10: Racing with Steve Parrish

0:01Hello and welcome back to Mat's Trucking Great Podcast. Mat Ireland hosting once again. Today I'm joined by a very special guest, former motorcycle rider and truck racer, Steve Parrish. Steve, how are you doing? I'm alright, thank you very much indeed. No, all good. I had a busy day playing golf today. A lot of people would think, what am I doing playing golf, but it gives me some exercise. And I take my dog, which is a Springer Spaniel, and it's tied to my trolley and pulls me around. Marvellous. so that helps a great deal so that's me getting less exercise and the dog getting more but anyway well being a Springer it's going to need a fair bit of exercise isn't it there it certainly is somewhat lively I think it's fair to say yeah I think they say a Springer's born half no a Labrador's born half trained and a Springer dies half trained and that's about it I think something about it just about yeah all good thank you very much indeed excellent excellent looking forward to the summer it's going to be a busy one yes yes indeed for me as well So as soon as it warms up a bit as well, because as I was saying to you off air, I've had to be on my bike this week to commute to work because the clutch had gone on my van.

1:04And the first vehicle I saw this morning was a Gritter going the other way. And the ride's about half an hour and at half four in the morning, it was just not enjoyable. You meant to enjoy riding a bike and my hands were awful by the time I got to work. Yeah, well, like you, I'm a bit of a sort of blue sky summer rider, but I do have hand grips, warmers and heated jackets and things like that. But generally, I just go out when it's above 18 degrees and the sun is shining. Yeah, I don't blame you. I have got heated grips, but they don't work, unfortunately. So another little job. Another little job to add to the list.

1:41So there we go. So, Steve, how I'm presuming that you started off like a lot of people riding bikes at a very young age you know long before it was legal so to speak yeah um not very well i say very young i mean nowadays if you're not won some championship by the time you're eight years old you're you're too old but i probably started about maybe 11 12 it was uh that time it's where basically i had to save up five quid through washing people's cars or doing chores to be able to go and buy an old bsa or a james or any anything that had an engine that would i could get running so yeah 12 13 years old something like that um and was a bit of a hooligan tearing around the fields and luckily i was born in a small village called steep and warden and it had a disused airfield yeah that was where i used to go and um scare myself and everyone else around that ever got on the back of me or anything else like that i can imagine in fairness it didn't just have to be a motorbike it could be a car it could be anything and i was with a friend the other day and And some of the vehicles we had, we had Austin 7s, Austin 16s, Triumph Mayflowers, J2, Austin Bands, anything that was a scrapper that would run.

2:52We used to drive around the fields and wherever we could. There was an old Roman road that we'd tear along and things like that. So anything that was five quid or less was my mode of transport. And then, of course, at 16, you were allowed to go on the road. I think I went on the road way before that. In fact, the local Bobby caught me one day when I was about 14. Anyway, I went to Hallands of Cambridge and bought a 250 Yamaha, which I'm used to say I've still got it. Not that I kept it all the way through, but I bought it back off of someone that knew it was mine and it's in my collection along with some of my race bikes.

3:28And, yeah, that sort of gave me mobility, I guess you could say. Yeah. So did you – I can't remember what the stipulation for having a test at that sort of time was. Was it at 16? You'd go on the road at 16 with a bike. I used to actually go to the youth club on a tractor, though, because you could do that. So I used to be able to, my dad was a bit of a farmer, and I used to go to the youth club on a Nuffield when I was 15 because we were allowed. But 16, but you could put in for your test before your birthday. So I think 16 years and two weeks, I'd passed my test, which back then was driving down the road where the bloke stood on the side of the road with a clipboard and watched you ride away and stepped out in front of you to give you an emergency stop.

