by Tom Rubython
In the wedding pictures, Hunt looks somewhat dishevelled in a borrowed tie and Sarah is wearing a curious green wedding dress that makes her look like a morris man. She had cut her long blond hair into a short bob, fashionable at the time, and dyed it a darker shade. They looked a very odd couple indeed as they stood on the steps of Marlborough registry office. The wedding day had none of the glamour of his 1974 marriage to Suzy Miller, and certainly Sarah Lomax would not be running off into the arms of Richard Burton.
Stirling Moss, who met all Hunt’s wives and girlfriends over the years, agrees: “Suzy was absolutely drop dead gorgeous and she was exactly what I thought James would have married. Sarah was not the one that all the guys were trying to grab, I mean, ‘cor! where did you get that one?’” Susie Moss disagrees with her husband: “Maybe he wanted a more real person. Maybe he wanted a family now, maybe he wanted to settle down, maybe he wanted a house and kids. You know, there must have been reasons.”
But that day, it was obvious the golden boy had fallen far from his former gilded perch. Luckily, the wedding photos received hardly any attention in the next day’s newspapers as editors had weightier issues with which to contend. The wedding day was somewhat overshadowed when news filtered through to the reception that there had been a car bomb attack by the IRA outside Harrods department store in London’s Knightsbridge. Three police officers and three other people had been killed and 75 were left injured, some of them seriously.
With the marriage to Sarah Lomax came a new and formidable set of in-laws. Hunt had developed a predilection for collecting formidable in-laws. Both Suzy Miller’s and Jane Birbeck’s parents had been highly accomplished people and fully signed up members of the British establishment. The Lomax family was no exception. Ian and Rosemary Lomax were both accomplished horse and sports people. Her father was a master of foxhounds and a notable cricketer at county level. Her mother trained race horses and was a top point-to-point competitor in English competition and had won 41 races in the fifties. They had married in 1953 and had established a small training yard at Baydon, near Lambourn in Berkshire, which Rosemary ran whilst her husband played cricket. They lived nearby, across the border in Wiltshire. Three children followed: David, Michael and Sarah.
Both parents became famous when her father played cricket for England and her mother became the first woman officially to train a winner at Royal Ascot. Her success came with a horse called Precipice Wood, which won the King George V Stakes in 1969 and the 1970 Gold Cup. The Gold Cup success was much earned, as the horse had been stung by a bee shortly before the race. It had bolted only to be recovered, drenched in sweat and exhausted, but he still won. Rosemary was also a successful trainer of jump horses, and her horses competed in the Grand National. In those days, the training licence was in the name of her husband since it was not until 1967 that the Jockey Club granted permits to women, at which time she took out a licence in her own name. The perfect family came unravelled when her parents divorced in 1974.
After the wedding and honeymoon, Hunt and Lomax just carried on partying where they had left off. She told Donaldson: “James said he married a wild, drug-taking sex maniac.” They drank, they smoked and they indulged in recreational drugs in a way that perfectly matched eighties hedonism at its best. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they gave each other the same nickname: ‘The Beast.’ It was totally appropriate for the way both of them behaved. They were both beasts, with the money and the ambition to indulge their fantasies. They chain-smoked joints and woke to glasses of vodka by the side of the bed to help them face the day.
They were two people totally out of control and with too many hanger-on friends who indulged them. Their parties at the 1930s house, right by the home of the tennis championships and on the edge of Wimbledon Common, went on until dawn every Friday and Saturday night. A big whirlpool bath was installed in the garden, and the high jinks in that bath can only be imagined. Certainly the neighbours recall naked whirlpool bath parties in the garden, which were rather shocking for suburban Wimbledon.
In truth, all sorts of things went on at that Wimbledon house during that period. She once told another famous racing driver who raced with Hunt in the seventies: “I can walk into a room and immediately identify the girls who like to do tricks.” Sarah said: “I was in a continual state of excitement, never pausing for thought.”
