by Tom Rubython
Wilkin was a friend of Tim Hunt, James’ brother, and often visited the family home in Belmont, although he never got to meet James, who was always away racing. Wilkin first met Hunt at the Wimbledon tennis championships where he was working and Hunt, an avid tennis fan, was a guest of the BBC. Jonathan Martin wanted to test Hunt as a tennis commentator.
Wilkin’s first race was at Monaco in 1989 and he remembers: “I’d gone out with Murray and an engineer and I didn’t see James at all. We were sitting in the commentary box on Sunday and then we went on the air and I still hadn’t seen James.”
Wilkin had been briefed by his predecessor, Charles Balchin, on what to expect and he wasn’t too concerned. But he admits, as it was his first race, he was anxiously scanning the track looking for his arrival. He recalls: “Eventually, I see a lone figure in a pair of shorts, no shoes and no shirt and a shock of blonde hair, holding a bottle of rosé wine and staggering across the grid looking for the gap to jump over the fence in order to get up to the commentary box on the outside of the circuit.”
Wilkin was ready and had rehearsed in his mind how to handle Hunt: “As he came in, I said: ‘Hello, James. I’m Mark, let me take that from you,’ which was the bottle of wine. I replaced it with a bottle of water and he went on to give us one of the sublime performances that he used to do every week. He disappeared at the end of the race, just after the cars crossed the line, and I didn’t see him again that weekend. But as time went on, we became firm friends and I saw a lot of him, both at the track and away from the circuit.”
Wilkin resolved to sort out Hunt’s on-air drinking and he gradually phased it out. Wilkin trod cautiously and says: “I never really had a row with him. We used to have some fierce arguments, but they didn’t develop into screaming matches. They were genuine debates. The worst really was that first time when I didn’t know him and I thought: ‘What on earth am I going to do?’ I was thinking: ‘I should’ve done something to avoid this situation’ and yet, twenty minutes in, he’s making lucid and pertinent comments. I did say to him: ‘It’s best to be sober’ and ‘You’re actually much more interesting when you’re sober’, and I think he got that fairly early on and he took that on board.”
But one incident made him realise that Hunt’s capacity for alcohol was so enormous that the odd bottle of rosé wine really made little difference to him. It happened at the 1991 Australian Grand Prix, which coincided with the final of the Rugby World Cup between England and Australia. Wilkin says: “James and I were in Adelaide, and he said to me: ‘What are you doing for the match? Why don’t we watch it together?’ So I went to his hotel. We had dinner and we spun it out with a few bottles of wine. Anyway, by the time we’d finished the match, we had 11 empty bottles of wine kicking around, and that was just the two of us. We had started at ten and we finished at five. I didn’t drink my share, it’s safe to say. I had to get back to my hotel after that and I was supposed to give a report to Murray about what happened in the match. I couldn’t remember the second half at all. I knew we’d lost.”
But while life in the commentary box may have been getting smoother, life outside it was not. Hunt was paid generous expenses and made his own flight and travel arrangements, sending the bills to the BBC to pay. He did not fly with the BBC nor sleep at the BBC-booked hotel, preferring to make all his own arrangements.
Hunt’s expenses were always a running sore with all of the BBC producers for whom he worked. They were difficult because they were so large, and Wilkin says they were always inflated. Diplomatically, he explains: “Let’s just say he used to claim for things that I knew he hadn’t spent.”
The relationship between Walker and Hunt may eventually have developed into mutual respect and liking, but, as Wilkin says: “It went through some trying times along the way.”
Now Walker firmly believes that Jonathan Martin was totally right to put them together, as he says: “We may not have had the greatest respect for each other at the start, but our skills complemented each other perfectly, the viewers liked our partnership and, as time went by, we rubbed the corners off each other, grew together and worked even better.”
And Walker admits he was not exactly perfect himself: “I must also have irritated James immensely by my attitude in the box. I was immensely fired up, totally focused, literally on the balls of my feet, oozing adrenalin, and all the time I wanted to be the one pouring out words about what was happening. I thought James slowed things down and he thought I talked too much. He may well have been right.”
There were one or two occasions when the two almost came to blows in the commentary box; incidents that both Murray Walker and Mark Wilkin readily recall: “I was, as ever, standing up and in full flow, giving it plenty when James, sitting beside me, decided it was his turn. Instead of languidly waving his hand for the microphone, he grabbed its wire and gave a sharp tug. It flew out of my hand into his, and while he calmly got on with whatever it was he wanted to say, I was seething with rage at being cut off in my prime. I regard myself as someone who is hard to anger, but I actually held my fist back when I saw Mark Wilkin wagging a reproving finger at me and silently mouthing the words: ‘No, Murray.’ I backed off, and it is just as well I did, for that would have been the end of a great partnership.”
Wilkin admits that there was never a dull moment when Hunt was commentating and never a period when he could say the show was “settled.” Jonathan Martin says there was much more animosity between the two than anyone realised: “There were many times at the end of a race when I thought they were going to go outside and thump each other.”