4:10Yeah. Which he didn't do for me because I got lost and came at him from behind. He was looking down the road and I came from behind him. But anyway, I passed my test, got involved with a load of bikers from around this area. I guess I was one of your rockers, really. There was mods and rockers back then. Yeah, yeah. This is 68, 69, something like that. Yeah. And would wear my leather jacket. It was probably plastic because I couldn't afford a proper leather one. but got to know a bunch of guys again locally that decided it'd be good fun to have a race team because we used to go to the pub we didn't like darts we didn't like snooker we didn't play football we liked engines so um it was decided we'd have a race team and there was a guy that could weld there was a guy that did paint work there was a guy that did electronics and there was everybody there at the time i was doing an apprenticeship as a tractor mechanic but generally i used to beat them on the road so they said you better be the rider and that's really how how it started there was nobody in my family that was ever into it so it was just a sort of fluky thing that came out of a bunch of lads getting together and having a good time yeah talking about it down the pub and going racing and we had really went racing just to mix in with a community of like-minded people Snetterton was the local local track for me uh but I'd head off if if the van that we had which I think we had all sorts of old shit vans that would break down and whatever you never knew yeah i can remember on numerous occasions we'd have the the motorbike petrol tank on top of the engine inside the cab because it was like a austin j4 or something and it would be have to be gravity fed because the fuel pump had gone and all that but that was all part of it really yeah where that was really i think amateur racing is where people have more fun once it gets professional it gets a bit serious yeah absolutely and it's it's just a good crack isn't it you know it's um similar to going to a show or something like that with a bunch of friends all like-minded just there for that one reason you know and like you say before you get serious sponsorship and and the pressure that you have to win as such to satisfy these sponsors i can see why it's a lot more fun at a sort of amateurish level yeah yeah i mean you strive to get better and better and better but sometimes you fall into that commercialized trap that you As you rightly say, you've got people and even one of my first sponsors was a chicken farmer from Oxfordshire.

6:30And you felt more obliged to make sure you turned up on time and you got all the bikes prepared and you didn't get pissed the night before or over the weekend and all those sort of things. So gradually, bit by bit, it starts to become more like a job, I guess you could say, less like a bunch of fun. That doesn't really slot in until you really are properly sponsored by a factory team or something like that. but I have to feel sorry for I mean the guys that are doing it now when you get into Grand Prix's they're earning millions and millions of pounds but they're not really enjoying it because the pressure that they're under and the workload that they have because when they finish one race on a Sunday they might have Monday off and then it's in the gym and then it's seeing the dietitian then you go and see the psychiatrist and then you sit with the data guy so it's pretty much 24-7 really yeah that they're living in and that was sort of it wasn't quite as serious in my days but There's no question about it.

7:23When you've got millions or hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent on you by proper sponsorship companies, whether it be oil companies, tyre companies, manufacturers, you are then obliged to not be seen doing things that didn't seem the right thing to do, like going out nightclubbing and getting drunk and doing all the things that are bad publicity for the manufacturers that you're involved with. Yeah, seeming unprofessional. Yeah, and I think that's sometimes quite difficult. That's why arguably at times in normal life, it's quite nice to be self-employed because you feel that you're putting the pressure on yourself as opposed to your boss looking down on you.

7:59Absolutely. Yep. Couldn't agree more. And it gives you more of a drive to actually go to work and get a job done rather than just think, oh, the weather's nice. I can't be bothered. I'm going to sit at home, you know, and I'm still going to get paid for that because my boss is going to pay me regardless. Whereas if you're self-employed, I'm sounding a bit like politics here, but I think that's half the problem we have in this country. There's a lot of people out there that really just all they're interested in is having, well, maybe finish on Friday, dreading going to work on Monday. They can take a day or two off.

8:32We've become maybe a bit of a lazy society now. That's why I love people that have start small businesses and self-employed and entrepreneurial, really. Yeah, absolutely. Driven people. Yeah, sure. Yeah, definitely. So can you remember when you sort of transitioned from amateur to an actual professional racer as such? Yeah, pretty much. By 1976, I got a really nice sponsor. Harold Coppock was my first sponsor, who was a chicken farmer. And then a guy who was a builder from Guildford, a guy called Dave Moore. He bought me a TZ750 Yamaha and a RG500. Same thing. I've got that very bike in my collection here, which will be going out this year.

9:16It'll be at all the Goodwood events because it's a big celebration this year of Tear 50 years of Barry Sheen winning his first world championship in 1976. Brilliant. I went on to win the British championship that year in 1976. But yeah, very much obliged to do things properly because Dave Moore wasn't a hugely wealthy guy, but he put every penny he had. His wife used to hate me because she wanted a new kitchen and I kept falling off his bike. And so he never got a new kitchen. But we're kind of friends now. But I've actually got the very same bike in my collection now and it will be going out of Goodwood this year.

