Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  Meanwhile, Hunt did everything he could to earn money, including as many promotional days as he could, albeit now at a somewhat reduced rate. He was always asking Mark Wilkin for improvements to his BBC contract, saying he needed the money. Wilkin helped if he could – often inadvertently. He signed off expenses he knew Hunt hadn’t incurred to try and help him out of a chronic mess. Hunt knew nothing of this, of course, and he thought his expense fiddling was going by unnoticed, but Wilkin was aware of it. Wilkin says: “He was always complaining he hadn’t got any money, but all through it I had huge respect for him and it grew into a huge fondness.”

  To raise money, Hunt licensed his name to a venture called the ‘James Hunt Racing Centre’, which had cost US$3 million to set up. The centre was effectively a leisure race track with small identical single seater race cars designed for the corporate market for staff and client away-days. It was all based around a private track in Milton Keynes. He was paid UK£50,000 for the use of his name, plus royalties. But these didn’t amount to much as the venture quickly went bust. The idea was ahead of its time, and ex racing driver Jonathan Palmer later took up the concept and set up Bedford Autodrome based on the same idea and made millions. Hunt continued to raise money any way he could and eventually his beloved budgerigars had to be sold. He got UK£45,000 for them.

  He also took any journalistic work he could find. He wrote an internationally syndicated newspaper column and worked with a new friend called Gerald Donaldson, who later became his biographer. It paid him over US$1,000 a week. Stirling Moss remembers it well: “When he lost all his money all of a sudden, he needed to work.”

  His meeting with Donaldson was accidental and fortuitous. He bumped into him in the Silverstone car park. The encounter was marked when Hunt told Donaldson he had read his earlier biography of Gilles Villeneuve and said he had found it an emotionally challenging read. He congratulated Donaldson on it.

  Donaldson immediately suggested that he might want to consider his own biography, but Hunt nixed the idea straightaway: “No, no time for that, but why don’t we work together?” And so they did. Donaldson became his collaborator for his syndicated newspaper columns, which appeared all over the world and were highly lucrative for both men.

  And so began a highly enjoyable three years of co-writing, as Donaldson says: “We did them on the Monday and they were due on the Tuesday. 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. It was a pretty influential column in those times.”

  Hunt also got lucky with a lucrative promotional contract from Shell Oil. Shell sensed that his Texaco days were now a distant memory for most people and that it could use him very effectively to sell more petrol and oil, just as Texaco had many years earlier. Unfortunately, Eric Morecambe was now dead, so that golden partnership could not be recreated.

  His old friend David Gray believes that Hunt handled his financial reversals with considerable maturity: “James was careful with his money and he always had a fantastically broad bat, so he never had any sort of self-pity. His attitude was ‘shit happens’ and that was pretty much what he thought. He could always earn money; he was a good-looking bloke.”

  Publicly, Hunt was confident he could rebuild his fortune, as he told a group of journalists: “In the long run money buys freedom – the right to do exactly what you like – and that’s what I shall buy myself when I retire.” But as he said the words, he leant down to touch some wood.

  In truth, he was by no means sure he would be able to recover from the financial calamity that had befallen him.

  But out of the travails eventually some good did emerge. With far less money in his pocket, Hunt’s drinking subsided considerably. He simply couldn’t afford it. He also admitted for the first time that he was probably an alcoholic.

  He also slowly began to realise he had to give up smoking and reduce his marijuana consumption. To help him do it, he began to read voraciously on how to cure addictions and the consequences of an addictive personality. The more he read, the more he recognised himself. He also finally realised he was a sex addict, long before the condition was ever recognised publicly. It was also the age when people were dying of AIDS, and he realised that casual sex was now dangerous and that he needed to take more precautions.