There is no question that the two of them were extraordinarily close for a period. Although he later gave interviews saying that his last girlfriend, Helen Dyson, was the only girl he ever loved, it simply wasn’t true. For a period of two years, when they first met and married, he was totally in love with Sarah and obsessed and besotted with her wild ways. In 1984, he took her to the Monaco Grand Prix, where the two of them had the most marvellous time. She remembers: “He took me into the tunnel and said: ‘You ought to experience this.’ This is the closest ever you’ll get to what it feels like to be in a racing car going at that speed. And as a driver, you have to be completely focused.’ He wanted me to experience it.”
She also found she liked motor racing: “The only time I’ve known adrenaline is out hunting, and you don’t think about anything else at all. You can’t. Imagine that in motor racing: it’s got to be the fastest, most dangerous sport. When you’re standing in the tunnel at Monte Carlo and if you’re having the worst crisis of your life, you’re going to forget that crisis.”
Sarah loved being Mrs James Hunt but found she became totally dependent on her husband. Whilst she thrived at home and was in her element in an environment in which she felt safe, she didn’t like being the centre of attention at the formal functions she was obliged to attend as his wife. As she explained: “I hated parties, too shy, couldn’t cope at all. To walk into a room full of people still fills me with absolute fear.” But she coped, as she said: “It was different when I was on James’ arm, someone charming and ravishingly good-looking, because everybody wanted to help.”
But many of Hunt’s friends simply didn’t like her and didn’t think she was good enough for him. When they invited him to an event or a party, they would write on the invitation: ‘James Hunt plus one’, hoping he would bring someone else. But he didn’t, and at the beginning of their marriage he had resolved to be a good husband and faithful to her. She remembered: “At one party, I was introduced to the hostess to whom I said: ‘Hello, I’m “plus one”’. She didn’t know what I meant so I said: ‘Well, you addressed the card to James Hunt “plus one”, and I’ve been Mrs Hunt for three years.’ I was livid.”
But the first year was a good one as the partying continued. She admitted: “I depended on him 100 per cent. James and I, two very shy, very excitable souls. He was always a very young man in terms of outlook; young in spirit.”
And therein lay the problem. But even before the problem became apparent, there were to be children – as Tom and Freddie came on the scene.
CHAPTER 41
Family life, Freddie, Tom... and the budgerigars
A false dawn as fatherhood beckons
James Hunt was always very good with children, just as he was with animals. He had an innate understanding of them and, from the age of 28, he had wanted his own. He first started trying with Jane Birbeck. If Jane had been able to get pregnant, it is likely that the course of his life would have been radically different.
His understanding of children came from his skills understanding people and situations. And much of that came from his experience with his own family in his youth. The Hunts were unusual in that they were essentially two families in one. His mother, Sue, had arranged her child rearing in two halves. She had Sally, James and Peter first and, ten years later, gave birth to Georgina, David and Timothy. It created an unusual situation. When James was 20, he effectively had three youngsters to look after. Caring for and providing guidance to Georgina, David and Timothy gave him enormous experience and confidence with young children; something few other 20-year-olds would have cultivated.
When he gave up working to
become a full-time race driver, he had plenty of time to spend with his younger siblings, especially in their school holidays. And he was effectively an uncle to them rather than a brother. When his brothers and sisters were unhappy, he could always talk it through with them at their level. His mother recalls: “He just knew how to do it.” His skills as a communicator probably worked best on children and, according to his mother, just a few words from him could transform a child’s mood. He was incredibly good at it, and that experience would pay enormous dividends when his own children arrived.
Taormina Rich, his first girlfriend, who witnessed his relationship with his younger siblings, says: “He really enjoyed looking after them, and just seeing the way he behaved with his little brothers and sisters, you knew it was instinctive in him. He was always going to be a good father.”
