Murray Walker: Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken

For the next 13 years, in addition to my developing advertising career, I would be my Dad’s number two as the only long-term father-and-son sports commentary team the BBC has ever had. That was entirely to do with motor bikes but, as the years rolled by, I would also cover, for both BBC and ITV, anything to do with motor sport: motor-cycle trials, scrambles and races of every type and class, truck racing, power boats, touring car racing, sports cars, rallycross, Formula Ford, Formula 3, Formula 3000, Formula 5000 and, of course, the pinnacle of them all, Formula 1.

It was here that I developed a reputation of being an enormously excitable chap who used colourful phrases but didn’t always get things right in his enthusiasm to communicate what he was seeing. Inevitably people remember my amusing ‘mistakes’ more than the factual comment, but importantly they found them endearing – and that didn’t do me any harm! Not so for others though, given my entirely justified reputation for the ‘Murray Walker Kiss of Death’. I would confidently predict something was going to happen and, dramatically, it wouldn’t. At the 1986 Australian Grand Prix Keke Rosberg came up to me and asked if he could have a word – a highly unusual move for an F1 driver.

‘This is my last race, Murray. I’m retiring after it.’

‘I know that, Keke, I’ve been talking about it for ages.’

‘Well, this being my last race I’m particularly anxious to do well in it.’

‘Of course you are, good luck to you my friend.’

‘Murray, if I am doing well, for Christ’s sake don’t say anything about it!’

He was leading the race, I said he was going to win his last event, and he got a puncture and retired.

Similarly, in 1993 the BBC did some technical fiddling that allowed me to talk to Damon Hill while he was actually qualifying on the track. I wasn’t going to risk breaking his concentration while he was working but right at the end of the session he took pole position and on his run-down lap I shouted out, ‘FANTASTIC Damon! POLE POSITION! Well done! You must be delighted!’

‘Thanks, Murray,’ came Damon’s reply, which was going out to the BBC’s vast worldwide audience, but as he went on to say how happy he was and how much he was looking forward to starting from the front in the race, I was horrified to see the word PROST appear above HILL on my timing monitor. In my excitement I had failed to spot that Alain had passed the start just before the flag went out and could therefore still do a hot lap that would count. To my acute embarrassment The Professor beat Damon’s time by a tenth of a second and snatched pole position from his team-mate.

‘Damon,’ I said. ‘That was the good news. The bad news is that you are now starting second. Alain’s just beaten you.’

I conveniently cannot remember what Damon said in the car but he came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Murray, do something for me will you?’

‘Anything, Damon. What is it?’

‘In future just keep your mouth shut, will you?!’

Another Williams success, Portugal 1990, was even more embarrassing. After a brilliant victory ahead of Senna and Prost, Nigel Mansell made his way to the interview room standing in the back of an open car, waving to the crowd, and hit his forehead on a steel beam. He staggered in and sat down as the cameras started rolling. ‘Nigel,’ I said. ‘First of all, will you carefully and slowly take your cap off. You’ve got an enormous bump on your head. Can you let them see it? Right up there’ … and stuck my outstretched finger right into the middle of it. It’s a clip that’s been shown dozens of times and it never fails to raise a laugh. I hope my life story is even half as entertaining … and rather less painful.

CHAPTER ONE A Proud Brummie (#ulink_9781b69a-d0cc-5d23-9c3d-ea91bbca40be)

People think of me primarily as a commentator and yes, to my continual amazement, I’ve been one for well over half a century. But for the first 59 years of my life it was very much a second string to my ‘proper job’ in advertising and to be honest I sort of blundered into it, partly out of desire and partly because of circumstances at the time. Did heredity play a part or was it just the environment in which I was brought up? It’s impossible to tell. But of one thing I’m sure. A lot of my characteristics come from my mother and maybe even more from my father.

My mother was the daughter of Harry Spratt, a well-to-do draper and gents outfitter (as they used to call them in the 1920s) who owned businesses in the market town of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. She had a pretty idyllic upbringing amidst a loving atmosphere in a fine home with servants, horses and stables, and she seems to have wanted for nothing. She was an extremely attractive woman, both physically and personally, had a very strong personality, was very much the belle of the local ball, very feminine and great fun. But she was also extremely bright, pragmatic and good with money, being a very nifty operator on the Stock Exchange. She created a wonderful home for me to grow up in, I loved her dearly and suspect that her influence resulted in me marrying as late as I did.