  He also started some brutal fitness programmes. After a heavy workout, he would take a hot shower and then jump into a tub of ice-cold water. The brutal process was intended to strengthen the immune system and libido. He also stopped using soap and deodorant, allowing his body to clean itself naturally. He became a ‘chinese herbalist’ and drank what he called ‘funny tea,’ a mixture of crushed ginger, lemon juice, honey and hot water.

  Hogan says: “He straightened himself out by absolute willpower. The strength of character of the man enabled him to get out of it. He cut out the cigarettes, the dope and drugs, the booze and the womanising, and his sense of priorities became more well-balanced.”

  Niki Lauda said: “He he got himself out of the shit completely. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t drink. I think one day he just woke and said: ‘Shit. I can’t go on like this.’ He realised this is not the way he wanted to go on, so he was completely clean and clear. This strength was unbelievable for me.”

  And with the new, more sober regime, a new mood overtook him. A substantially better mood prevailed. Hunt also got back into fitness by buying an old bicycle, and he started cycling into central London from Wimbledon, stripped to the waist and carrying clothes in a haversack for when he arrived. He cycled everywhere.

  The only aspect of Hunt’s life that he didn’t reform was his mode of dress. That was apparent on his first visit to Shell’s headquarters for a meeting with Shell’s top managers; he turned up on his bicycle, in shorts and trainers. When the doorman asked him if he had found a place to park his car, he asked if he could put his bicycle behind the security desk.

  It was the new James Hunt. As Stirling Moss assessed: “With James, he needed to run out of money before he pulled himself together.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Helen’s arrival sparks a financial personal revival 1990–1993

  Light in the dark tunnel again

  As 1989 came to a close, James Hunt found himself in radically changed circumstances. He literally had no money; none at all. His only solution to the problem had been a motor racing comeback, and that had failed. Added to that, Britain was in the grip of a recession and property prices had collapsed. As the potential to make money disappeared, his property development company with Bubbles Horsley also wound down. Margaret Thatcher was about to fall, and interest rates were on their way up to 14 per cent. His biggest problem was servicing the loans he had been forced to take out to fund his Lloyds’ losses and the divorce. The interest payments and maintenance he paid to Sarah were taking all his money, and he had less than UK£500 a week to live on.

  It was by no means enough, and he was forced to borrow money from friends, including Bernie Ecclestone. One day, desperate, he rung Ecclestone and asked him for a loan. Ecclestone asked: “When do you need it?” To which Hunt replied: “Right now.” And he meant right now. Ecclestone rang up to his personal accountant at his offices at Princes Gate in Knightsbridge, and asked him to arrange for UK£5,000 in cash to be left in an envelope at reception for Hunt to collect an hour later. Hunt cycled into London, collected it, took it to his bank and deposited it so his bills would be met.

  Money was desperately short, and this was reflected by the difficulties he had getting his Austin A35 van through its MOT test. The van needed some welding done on the chassis, which was going to cost UK£200, and Hunt simply didn’t have the money to get it done. As the van was a necessity, he panicked and rang his old friend Tony Dron for help. Dron arranged for one of his race mechanics to do it for him on credit. Dron remembers: “He said to me: ‘I have been broke many times in my life – I just get on with it.’”

  Th
ere were many other incidents like that, and Hunt just about managed to cover his bills and avoid a financial meltdown. He was being overtaken by the high interest rates, and the situation looked hopeless. But this cloud had a silver lining, even if it wasn’t apparent to him at the time.

  Hunt’s drop in income proved to be his salvation. It made him wake up and take a good look at himself and the world around him. He realised that, since 1973, for nigh on 17 years, he had been living in a complete fantasy world where money didn’t matter because he had so much of it. The unlimited supply of money had enabled him to indulge any fantasy he liked, whether it was good for him or not – and usually, it was not.

  Now that he had no money, he would no longer drink himself to oblivion every night. He certainly couldn’t afford cocaine, and even marijuana was off the menu. He cut down the number of cigarettes he smoked to less than 20 a day.