The Hunts began trying for a baby soon after Christmas 1984, and, late in January 1985, Sarah announced she was pregnant. It suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world and everyone was delighted that, at the age of 37, James Hunt was to be a father for the first time after so many years of trying. When it finally happened, he was surprised. After Jane Birbeck’s many miscarriages, he had secretly wondered whether he was destined to be a father.
Initially, the decision to have children came about as part of a plan to rescue the marriage which, at the time, was going the way of all his other relationships. After just a year of marriage and non-stop hedonistic activity, Hunt had begun to wander and his vows of faithfulness and monogamy had worn off. He had also fallen out of love with his wife and began to see sides of her he had never before noticed. But it was not mutual. She was more in love with him than ever, and just as desperately in need of him as ever. But the marriage had begun to disintegrate before their very eyes.
Sensing this and worried about both their parents’ reactions to a failed marriage, the couple decided to consult marriage counsellors. Couples’ counselling was increasingly common in those days, as the divorce rate in England was alarmingly on the rise.
One of the possible options suggested to them by the counsellors was to start a family. It was not an easy decision, and they both realised that their lifestyles were not conducive to family life at all.
But they took the advice and Sarah stopped her contraception and soon fell pregnant.
To ease the housekeeping duties and prepare for the baby, Hunt didn’t do the conventional thing by hiring a nanny or a housekeeper. He hired a mixture of a valet cum houseman, gardener and butler called Winston, who hailed from Jamaica and was almost as eccentric as his new employer. Hunt had met him when he was a taxi driver – he had lost his licence for speeding whilst taking Hunt to an appointment for which he was late.
Winston was in his early forties and came to the house every day. He began addressing Hunt as “boss” and was an immediate hit. Visitors to the house remember Winston as being a very charming and warm man.
There was nothing Winston could not do, and one of his tasks was dropping off and picking up Hunt from nearby Heathrow airport on his many foreign trips. Winston was quickly absorbed into the family and gradually assumed the household tasks as Sarah progressed further in her pregnancy.
The pregnancy was difficult in its later stages and Sarah went into St Teresa’s Hospital in Wimbledon early to prepare for the birth. Situated on Wimbledon Downs, St Teresa’s was a specialist maternity hospital and a great place to have a baby.
But once there, despite her mother’s support, Sarah was frightened and felt alone. She was full of apprehension about childbirth and her ability to love her baby. Hunt recognised this and did everything he could to support her. Bizarrely, he brought a powerful stereo system and some of her favourite music into the hospital, which wasn’t popular with either the nurses or the other patients.
Hunt also did his best to reassure his wife, spending many hours at her bedside talking about the coming baby. Although they had opted not to know beforehand and wouldn’t have minded a boy or girl, they had a feeling it might be a boy and, if it was, they were to call him Tom. Sarah told Gerald Donaldson: “I asked James about whether I could love my baby and he said: ‘Don’t worry, Beast. God is a great designer and you will love that little thing when it is born.’ And he was so right.”
So the household was fully prepared when Tom Hunt arrived a few weeks early, on Thursday 12th September 1985. As it was the day James was due to go to the Belgian Grand Prix, it threw into disarray his plans to travel to Spa for the race.
Hunt was reported as saying after the birth: “I didn’t mind a boy or a girl, but Sarah is very pleased at having a boy. But it’s a daunting prospect as I have lived 37 years without responsibility.” Tom weighed five and a half pounds and was a very healthy baby. That was a relief, as Sarah was a heavy drinker and smoker before her pregnancy but had totally reformed for the eight months while she was carrying.
At Tom’s christening in Wimbledon, Bubbles Horsley did the honours as godfather. It was quite a tense ceremony, as Horsley was still angry with Tom’s father about an incident on an aeroplane a few weeks before.
Hunt was not much enamoured of his son as a baby. Although he could relate to children once they could communicate, he wasn’t so good with babies and spent much of the time away from home commentating on races, exhibiting his budgerigars and doing promotional work. He also found that being away was the best medicine for his very shaky marriage, which had not improved at all since the birth of Tom; the marriage counsellors had been wrong about that. If anything, it had become worse, with the normal postnatal problems and disruptions to the household.