9:51So that to me was a point where I'd virtually stopped working as an apprenticeship, doing my apprenticeship, because my commitment was so big. But my full professional career started in 77 when I signed for Suzuki's. I had the call. Or did I want to join Barry Sheen doing the World Championships? Which is like, you know, that's the pinnacle. Really not winning races, it's having that chance to make your hobby into a full-on professional and earn money from doing it. Because up until 77, I probably hadn't earned any money. I'd won some prize monies and trophies and odds and ends, but not really making a full living out of it.

10:30So 77 was the year I turned fully professional, jacked in all my work. I even had my own little business repairing cars and odds and ends, and that all had to go, really. Yeah. Yeah, all of a sudden I was a professional sports person, I guess you'd say. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just, at that point, you know, it's just like, well, there's no turning back now. I'm fully committed. I'm going for it, and I've got to give it my all. And to then be paired up with someone like Barry Sheen, that must have been quite something as well. Yeah. I mean, he was a poster on my wall. There would be Barry Sheen, Phil Reed, Giacomo Agostini, you name it, all the superstars that were winning races when I was coming through the amateur ranks.

11:11Because Barry was three years older than me and started three years earlier than me because his father got him into it when he was about 15 or 16. By now, I'm 21, I think, something like that. And, yeah, to actually go out on the track with him and travel around with him was rather special. And weird as hell was, I'll never forget the first time I overtook Giacomo Agostini, 15 times world champion. I couldn't believe that was it. I'm looking at him and he's looking at me thinking, who the bloody hell is that? And that's my hero, I go. Yeah, so they're the things that give you the great pleasures of being into a sport at a fairly high level.

11:49Yeah. And achieving things that you would never have dreamed of five, six years before. Absolutely. The downside, of course, was the fact that when you crashed, a lot of people died. And through that era of 77 through to probably when I stopped in 86, I think I lost about 20 odd mates, really, that died because it was hugely dangerous. The bikes were quite fast. The protective clothing that we wore was pretty rubbish. It was the best in the day, but it hadn't got much padding in it. Certainly didn't have airbags. We didn't have back protectors. we didn't have boots that stopped you breaking your ankles and the gloves were like golf gloves so you ended up covered if you didn't die you ended up with huge scars all over you and broken legs and arms and everything else so a lot of injuries around the time yeah but i think that probably made it more exciting because it was a bit you know scary to do but gave you a huge adrenaline yeah absolutely and and i think um a lot of i mean i know road racing is different but But a lot of the TT races sort of, it's obviously the same with road as track racing.

12:53It's a potential issue as such. You know the risk, the inherent risk of doing the sport. And if you are sadly killed doing it, you're at least doing something that you love. And I think, I mean, I'm not a racer at all. And I think it's the racer mentality, knowing obviously they're your mate and you've lost them. And that is absolutely tragic. but you know in your head that they did it doing what they love and it wasn't just something boring and mundane as such. I know it's not the best way of putting it, but you see where I'm going. No, I think that's right. You know what you're about to do. You understand the risks.

13:28You see what's going on. And, yeah, you have to accept that. I can't think it's much fun. But I think, for me, I was probably more scared I've ended up in a wheelchair than I was dying. I think just because you knew you'd probably end up enduring a life that wasn't really anything – you couldn't do anything that you really wanted to do. And lots of people did that as well, unfortunately. that was the way it was but I think you're you're sometimes you're a bit lucky sometimes you're maybe slightly more cautious you know I've often said I don't think I ever properly raced at 100 % I was a bit of a 95 % guy that got me to a reasonable level but I kind of did air on the side of caution a little bit that sounds ridiculous when you I used to do the TT and finish third and got on the podium a few times but even so I didn't feel that I could give it what maybe Joey Dunlop did or people like that that were proper TT riders.

14:16I had a fair amount of, a bit in reserve, put it that way. I've got you, yeah. I mean, self-preservation perhaps, and it's, at the end of the day, you're still here, aren't you? I am, and there is, as I rightly say, I look at pictures now from the 80s and half the people that are in it, if there's 10 people in it, five of them aren't here anymore, and that's sort of a bit how it was. But there you go, very fortunate guy. Never thought I'd live this long, actually, quite frankly. I'm quite shocked. I thought, A, it would take longer to get this old and B, I never thought I'd get this old. Anyway, maybe I'm a lucky guy.

