Journallist and broadcaster Andrew Marriott writes with a light and humorous touch about a multi-faceted career covering some six decades.
He reckons he was the youngest ever person to report a Formula 1 race for a national publication and now the oldest person to regularly report from the pit lanes of Le Mans, Daytona and Silverstone.
He has covered every aspect of car and bike racing from Formula 1 to NASCAR as well as World Championship motorcycle racing plus inshore and offshore powerboat racing. Along the way he has interviewed thousands of competitors and, indeed, show business personalities . He says that he has interviewed or worked with every Formula 1 World Champion bar Farina, Ascari and Hawthorn.
He has been driven across Buenos Aires by Fangio, starred in a hilarious TV blooper episode with Mario Andretti, judged competitions with James Hunt, provided a flat floor for Jody Scheckter to sleep on, played charades with Jochen Rindt, persuaded Denny Hulme to go truck racing, covered up for Alan Jones after an altercation with a van driver and door-stepped Alain Prost as he came out of a Monaco portaloo. Ayrton Senna secretly signed his Lotus contract in front of Andrew but subsequently stood him up when the Brazilian decided that taking a ride in F16 jet was a better option than a Marriott interview.
Add to that ghosting road tests and much more from motor cycle world champion Barry Sheene, working with George Harrison on a sponsorship deal and for 25 years interviewing the Le Mans 24 Hour winners at the end of the great race. He says he is not sure how many times he has covered the French classic but at least 50 and he has worked at over 130 different race tracks. He came up with the idea of a feature film about Steve McQueen which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is currently working on a follow-up.
Add to this a career in sports management and sponsorship embracing such events as the Hong Kong-Beijing Rally, various major Truck Races and the Birmingham Superprix. He has launched racing cars everywhere from London’s Albert Hall to a former carpet warehouse in Didcot. Add to that a brief career as a rally co-driver which included winning internationals in South Africa and the UK and finishing up stuck in a mud hole in Paraguay.
So he has plenty to write about and he says he has enjoyed nearly all of it all but as the title suggests – Is There Much More of This?
It started as a daydream. Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor — acclaimed actor and self-confessed bike nut — noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the imageworld, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn’t get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called his fellow actor-slash-biker friend Charley Boorman and told him it was time to hit the road….
Beginning in London, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia; across the Pacific to Alaska; then down through Canada all the way to New York. Long Way Round is the result of their four-month, 20,000-mile joyride. Featuring original diary entries, travel maps, mileage charts, and dozens of photographs, this is a freewheeling, fully charged, and uproariously entertaining book about two world-famous individuals who chose the road not taken…and made the journey worthwhile.
From Aberdale to Wooler
From the forgotten Aberdale, of Llwynypia, Wales, to the ingeniously eccentric Wooler, of north-west London, British Motorcycles 1945-1965 offers alphabetical coverage – in no less than 600 pages – of British motorcycle makes of the period 1945-1965, among them great names such as AJS, BSA, Matchless, Norton, Royal Enfield, Triumph and Vincent.
The two decades covered by this book represent the final flowering of the motorcycle industry in Britain, a period when British bikes were shipped all over the world, when America discovered high-performance British twins and when ton-up boys vied with each other in feats of horrific daring. In the meantime, rush-hour roads resounded to the buzz and crackle of ride-to-work two-strokes, men hidden in cumbersome waterproof coats slogged along on unwieldy sidecar outfits, wife on the pillion, kids alongside, and courting couples, carefree, hugging tight, enjoyed a sunlit ride to the seaside or into the hills.
In this intensely detailed study, author Rinsey Mills gives the histories of the motorcycle manufacturers and then provides information on the models they produced, year by year, using original material from sales brochures for the illustrations, not only to identify the bikes and to highlight model changes and revisions, but also to give the flavour of the times when they were to be seen going about their business.
Whether your taste is for the obscure and the might-have-beens, for workaday two-strokes, nimble scramblers, thumping singles, ton-up twins or fiery road racers, all are here, offering an unrivaled store of knowledge and information as well as more than 1,500 illustrations that provide a powerful evocation of motorcycling in these two decades. The illustrations are accompanied by generous and informative captions which help to convey the strengths, weaknesses and character of the machines, as well as provide intriguing technical insights.