Into her life in the 1920s came Sergeant Graham William Walker, despatch rider, Royal Engineers, then convalescing at Leighton Buzzard after having been injured in France in World War One by a German shell. The son of William Walker of Aberdeen, Company Secretary of the Union Castle shipping line, and his wife Jessie, this young, attractive man (most attractive, even in hospital blues, according to my mother) was potty about motor bikes. He was also personable, had a highly developed sense of humour and couldn’t have done a dirty trick if he’d thought about it, so it’s not surprising my mother fell for him. His father, Grandpa Walker, I remember as a kind, gentle man with a fine white beard. His wife, who produced four sons and two daughters, was a dominant woman who ruled her family with a rod of iron and adored my father, her youngest son, probably because he was the only one who stood up to her. Sadly she seemed a rather unhappy woman, and after her husband’s death she spent most of her time wintering in Madeira and restlessly buying, moving into and then selling numerous expensive houses.

When my father set about wooing Elsie Spratt it wasn’t long before they were wed. And, the way these things happen, their marriage was followed by the arrival of 9lb 12oz Graeme Murray Walker on 10 October 1923. I was born at home at 214 Reddings Lane, Hall Green, Birmingham, for at that time my father was working there – so, like Nigel Mansell, I’m a Brummie and proud of it. I nearly killed my poor mother: at one point during her immensely long labour the doctor told my father, ‘They can’t both make it. One of them’s got to go. It’s the mother or the child. You’ve got to decide.’

‘No question,’ said Father, ‘it’s the child.’

Fortunately both of us survived, but my parents never tried for another. ‘I lost the blueprint,’ said my father. He subsequently told me that, while he certainly didn’t mind being a father, it had never been one of his great aims in life. My mother had always made the running and was keen to have another, but the fear of losing her had well and truly put him off.

I worshipped my father for he was a wonderful man. I called him ‘Daddy’ to his dying day, when I was in my thirties, but I frankly feel a bit of a twit doing so now. He was kind, generous, as honest as the day is long, a brilliant communicator and an immensely hard worker. Not a demonstrative man but a pillar of support if ever one was needed and never deviating in his loyalty to his beloved wife and son. But he was a terrible worrier. My mother used to say, ‘Tim worries if he hasn’t got something to worry about because if he hasn’t there must be something wrong.’ (‘Tim’ was her nickname for him – don’t ask me why.)

His passion was motor bikes. He joined the Royal Engineers as a despatch rider in World War One because of it and they dominated his life. But motor cycles were looked on very differently in those days. Incomes were vastly lower and so was the general standard of living: no central heating, no washing machines, no fridges, no fitted carpets; homes with telephones were highly unusual and television didn’t even exist. Cars were rare and for the wealthy. There were no interesting and exotic foreign foods, no wine-drinking and no credit cards. You were somebody if you had a motor bike and very much somebody if you had a motor bike and sidecar. So, as my Dad made an increasingly successful living through racing them and tuning them for others, I grew up in a very comfortable atmosphere dominated by motor bikes.

It was certainly an unusual childhood. Where the fathers of other children went to work in the morning, came home in the evening and were home at the weekends, mine was forever disappearing to race on the Continent, soon to reappear with some massive trophy, for he was very much one of the top men of his day. That being so you’d think I would either like or loathe what he did, but in truth I was pretty much unimpressed by it. When I think back on it I’m quite ashamed by my apathetic attitude, because he was a great man who achieved an enormous amount in what was far too short a life. He wore himself out editing a motor-cycle magazine and recruiting despatch riders for the army in World War Two, smoked too much and died in 1962 at only 66 years of age.

Conversely, my mother lived until she was a spirited 101. She had a home in the New Forest fairly near us and not long before she died I went to see her on one of my regular visits.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said, looking disapproving. ‘It’s time you had your hair cut.’

‘But I’ve hardly got any left, Mother.’

‘Well, what you have got is too long!’

So what did I do? I had it cut.

I’d give my eye teeth to have been with my father at an age of understanding and appreciation when he was racing but as a young and developing child I just didn’t realize how lucky I was. To the extent that I thought about it at all, racing motor cycles was what he did for a living. Whereas some boys’ fathers were plumbers and others were solicitors or doctors, mine raced motor cycles. But I thought it was great when, as a result of it, I went to places like Holland, Spain, Germany and France to be with him at one of the Grands Prix. None of my friends did that. All this was at a time when ‘The Continent’ was somewhere that very few people in Britain had ever been. France and Germany were more foreign then than Russia is now. People had neither the time nor the money to travel far from home. Very few had been out of the UK, hardly anyone ‘abroad’ spoke English and communications were comparatively archaic. There’s no doubt that travel broadens the mind and it surely broadened mine.