14:52Yeah, I'd say so. So what was it like being with Barry Sheen a lot then? You sort of got up to a few hijinks, I presume. It was wild and exciting and dangerous and fun and just hanging out with all these sort of superhero people. that, you know, I used to go off to different parties and meet different people. And in 1978, I was sponsored by George Harrison from the Beatles and used to go in his house and things like that. And you just can't believe all these lovely things are happening to you. We'd travel the world, getting paid to do it, staying in nice hotels and doing great things. And yeah, it was absolutely brilliant.

15:30But all the time in the back of your mind, oh, bloody hell, we lost poor old Joey Dunlop and people from that era met Dave Potter, who was a good mate of me. and mine and Tom Heron, who was my teammate, Pat Hinn. And it just sort of all the time, in some ways you went, oh, bloody hell, if the percentages are about right, I might be all right here. And I think it was a bit of a war zone. And I guess the same would have been. And I'm wrong in actually aligning it with it. But when you took off in your Spitfire in the war, you knew that about one in four didn't come back. And that was a bit that way in racing, I guess, to a certain extent.

16:04And I'm pleased to say that things have got considerably better. more the fact that they've made the circuit safe and that was the problem that we had not just our protective clothing it was the fact that there was barriers all around and um that was the problem a bit like the TT we say the TT was dangerous but I can remember racing at Brands Hatch which was lined with the railway sleepers and Alton Park would be the same and if it wasn't railway sleepers it was Armco barriers because all those circuits were really majoring on car racing and they didn't worry about bike racing quite as much but anyway it was a wonderful wonderful time wouldn't change it for the world i've got dodgy knees because i broke them and i've got dodgy hips and i've got dodgy ankles and all sorts of pins and scar and things put in me most of them have been taken out now and i do at times think bloody hell if i hadn't crashed to aston and snapped all my acls and things i'd be able to walk a bit better and stuff like that but really i wouldn't have changed it for the world.

17:01Had a wonderful, wonderful time. And here I still talk about it. Absolutely. Yeah. So you retired from motorbike racing, and then you got a little bit into the car side of things. Is that right? A bit. But mainly what happened straight after I finished racing myself, and I've got a picture up here, 1986 was my last ever race in Macau near Hong Kong. Hung up the letters, but I already had a team set up to run from 87. So I had good sponsorship from Yamaha and Loctite, the adhesive company. So from 87, the 87 season, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, five years, I ran my own team from my workshops and had two riders in the team for those five years, won four British championships.

17:50I had Rob McElnay, Terry Reimer, Mark Phillips, Trevor Nation, Keith Hewitt, all riders that rode for me. and we won three, I can't remember, three or four British championships, won some world championship races with Terry Ryan and Rob McElnay. And it was great. I enjoyed it. Not as much as riding myself. Quite clearly, when you win, it's the rider that's the one that's going around with the laurel around his neck and waving to everyone and the team manager's packing everything up as such. And when you lose, the riders blame the team back and everything else. So it was OK. But I came to an ultimatum in the start of the end of 1991.

18:34I had a proposal given to me by Mercedes-Benz to go full time truck racing. And I've been doing some truck racing while running the team, which sometimes made it a bit awkward because I might miss one or two races. And I'd have to get someone else to take over my job as team principal because I'd be away racing trucks. at that point just supported by mercedes uk and a team called atkins racing but anyway at the end of 91 mercedes invited me to join the factory team right okay and it was yeah it was a real kind of um awkward time because the team was going extremely well i was earning a good living out of it and everything was running nicely but by then i was 32 years old and i worked out that i could run a team till I'm 60 or 70 but I couldn't go racing at that time so I thought sod it I'll have a go at carrying on racing because I did miss it a bit yeah and and literally went over to Germany tested the race truck the factory team trucks uh was faster than all the drive they've got three drivers at the time two German one uh Hungarian driver um and I was fast and all those guys signed on the dotted line and that was it truck racing for 10 years 91 91 to 2001 yeah so you were saying you'd sort of been dipping your toe in a little bit to begin with previous to 91 how did you end up getting in because i think the first sort of truck racing you did was about 86 i think it was which is only only sort of two two years after it actually started the first well the first one was in 84 i mean being in the world of race and whatnot was this kind of like a new sport that was just sort of appearing and hearing about or did you just go and watch it out of curiosity or well no it was all down to bloody barry sheen again everything i did was down to barry sheen because at the end of barry sheen's career which was 84 i think to 80 yeah 84 he had sponsorship from daft daft trucks it was on the back of his bikes and so when truck racing turned up in the uk and you might be right i did the first race i think in the uk which was the donnington multi-part truck Grand Prix.