  He was literally forced to go straight, and as soon as he cut down on the drink, drugs and cigarettes, he started to feel much healthier. He had never felt as good as he did after just one month without alcohol. It was at that moment that he resolved to give them up altogether. The more progress he made, the more voraciously he read his self-help books and became focused on overcoming his addictions.

  His financial problems had ultimately ended up saving him, and he began the last three years of his life in better shape than at any point since he was 17.

  He told Nigel Roebuck, explaining the change in his outlook and his new lifestyle: “Quite simple, really, the tail was starting to wag the dog.”

  He didn’t try to hide his straitened financial circumstances from anybody and, when asked, he admitted he was broke. John Hogan remembers some very pleasant times after what he calls ‘The Reformation’: “We had many pleasant lunches and dinners at a restaurant called Drones, and he used to come out skiing at Verbier with his kids. He found he was suddenly much happier and much fitter. He discovered that life was no different driving around in an old van than it was in a large Mercedes, or indeed even pedalling everywhere on a bicycle.” Stirling Moss recalls: “When his car was up on bricks, he said to me: ‘That’s how it is darling, you know. It’s nobody’s fault, nobody owes me anything, that’s fine.’”

  Ian Phillips was delighted to see the change in his friend: “He was only 40 and I think he suddenly asked himself: ‘What am I doing with my life?’ and he cleaned up his act. The drugs had gone, the drink, and he didn’t even smoke.”

  Professor Sid Watkins, Formula One’s doctor, says it is a misconception that Hunt actually gave up drinking. He didn’t, but what he did do was learn to control it. Says Watkins: “At no time was he not drinking at all, but he was able control it and we enjoyed a few drinks together.” Likewise, Nigel Roebuck, who enjoyed drinks with Hunt on his last flight back from Australia in 1993, recounted to Gerald Donaldson: “I asked him if he was off the wagon. James said: ‘No, I’ve allowed myself to have a bit of fun.’ And when I asked him if he really could stop it, he said: ‘Yes, I really can.’”

  When he dined with Murray Walker in Portugal in 1991, Walker offered him wine but Hunt declined, saying: “I’ve stopped, I’m off it, Walker.” Walker asked why and he replied simply: “I think I’ve had my share.”

  To say Walker was surprised would be an understatement, as he later told Christopher Hilton: “I’m no psychologist, but my analysis is this: one, James suddenly had a driving need to earn money; two, the need existed because he had two things that mattered enormously to him – his sons; three, he had reformed because I suspect he knew or had been told his health was at risk if he didn’t knock off the drink and other things; And four, possibly more important than anything else, he had a good woman behind him.”

  Walker says he noticed the physical change in Hunt straightaway: “James changed physically and he changed mentally. Before he had been dour, sleepy-eyed and flaccid, but he now became lean, ruddy-faced and, most significantly, bright-eyed. Before, you felt he wasn’t with you or was seeing you through a veil. All of a sudden, he was very much there.”

  Walker was very enthusiastic about the change, as he told Gerald Donaldson: “He became, to me, an altogether different, enormously likeable chap whom I greatly respected. A much more charming and jolly chap who actually began to communicate with me, whereas before we had been talking to each other through millions of people by means of television, but not really communicating. James was now positively demanding the microphone, and making significant and interesting contributions to the whole presentation, and we were now producing, in my opinion, an incomparably better product.”

  Walker also remembers some carefree days in Portugal at Grand Prix time at the Estalagem Muchaxo in Guincho, up the coat from Cascais: It became an annual event with his two sons in the last few years of his life: “It was a very unusual place at the end of a superb bay at the extreme western edge of Europe, and I was immensely impressed with a side of James, as a warmhearted dad, that I had never seen before. He was marvellous, marvellous.’

  And then there was Helen.