Sarah recalls: “By the time the nine months had gone by and I’d gone through the process of giving birth, I was halfway changed to this new person. But James wasn’t changed, and that’s when things started to go wrong.”
So in October 1986, barely a year after Tom’s birth, Sarah announced that she was pregnant again. The second pregnancy was another attempt to improve their marriage and, in the process, round off the family. Hunt had always wanted many children and had no intention of Tom being an only child.
For some reason, they didn’t seem particularly welcome back at St Teresa’s – perhaps it was the loud music – so Freddie Hunt duly arrived at Mount Alvernia hospital in nearby Guildford on Wednesday 1st July 1987. Tom was just 22 months old, his father was 39 and his mother 28. Once again, the timing of the birth was very inconvenient. Hunt was about to leave for the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, which was followed by the British Grand Prix just a week later. Somehow, they all got through it and, when the season was over, Lord Hesketh did the honours as godfather.
James Hunt also had other things on his mind when his second son was born; he was approaching his 40th year. He was determined to mark his 40th birthday in style. The birthday party was always going to be a big affair and it didn’t disappoint, becoming the talk of Wimbledon for several months afterwards.
He celebrated with a lavish event at his home in Wimbledon. The garden was virtually covered in marquees, and everywhere there were tin baths of ice to keep the champagne cold. Unlike his wedding, this celebration was attended by most of his friends. Some 300 guests turned up on the night and packed the house and garden.
The party was designated fancy dress and the theme was, bizarrely, ‘bird or beast.’ Hunt was drunk before the party began and put on a kilt, under which he hung an actual salami-type 18-inch sausage, which poked out underneath the kilt. When the kilt was lifted, as it was many times during the evening, it was apparent that Hunt was wearing no underpants – and two sausages were revealed. It has to be said that many of the ladies who did the peeking seemed to have viewed the contents previously. Sarah was not best pleased, but then she hadn’t quite anticipated being surrounded by so many of her husband’s ex-girlfriends fluttering around in revealing outfits. She was wearing a budgerigar outfit with a feather wig and false beak.
The relevance of Sarah’s outfit was obvious, although her husband’s
was less so. Hunt told his guests that his outfit was meant to signify the famous racehorse Northern Dancer, who was now at stud. Canadian bred, Northern Dancer was the most successful sire in thoroughbred horse racing, and his offspring earned more money and won more major stakes races than those of any other.
The owners of Northern Dancer charged US$1 million each time he covered a mare. And Hunt told his guests that it was his hope, when he died and came back, to be a stud horse like Northern Dancer.
Legend has it that during the party, he may have got in some early practice. Certainly, no one would have been surprised if he did.
At the end of the party, he slumped on the bed still wearing the kilt and the salami sausage, and he awoke to find that Oscar had eaten most of it. Although Hunt said he had removed it before going to sleep, he later confessed that he hadn’t and was glad Oscar knew the difference between the sausage and ‘the real thing.’
Once the party was out of the way and the Formula One season over, Hunt concentrated on his parenting duties. The 40th birthday party really had been the of irresponsibility for parents with two young children and all the responsibilities that entailed. But it precisely defined the dilemma of this 40-year-old man and this 29-year-old woman and the excesses that drove them both. They were both Jekyll and Hyde characters, albeit in totally different ways. Both were truly excellent parents but highly irresponsible adults. The incident on the aeroplane that had so upset Bubbles Horsley truly reflected just how irresponsible Hunt could be. He was now drinking more and more as the marriage deteriorated.
As Sarah ruefully told Donaldson: “He would be partying and I would be panicking, worrying about getting up to breastfeed at four in the morning. I would say we can’t party but he would say: ‘Don’t be silly, Beast, of course we can. But I couldn’t do it. I just wanted to look after my babies.”