20:39Yeah. I can't remember if that was 84 or 85. Driving, funny enough, a truck in the colours from down your way, a company called Mitchell Cost. Yes. It was a truck transport company down Norwich, Ipswich Way, I think, somewhere down there. This episode of Matt's Trucking Rep podcast is proudly brought to you by MSL European. MSL European transport cars on covered car transports or open transport. They can also handle static caravans and also machinery, covering all of the UK, Europe and beyond. Thank you very much, MSL, for your kind support. I'm not too... I can't remember, to be honest, because I thought that they were a truck franchise dealership, but I could be very wrong.

21:20But, yeah, they were white and blue. All I remember, they were blue and white diamond shapes. Yes. I've got pictures somewhere of it. And that was my first ever truck, and it was a road truck, and that's what truck racing was then. Yeah. And I'm going to guess it was a... 1644, something like that. I think so, yeah, something like that. And it was a road truck. They hadn't modified it at all, apart from I got the fuel injection company to wind up the pump so it had more power. And it was a ludicrous race. It was the biggest crowd they ever had at Donington Park. It went berserk. M1 was shut because of traffic jams and everything else.

21:59And nobody's brakes lasted more than three laps. So everyone was going off the track and everything else. the truck brakes are not designed to stop trucks going flat out to nothing and flat out to nothing yeah and so everyone's brakes were melting and everything else but i loved it i enjoyed the camaraderie of going back racing i enjoyed the fact that i was relatively safe cocooned in a a big truck and shouldn't have got hurt but i'm surprised more people didn't back then because they didn't even have roll cages in them anyway i did and i got paid quite nicely to do it by this a company called Mitchell Cots and I think Mercedes were a bit involved with it and just thought it was real good fun and I was dovetailing that and I did about two races a year back then when I was still racing uh still running my team uh just doing the old British Championship race but doing really well I have to say and after a couple of years Mercedes-Benz UK got involved and built a proper race truck because things were moving on quickly where you had to have roll cages and whatever and they changed the suspension and whatever whatever and and it got really quite serious because the power was coming up a lot the brakes were much better and so on and so on and then carried on doing that and i think i won a couple of british championships even whilst i was running my race team right but that's what got the eye of mercedes-benz germany in stuttgart they realized that i was doing pretty good over here and i think the the boss of mercedes-benz commercial at Milton Keynes, David, David, David.

23:29Anyway, he's kind of a bit of fan. He loved what I was doing and enjoyed it. He used to come along at the races. And he contacted Mercedes Germany, went out there, and that was it, signed and sealed. And had to let my race team go, gave it back to another team owner as such and said thank you to Yamaha, thank you to Loctite. I'm going off and racing. And that's what I did. so from a race rider driver point of view my career went on a lot longer than most because it gave me another 10 years of competing yeah absolutely so so from a racing point of view how difficult was it to transition from a motorbike which is very small you can chuck about to a truck um that i mean you can't just throw a truck about like you can a motorbike and you've You've got to.

24:15Well, if you think about it, you're a bike rider. There is a similarity, and it works, because a motorcycle, you can say you might be able to chuck it around, but you can't actually really – you can't just throw it into a corner like you can a car. You don't just chuck it in. You have to be smooth. You have to kind of turn it in nicely, and if you don't, you fall off. So everything you do on a motorbike has to be done with precision being smooth. You can't jam the front brake on in a corner like you can in a car. You can't accelerate mid-corner and slide the rear out, or you probably can nowadays.