Eventually, as the ratings went up, the BBC Grand Prix programme went live on Sunday afternoons and live commentaries were done from European events, although Walker and Hunt were still mostly studio bound for races outside Europe. The duo however always gave the deliberate impression that they were actually trackside in the country hosting the race, although they always stopped short of saying so in order not to mislead. But they definitely never said they weren’t.
One Sunday, Hunt made a monumental cock-up as he and Walker were sitting in front of the screen commentating live at Shepherd’s Bush on the 1991 South African Grand Prix that was taking place in Kyalami, 4,500 miles away. Suddenly and for no reason, Hunt launched into a withering attack on the evils of the white South African government. Walker remembers: “He was fired up about apartheid and we were about halfway through and James suddenly starts banging on about the evils of apartheid, which wasn’t at all relevant to the South African Grand Prix and wasn’t conducive to good relations between South Africa and Britain, exemplified by the BBC.”
It was politically provocative material, and Wilkin ordered Hunt to get back to the subject of the race, and Hunt did, ending his diatribe by saying: “Anyway, thank God we’re not there.”
Wilkin and Walker just hung their heads in despair as Hunt looked quizzically at them, not realising that he had blown their cover.
Another tricky moment was at the Australian Grand Prix in 1985, which was recounted by Murray Walker in his autobiography. The host broadcaster, Channel 9, were making maximum efforts and Walker and Hunt were also doing the race commentary for Channel 9 as well as the BBC. Its show was produced by David Hill, one of Australia’s top TV executives. The qualifying was being broadcast for Channel 9’s benefit, and was not on the BBC.
Hunt took an instant dislike to Hill and was sulking when Walker handed him the microphone during qualifying. Hunt put the microphone down and simply said: “I’ve got nothing to say.”
The producer quickly switched to a commercial break and Hill, the consummate professional, just leaned across to where Hunt was sitting, looked him in the eye and said: “Pick the fucking thing up and say something.” Hunt, not used to such direct talk, looked at Hill and did as he was told. After he had got over his surprise, Hunt started seething in his seat. When the session was over, Hunt approached Hill and said: “I’d like a word with you. I’ve never been spoken to like th
at by anyone in the whole of my life and I don’t like it.” Hill replied: “I don’t give a fuck what you like, as far as I’m concerned you’re a hired hand, and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.”
The tense situation between Hunt and Hill continued over the years and only ended when Hill was posted to the UK to become head of Sky Sports. Walker witnessed all this and was mildly amused by it, particularly by Hunt’s discomfort at being forced to work with Hill: “We were never the greatest mates out of the box because we were so different, but as the years rolled by he changed, very much for the better as far as I was concerned, and I must have too. We both mellowed.”
John Hogan is adamant that the difficulties were just part of the creative process and that Hunt was one of the finest sports commentators ever: “James was the only driver I’ve ever seen who had the vaguest idea about what it actually takes to be a racing driver. Others, like Niki, could say so, and so might be good. But they couldn’t tell you why. James’ big strength was that he could articulate the game. More than anyone, James had that ability to articulate and communicate. That’s why he was such an outstanding TV commentator.”
Ian Phillips agrees with Hogan: “He became incredibly good in the commentary box, he was intelligent, he understood what was going on and he made the effort. He wandered round the paddock, saw and spoke to the people.”
Martin says: “For all his laid-back irreverence, James could be intensely serious when the moment demanded. That was what made him such a good commentator. His act was simple enough really: A great performance received tribute, a poor one rebuke.” Martin was often amazed at the expertise Hunt brought to the job: “He would poke his head out of the commentary box, cock an ear and listen to the engine note of a passing car.”
There was no better example of that expertise as when he was describing the duals between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in the late eighties. At the German Grand Prix, at the of the Prost and Senna battles, he said: “To run at the front in Grand Prix racing, and to stay there, is mentally exhausting. The brain gets tired before the body does. I mean, you’ve only got to look at some of the geriatrics tooling around nowadays to see who’s got tired brains.” The then producer Roger Moody braced himself as he expected Hunt to name the drivers he considered to have ‘tired brains’. But he didn’t, and Moody breathed a sigh of relief.
But Hunt didn’t always get it right. One of his last commentaries was for the European Grand Prix at Donington Park on 11th April 1993. It was pouring with rain and, during the build up to the race, Hunt forecast that there would not be a lot of overtaking in such appalling, difficult wet weather conditions. He couldn’t have been more wrong, and the first lap proved to be the finest exhibition of overtaking mastery in Formula One history, with Ayrton Senna starting the race in fifth and overtaking Michael Schumacher, Karl Wendlinger, Damon Hill and Alain Prost on a single lap to lead into lap two, and then to go on to win the race.
Regardless of that, when he died, Hunt was regarded as being unmatched in his analysis of Formula One racing by Nigel Roebuck, who knows a thing or two about Formula One himself.
According to Roebuck, Hunt could never be accused of artificially romanticising Formula One, of which today’s commentators are often guilty. Hunt told Roebuck in an interview: “I won’t compromise myself by saying things I don’t mean.” After thinking about that statement, he added: “What tends to happen, in fact, is that I compromise myself by saying exactly what I think.”