When I was born my father was a works rider for the fabled Norton motor-cycle company with its legendary Bracebridge Street address which, in truth, was anything but inspiring, being a typically drab 1920s Birmingham factory site. But because of its riders’ achievements, its image among racing enthusiasts was all-powerful. It was the start of my father’s career and his day was yet to come, but he won countless awards for Norton, including second place to the great Freddie Dixon, about whom volumes could be written, in the 1923 Isle of Man Sidecar TT. In its day the TT was more important than all the rest of the world’s races put together so this was quite a feat. In my study I have the actual piston from his side-valve engine. It makes me feel quite spooky when I look at it.

In 1925 the Walker family moved to Wolverhampton, for my father had been made an offer he couldn’t refuse – to become Competitions Manager for Sunbeam, ‘the Rolls-Royce of motor cycles’ as the company modestly described itself. More success led to another move in 1928, this time to Coventry and Rudge-Whitworth, which has long since disappeared but was then one of the world’s truly great motor-cycle manufacturers – at a time when motor bikes were a highly desirable everyday means of personal transport for normal people, as opposed to a sporting device for enthusiasts. And that was where my father really came good. Rudge, Norton and the rest of Britain’s motor-cycle manufacturers who dominated the world were in a head-to-head battle for sales. The promotional benefits, both at home and overseas, that came from sporting supremacy were immense, so racing success was vital. At Rudge-Whitworth my father was Sales and Competition Director and he got down to it with a will.

In 1928 he came within an ace of winning what was then by far the most important race in the world, the Senior TT, retiring in the lead with only 14 of the 268 miles to go after a titanic scrap with the great Charlie Dodson. Just two months later he got his revenge by becoming the first man to win a motor cycle Grand Prix at an average speed of over 80mph. It was the Ulster Grand Prix and this time he beat Charlie, after an even more epic duel, by 11 seconds in a race where they were wheel-to-wheel for over two and a half hours. And this on the bumpy, gruelling Clady Circuit riding a bike with no rear suspension, almost solid girder forks, hand-operated gear change and skimpy, narrow, bone-hard tyres. No disrespect to the modern superstars but they made them tough in those days.

With the sales office in London and the factory in Coventry my father had constantly to commute from one to the other by way of the A5 in his mighty 4.5 litre Lagonda, with its mammoth Lucas P 100 headlamps which used to impress young Murray so much. It was a stunning motor car. So he said to my mother, ‘We can live in the Midlands or in the northern part of London. I don’t mind, so it’s your choice.’ Well, that was no contest for my mother who, as a Bedfordshire-born country girl, detested the industrial Midlands where her son had been born and in which he subsequently lived, worked and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Off we went then to Enfield in Middlesex, which is where I spent most of my time from the age of five until I married at the ripe old age of 36.

Father raced on for Rudge on bikes whose constant development by the brilliant chief designer George Hack had made them the class of the field. He rode to victory in the Isle of Man in 1931, and received an impressive 15 silver TT Trophy Replicas, which I still proudly have. In 1931, Hack masterminded a new 350cc which had never even turned a wheel until it got to the Isle of Man, but the three works entries finished first, second and third with all three team members, my father, Ernie Nott and Tyrrell Smith, breaking the race and lap records. Mighty days! And that’s not to mention umpteen Continental Grand Prix wins. Had there been World Championships in those days, my father would undoubtedly have won at least one of them.

In the meantime I grew up. If my mother had an idyllic youth then I most certainly did. A governess at home started my early education, which was followed by a couple of prep schools in the country before I went to my father’s old public school at Highgate to be taught by several of the masters who had taught my Dad. One of them was the Reverend K R G Hunt, whose claim to fame was that he had played soccer for England as an amateur. On one occasion he got me out in front of the class to beat me (as they did in those days) for something trivial like putting sticky seccotine on the board rubber.

‘I’m going to give you three strokes, Walker, but before I administer justice have you got anything to say in mitigation?’

‘Yes, Sir! I thought you’d be interested to know that I will be the second generation of Walkers you have beaten because you beat my father.’

‘Oh did I? Well, I’m now going to give you six for that!’

Which taught me not to be cocky and to keep my mouth shut in difficult circumstances.

I really enjoyed school. I was no great scholar, but a steady grafter; I got School Certificate with Credits (the equivalent of A-levels today) including, believe it or not, a Distinction in Divinity. I needed an extra subject to compensate for my incompetence at Maths and taught myself by learning almost by heart the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to St Matthew.