24:48But everything about riding a motorbike has been smooth. And also nice flowing lines. You don't do late apexes with a motorbike so much because it all has to be done. You've got a lot of gyroscopic effect when you're racing a bike. So it's all smooth. And that's exactly what truck racing was about. We had trucks that weighed five tons, 5 ,000 kilos, huge amount of kinetic energy. And a lot of drivers, particularly race car drivers, there was quite a few that made the transition over. they couldn't quite gather that you've got to be smoother and you couldn't throw it around so everything had to be done very precisely but very very smoothly and i think that helped me but coming from motorbikes right okay most car drivers that came into truck racing didn't really do that well actually yeah fair enough because i mean it attracted some pretty big names and i mean like martin brundle i think he was also at the first one he was doing the first race yeah martin brundle did it it was rod chapman rally driver i think steve blomquist had a go at it denny holm number of older race drivers had a go at it quite a few german race drivers came and had a go at it um hand stück and people like that and they yeah they did okay but i used to be able to beat them that was you know quite quite good and and it worked for me latterly towards the end i i won five championships out of 10 years i have to say uh latterly man got better than the mercedes i I know it's easy to say that, but they, MAN built a truck that was superior to the Merc.

26:13And they got some decent drivers that really kind of worked it out. But funny enough, one of them was a sidecar racer. I can't remember his name now. He ended up winning the championship. So, you know, I guess my statistics were pretty good out of the 10 years winning five championships. It worked really well. Yeah, very good. I think there was something like seven or eight British championships. But the best thing was I only went to hospital once my whole career racing. And that was an accident at Donington Park that someone smashed into the side of my truck and the steering wheel got me. I should have been quicker at letting go because you know what it's like if someone hits you.

26:48And it broke my scaphoid here. But I've done it three times on bike racing anyway. So I was used to that. So, yeah, again, pretty fortunate. And also the other string to my bow, I guess you could say, whilst all that was going on, I ended up doing commentary work as well. dovetailing working on British Championship for ITV I think it was back then and then bits and pieces for BBC I do the British Grand Prix and so on and so on and literally as truck racing for me finished and the reason it finished was 2001 Mercedes withdrew from it they decided to quit which actually knocked the hell out of truck racing it's sort of getting yourself back a bit now but when mercedes stopped i think daft stopped and man pulled back and cat you know a lot of the teams it was a bit like ferrari stopping formula one mercedes were spearheading it and i ended up that year signing for bbc to cover moto gp and did 12 years of traveling around doing that yeah i'm still celebrating 51 years without having a proper job that's pretty impressive going i would say i don't know to get one now yeah i shouldn't worry that's not a lot of fun that's not what's cracked up to be i mean for me personally like the like the late 80s into the 90s was just sort of this golden era of racing because also i was a big fan of the british touring cars and murray murray walker just an iconic commentator just and one one story uh i was sat there once watching it on grandstand with des linem as everybody did and john cleland was carved up by somebody i I cannot remember who it was.

28:28And naturally, John was a quiet sort of chap, stuck his middle finger up with the in-car camera running. Murray Walker, just quick as a flash, he's like, I'm going for first, says John Clendon. And I just remember as this young teenager thinking that was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Well, he was. I actually worked with Murray on three occasions, covering the British Grand Prix. I used to get drafted in to be his sort of co-commentator or pundit, I guess you could say. and I worked alongside him and got to know Murray very well. He was a lovely man. But it was the same with Barry Sheen when he was racing with Kenny Roberts and gave him the V sign, put his hand up and gave him the V, and Murray goes, and he's waving at him.

29:07Now he's waving. But, yeah, he was probably the master of commentating. And Murrayisms, he'd make loads of mistakes, but they were always very funny. And no one really cared, did they? Murray got it a bit wrong. I think it made it a bit more personal. because it just showed that people are fallible. And, you know, he's getting it wrong live on telly and it doesn't matter. Yeah, absolutely. So anyway, that was – yeah, and again, I had a wonderful time travelling the world commentating on MotoGP, which was my first sport, of course. And so, yeah, I'm very lucky. I covered the TT for about 10 years, covering all that.

29:45Still working. In fact, I'll be out in Ireland covering the Northwest 200 in May for BBC Northern Ireland. Yeah. I'll be at the TT doing hospitality work. I'm at all the Goodwood events this year and lots of other hosting of opening of shops and things like that. So I'm still trampling along. Excellent. Is there any sort of motorsport that you wish you'd had a go at that you never did get a chance? I nearly, and I say nearly, the sponsorship fell through. I was going to do the Paris Dakar in a truck. Wow. With Mercedes backing it and then something went wrong and it didn't happen. But it was something very much on the cars to do.