  Helen Dyson was 25 and working as a waitress in a restaurant called ‘Hamburger Heaven’, a posher version of McDonald’s, with waitress service. Hunt loved eating hamburgers, and often visited the establishment after his separation from Sarah. He gradually became more and more enamoured of the young blonde who served him, with her bright personality and a dazzling but warm smile. It gradually emerged she was an artist, serving hamburgers by day and painting murals by night. She was also studying for a fine arts degree in fabric design at Middlesex Polytechnic. It turned out that she was also his neighbour. Her parents, Mike and Molly Dyson, lived on Wimbledon Common. He learned that she came from was a good Catholic family and that her father was an accountant.

  In normal circumstances, he simply would have asked her out and bedded her. But he really liked her and, by then, he was 43-years-old and overly conscious of the age gap. He was also waiting for his divorce to be finalised. He delayed making any move until that was all done.

  As soon as it was, almost to the day, he asked her out. They went to dinner the following Saturday. She didn’t know anything about motor racing, but had guessed from people’s reactions in the restaurant – he had been asked to sign autographs – that he was reasonably well known.

  But in the days before the internet and Google, she couldn’t really know who James Hunt was. She was still at school when he was winning his world championship. She says: “Had I known who he was, I might not have had the courage to say ‘yes’. I thought he was some charming village man and that it was sweet of him to ask me out.”

  She claims now that she never asked him about his past and only learned of it in the obituaries and many articles published after his death. She says: “I’d have run a mile had I known that when we started seeing each other. But I think, to be honest, James was ashamed of it; he’d moved on. I didn’t know the extent of it, I didn’t really want to know – it wasn’t relevant to our life.”

  Helen was entirely different from his previous girlfriends. For a start, she wasn’t a big socialiser. She explains: “I didn’t like all that partying and excess, so he didn’t inflict it on me. I’m very much a suburbs girl. I couldn’t have managed all that. And maybe James liked the fact that I was so normal.”

  Helen had an entirely different experience from Hunt’s other significant partners, Taormina, Suzy, Jane and Sarah, as she says: “I couldn’t have gone out with a man who was a womaniser. But the man I knew wasn’t like that. He wanted to settle down. He couldn’t have been more devoted and loving.” She didn’t recognise the man described in the obituaries, the manic-depressive, drug-taking drunk was not the boyfriend she had.

  Shortly after his death, Helen spoke candidly to Gerald Donaldson and described her first date with Hunt: “I was in a very jolly mood. It was bit awkward at first and the conversation was stilted, but I really began to fancy him and became completely infatuated.”

  She discovered he was a
lso a Catholic, a convert, but a lapsed one. He had converted to Catholicism when he married Suzy Miller – but not with any enthusiasm.

  On that first date, he confessed his past to her; although obviously not all the details. She admitted she was horrified by what he did reveal. When he told her he had been married twice, she immediately began to wonder what her parents might think, even though they were only on their first date and might not even have a second. The little he told her about what Gerald Donaldson described as “his decadent past” worried her. Helen didn’t want to be anyone’s bimbo or mistress, which was why she was single when she met him. She had high standards and, as the evening progressed, became hesitant about seeing him a second time. But she did, and by the third date, she was utterly charmed by him and was hooked. It was now too late for second thoughts.

  At the time, Mike Dennett, an old friend of Hunt’s, was living with him in Wimbledon. For a long time, he was the only one of his friends to have met Helen. Dennett told Donaldson: “Helen came around to the house more and more often, and he just seemed to light up in her company. But he also seemed less sure of himself.” They quickly fell in love and began what was a very happy three-year relationship, in which they often discussed marriage and children. They would undoubtedly have married, but Hunt simply couldn’t afford it.

  Helen remained anxious about him meeting her parents, and it was some months before the 25- year-old took her 43-year-old boyfriend round to her family home. But any fears about the age gap were completely unfounded. Her parents didn’t even register it. Neither Mike nor Molly Dyson batted an eyelid when she brought him home to meet them. They knew nothing about him, and took him at face value. Helen says: They didn’t know about motor racing, and they weren’t the sort to read gossip.”