. And she genuinely was. There were no recriminations; they had settled any differences long ago. As they said ‘goodbye’, Hunt cuddled his children for the last time and waved to them as they went down the road. Dennett recalled the mood to Hunt’s biographer, Gerald Donaldson: “I can’t remember James being as happy as he was that whole weekend. He was in such a good mood.”

  With the house quiet and the boys gone, Hunt and Dennett settled down to watch the highlights of the Canadian Grand Prix on television and, as always, they discussed the whys and wherefores of the commentary. After that, they resumed their snooker match and went to bed at around midnight. Hunt was physically and mentally exhausted from his exertions that day. Jackson and Muffy trundled up the stairs after him. They were all soon soundly asleep. There was no hint or sense of pending trouble.

  Indeed, Monday could not have been a more normal day. Hunt’s good mood continued and he was ecstatic with his decision finally to make an honest woman of Helen. He spent most of the day working on his syndicated post-race column, to appear in newspapers around the world, and he spoke throughout the day to his collaborator Gerald Donaldson, who was at his home in Toronto. Donaldson recalls: “We did the columns on the Monday. They were due on the Tuesday. We would compare notes, and he loved to gossip.” Although an excellent verbal communicator, Hunt wasn’t a natural writer, so he worked very hard to get the job done. But when they were finished, the columns were of a very high standard indeed. Donaldson concedes: “His columns were, dare I say, extraordinarily well written because he worked really hard on them, and, if he wanted, he could be as articulate in print as he was when he spoke.”

  As soon as the work was finished, James telephoned Helen Dyson, who was back in her hotel room in Lesbos. It was an extraordinary conversation, with him proposing to her over the telephone. In truth, he was only confirming what they had discussed often but had never finalised. Although Helen had been expecting a formal proposal, she had no idea of the timing and was ecstatic when he finally uttered the words: ‘Will you marry me?’ She recalls shrieking with joy. As she said later: “He proposed to me and I accepted. It was the last time I ever spoke to him.”

  With that decided, Hunt once again started up the snooker with Dennett, and other friends popped round to hear his good news. At around ten o’clock, the activity subsided and Hunt cooked spaghetti for his guests. Afterwards, he and Dennett resumed their match.

  But suddenly, Hunt starte
d to feel pains in his arms and chest. They were pains he had never before experienced but which are now easily recognisable as the classic early symptoms of a pending heart attack. Hunt was concerned enough to telephone Chris Jones to ask him what he thought. Jones told him it was probably indigestion and not to worry. Dennett agreed. And while he was on the phone to Jones, the pain subsided, virtually confirming the diagnosis.

  Hunt and Dennett resumed the match, but Hunt started to feel ill and, at around midnight, he said to Dennett: “I feel really shitty.” Dennett recalls: “He sat down, sort of huffing and puffing.” At that precise moment, they should have jumped into the car and gone to nearby Wimbledon hospital, but, instead, Dennett suggested they all go to bed. Hunt went off to the kitchen to make coffee, which he always drank before turning in. Dennett’s bedroom was above the kitchen, and he could here Hunt clattering around.

  No one really knows what happened next, but it appears Hunt climbed the stairs to his bedroom and was about to get into bed when he suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the floor, unconscious.

  Understandably, neither Hunt’s family nor his friends wish to relive that night, but the following is what Mike Dennett told Gerald Donaldson 17 years ago: “In the morning, I got up very late, about 10:30am. When he had not come down to breakfast, I went up to wake him. I found him lying there on the floor by the side of his bed. He was in his dressing gown but he hadn’t even got into bed. The dogs, Jackson and Muffy, were with him. I called an ambulance but it was too late. And then I started calling out to people. It was awful. Just awful.” Straightaway, Dennett called Peter Hunt, who raced around to the house along with Chris Jones.