30:22uh i wouldn't have minded that that would have been quite an interesting thing to have done because i know how grueling it is uh the boys on the bikes are bloody superheroes because they they you know you never know what you're going to come across but i think it'd have been a bit safe in a truck but anyway that didn't happen so i would have liked to have done that but other than that um i also spent time whilst commentating for bbc on bikes i covered the red bull air races used to do the commentary for that as well because i got into flying in the early 90s bought an aeroplane and i've had about five six seven now and i live on a farm and we've got an airstrip and my plane's parked outside the door perfect that works as well yeah ideal for commuting yeah i used to use it a lot whilst working for bbc we'd go to all the northern europe races france belgium holland germany all that area um we would use my little plane for it brilliant yeah it's an amount i've got a friend of mine who's got shares in a little plane and he took me up last year, the year before, and it's just so different to being in like, you know, a commercial sort of jumbo jet, it's just phenomenal, and it's, yeah, it's a bit like being on a back as composed to being in a truck, it's always, or you just, all the elements are around you, but the beauty is, is I lived in the Isle of Man for about 10 years whilst I was doing my commentary work, and it was literally an hour and 20 minutes to the Isle of Man, and it's like, bloody, it's a day's job if you want to drive up to Liverpool and get on a ferry and do this and do that and same I'd remember we'd do the Le Mans Grand Prix it was one of my favorites the race would start at two finish at three at 3.30 we'd be in my plane I'd take my co-commentator Charlie Cox Susie Perry who would come with me Matt Roberts so we would leave by 3.30 took about an hour and 20 minutes to get back here so which made it about 4.30 five o 'clock back an hour four o 'clock I'd have a barbecue lit up at home you know so it made life and you can't imagine how awkward it is to get home from Le Mans because there's no airport near it.

32:20So, yeah, things like that were great. And that was all part of the fun of doing the job that I do, was being able to scoot around and use my own little plane. Yeah, and enjoy yourself whilst you're doing it. Yeah, very much so. Even better. Was there, or is there, any particular track that you've never actually raced on that you want to? I mean, I'm presuming you've probably done most of them. I'm the majority, but clearly there's more and more tracks being built nowadays, particularly for F1. But I think I've pretty much covered all the iconic ones, racing at Spa in Belgium, Daytona in America.

32:54Nürburgring and various sorts of things. Yeah, Nürburgring. I did that on a motorbike around the Nordschleife. So I think I've Le Mans picked places like all the iconic racetracks I've been to, I think. Never raced at Laguna Sacred in America. Wouldn't have minded that, but commentated there for many, many years. I have ridden around Indianapolis, the Indy bike track. So, yeah, I don't think there's anything that's bugging me too much that I haven't done, no. Fair enough. So what does the future hold then? Just a bit more commentating, enjoying yourself, avoiding getting a proper job? I'm never going to get one of them, I don't think.

33:28This year I've got 18 shows I do with a guy called Henry Cole. Have you ever come across Henry Cole who does Find It, Shed and Buried? Yes. And that started last year properly. we did 16 shows last year all a sellout we got 18 to do this year starting next week we're in we're a wolver i know worcestershire something like that i don't know i can't remember but i did 10 years of my own theater show called the mad tour yeah traveling country doing that which was good fun my daughter hosted it for most of the shows and my wife did it was sort of a i guess an interrogation of my life a bit like we're talking about now which went on for two hours with a break in the middle, of course.

34:11So I've got 18 of those to do, some commentary work. I'm at all the good woods. I'm doing Chelsea Walsh, Hill Climb. I'm going to Oliver's Mount Scarborough for a couple of events up there, over to Ireland, TT. So, yeah, enough, really. I love playing tennis, which I do a couple of times a week, and I play golf a couple of times a week. I'm fortunate enough to have an apartment and a boat in Mallorca, so I go out there quite regularly. Just got back from South Africa where I was out there with friends and do some classic bike demo stuff out there. So, yeah, kind of living the dream, I guess you'd say.