embracing set of four words. You work, you buy
stuff, you get on with it. You make a living.
As long as you have enough of it all is well and
good, and coming from a family of five kids from
the 50s we all did ok. We earned our way.
Then there’s the “look at me” brigade. Those
of relatively youthful years who have already
made more in the last year than I ever made in
my 48 working years. I was astonished, but not
surprised, to spot the other day that Lewis
Hamilton is set to earn (if that’s an appropriate
term) $60 million for this year’s “work”.
If you can make $60,000 a year toiling and
fretting and whatever, then you’ll need to do
that for many centuries to match that. But he’ll
do it in year. How come?
Lewis the ‘dollar lush’ drives for Mercedes, so
will you go out and buy one because he just won
another boringly insipid procession? No. Oh, and
if the Ferrari chaps were to grab the F1 title
would you nip out and sell a few more bags of
home-grown spuds and buy one? Again, no.
Mind you, if you were making the sort of money
the drivers are making for going round and
round a race track every fortnight then
maybe you would.
Of course the MotoGP brigade are also
financially well endowed, because again, like
F1, it is a petrol-driven glamorous business.
In the ‘good old daze’ race day fans would
wander the pits and talk to their heroes
and get a photo on the old box brownie
with them, and they’d get out on the track
and do the business, because it was their
passionate love.
I don’t think it was about the dosh. It was
about the challenge. The grinning rivalry.
And I gleefully saw it at Mallory Park and
Silverstone back in the 70s where I shared
the same latrine as Barry Sheene because,
hey, we were all in the same paddock. Both
watchers and riders. “All’s going well Bazza?”
‘Yeah no real concerns.”
The simplicity of motorsport, and pretty well
sportingly everything else for that matter, has
kind of dissolved… taken over by Pink bloody
Floyd... ”Money!”