Within two years of my arrival at Highgate I’d learnt to play the bugle in the School Corps, become a Prefect, mastered the intricacies of the intriguing wall game Fives, proudly won my First Class shot (0.303 Short Model Lee-Enfield World War One rifles with a kick like a mule) and demonstrated a staggering lack of ability at soccer and cricket due to an abysmal lack of hand and eye co-ordination. Then came the ‘Phoney War’ and with it evacuation to Westward Ho! in glorious North Devon, as the School’s governors were convinced that there was going to be a war and that London would be heavily bombed. They were right on both counts but a year early, so we soon returned. In 1939 we were back in Devon again, this time for the duration, and I was there until 1941.

What a life it was! My school house was at the end of a superb beach with the Atlantic breakers crashing ashore just beneath my dormitory window. Hardly affected by the rationing to which the rest of Britain was subjected, it was shorts and shirts the whole year round, weekend cycle rides to Clovelly and Appledore, excitedly staring up at the Avro Ansons of Coastal Command as they lumbered across the blue skies in search of U-boats, swimming in the sea, sunbathing on the Pebble Ridge and the joy of achieving things that mattered to me as I developed. I rose to the giddy height of Company Sergeant Major of the School Corps, pompously marching about shouting commands in my World War One khaki uniform, complete with knee-length breeches, puttees, peak cap, scarlet sash and a giant banana-yellow drill stick with a silver knob on the top. I became Captain of Shooting with the honour of an annual competition at Bisley and even, arrogance of arrogance, an instructor to members of the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers: the predecessor of the Home Guard, or ‘Dad’s Army’), many of whom had fought in World War One, teaching them how to use a Lewis machine gun. And I loved it.

But then, at 18, and with school behind me, it was time to go to war myself. As Britain unflinchingly suffered the devastating ravages of Hitler’s Messerschmitt, Dornier and Junkers bombers, while his seemingly invincible armies raced across Russia, it was also slowly starting to ready itself for the invasion of Europe. My country needed me. Youth does not heed the horrors of war and I was eager to go – but in one particular direction. Conscription was very much in force and if you waited to be called you went where they sent you. However, if you volunteered and were accepted you went where you wanted to. I had stars in my eyes and knowing that inadequate eyesight prevented me from going for every schoolboy’s dream – fighter pilot – I volunteered for tanks. I was accepted all right but, believe it or not, they said, ‘Sorry Murray, you’ve got to wait. Not enough of the right sort of kit for you to train on. So off you go. Fill in the time and we’ll let you know when we’re ready.’

What a frustrating setback. It is difficult to convey to today’s generation, who are lucky not to have experienced it, how totally involved, intense and patriotically passionate everyone in Britain was about the war. Germany, and everything to do with it, was then regarded as the personification of evil. It is easy now, divorced from the bitter loathing and hatred that war inevitably generates, to accept that the vast majority of its people were (and are) the same as us but there was naturally little appreciation and no tolerance then of the fact that the ordinary Germans had been taken over by an obsessive megalomaniac and the fanatical political machine he had created. Hitler and his minions were doing unspeakably terrible things in the name of the Third Reich and were aiming for world domination. With the enemy literally at the door, Britain had its back to the wall and was fighting for its very survival. There was a gigantic amount to be done and I desperately wanted to be a part of it. I still had a bit of a wait ahead of me though.

‘Fill in the time,’ they had said. But how? It clearly wasn’t going to be long before I was in battledress but, as I have so often been, I was lucky.

At that time the Dunlop Rubber Company, then one of Britain’s greatest companies, awarded 12 scholarships a year to what they regarded as worthy recipients and I was fortunate to win one of them. Sadly, Dunlop now exists only as a brand name, having been fragmented and taken over by other companies including the Japanese Sumitomo organization whose country it did so much to defeat in the war. But back then Dunlop, with its proud boast ‘As British as the Flag’, was a force in the world of industry with many thousands of employees all over the world. It owned vast rubber plantations and produced, distributed and sold tyres, footwear, clothing, sports goods, cotton and industrial products and Dunlopillo latex foam cushioning.

Its scholarship students were based at its famous Fort Dunlop headquarters (part of which still exists beside the M6 in Birmingham) and had tuition and fieldwork on all of its activities as well as instruction from top people on every aspect of what makes a business tick, from production and distribution to marketing, law and accountancy. It was an invaluable grounding. I had a whale of a time, living in digs at 58 Holly Lane, Erdington with the Bellamy family, spreading my wings and discovering, amongst other things and to my surprise and delight, that girls had all sorts of charms I hadn’t experienced at Highgate.