Jonathan Martin, who rose to be head of sport at the BBC in 1981 and is now enjoying his retirement, recalls: “James was able to communicate his experience, and he could communicate. I’d say he was one of the top broadcasters of his generation, and I’m not saying that because he’s dead. I used to say that while he was alive.”
Peter Scudamore, a former jockey who commentated on horse racing for the BBC when it had the rights, was quoted as saying: “I hope over the years I’ll get to be as good as Richie Benaud or James Hunt or Geoff Boycott.” It was praise indeed.
Televised sport probably never had as great a combination as Walker and Hunt – neither then nor since. Even Mark Wilkin would probably admit that the combination of Hunt and Walker was unmatched, and puts the pair’s successors in the shade.
At the time that James Hunt made his television debut, only cricket’s Richie Benaud had successfully made the transition, and most people had forgotten he used to be a player.
Hunt became the first top British sportsman to go into television, and he paved the way for a whole swathe of retired sportsmen and women to become highly paid presenters and commentators. His BBC contract was then said to be worth US$70,000 a year, and was certainly the third most expensive single personnel item on BBC Sport’s profit and loss account after David Coleman and Harry Carpenter. He was up there with Morecambe and Wise and other top people on television in the seventies.
Only John McEnroe, Gary Lineker, Geoff Boycott and David Gower spring to mind as truly comparable, great sports commentators. Would Hunt eventually have done a Gary Lineker and become a household staple earning millions? Mark Wilkin believes so, and he also believes that Hunt would have been able to restore his fortunes as one of the BBC’s top salaried presenters, earning as much as he had when he was a driver.
Wilkin says: “We paid him a fortune but he was a world champion, you know, and we hadn’t hired people like that before.”
That fortune was paid back many times during those glory years of 1980 and 1993.
CHAPTER 39
Goodbye Baby Jane
The end of the affair
Once he was back in England, and as 1981 wore on, the novelty of being a retired racing driver soon faded. Hunt began to experience withdrawal symptoms and he became increasingly restless. And when he became restless, his consumption of alcohol went up accordingly. Jane Birbeck also found herself drinking too much. The depression caused by his skiing injuries, and the subsequent complications, had fatally wounded their relationship, and a parting of the ways was now only a matter of time.
Even the solution always came back to the same problem: apart from his job at the BBC, which effectively occupied him for only 50 days of the year, he had nothing to do. As he freely admitted: “Having nothing to do made me feel very frustrated. It’s not easy for a man of my energetic disposition to sit around twiddling my thumbs.”
He also realised, rather belatedly, that he was not cut out to be a businessman: his nightclub and squash club were absorbing his cash and showing no signs of making a profit. He and his brother Peter decided to exit the businesses, and, selling his shares back to his partners in both ventures, he made a loss on both. However, his successful property venture with Horsley continued.
Predictably, the farming experiment at Park Farm was also quickly over. But the booming property market meant that, after just a year and a half of ownership, the farm was worth much more than he had paid for it. He had paid UK£1 million and sold it off in two lots for close to UK£1.25 million. When that was done, he moved back to London full time with Jane. He went to Formula One races in Europe every other weekend, and his only other activity was promotional work for Olympus Cameras and Marlboro. For reasons best known to himself, Peter Hunt had dispensed with the services of the CSS agency and, with it, the chance of other promotional contracts.
The BBC commentating role was vital in maintaining Hunt’s sanity, as it gave him a sense of purpose. But against that, he had fallen out of love with the sport. Now that he was no longer a driver, he disliked being in the Formula One paddock. The care-free atmosphere that had always prevailed in the paddock was now replaced with a cold-edged business one. He was annoyed that the female groupies no longer had access to the venue. The groupies had been his main source of sex, and now that they were gone, so too was much of the appeal of being there. As he said: “With the modern pass system, there aren’t any women around and you have to go outside.” He had become so used to having casual sex with women at the back of
empty pit garages, that he resented the new rules intensely. Having to search for girls outside the protected paddock fences, he found that, even though he had retired, people still treated him as a driver. He explained: “What really made it particularly unpleasant was that people, especially the general public, were still treating me like a driver. This was specifically one of the things I was trying to get away from. So there I was, walking back into the fire, having just got out of the frying pan.”
Outside the paddock, he found larger quantities of girls who wanted to sleep with him, but the quality was considerably poorer. Nevertheless, during the summer of 1981, he was chronically unfaithful to Jane Birbeck. They had been together for close to six years and Jane had miscarried nine times during that period. They had, by then, given up hope of a baby. In the end, she was glad. As the incompatibility became readily apparent, she became anxious to leave the relationship. But that was easier said than done as their lives were so completely intertwined.
She also realised she was on the way to having an alcohol dependency, and she would not be able to stop drinking whilst she was going out with him. And as much as she loved him, she yearned to get back to a normal life.
She had always overlooked his infidelities, as there were just too many of them, and she accepted him for what he was. As long as she didn’t specifically know about them, she was okay about it. But she stopped going to races because she could no longer look people in the eye.
