THE ROAD RACERS THE MAKING OF A CLASSIC
“I’M FAR MORE WORRIED ABOUT THE SHEEP... THAN THE POLICE”
“Most people’s image of bike racing at that time was of Barry Sheene and all the glamour that surrounded him with the Brut adverts on TV,” says David Wallace. It was 1977. Sheene had won his second 500cc world title and enjoyed a playboy lifestyle more reminiscent of a rock star than a motorcycle racer. He had the Rolls-Royces, the helicopters, a penthouse pet hanging on his arm, and the world’s press eating out of his hand. Sheene had it all, and his success had made bike racing more popular than it had ever been in Britain.
But there was another side to bike racing in the 1970s and David Wallace was determined to capture it on celluloid to complete the picture. As he says: “Joey Dunlop was unlikely to be offered an aftershave advertising contract. I took some photographs in 1976 and his hair was so unkempt you could barely see his face when he was working on the bike.”
Even after becoming a five-times TT Formula One world champion (the championship that was effectively replaced by World Superbikes), Joey Dunlop didn’t have too much time for appearances, but when Wallace worked with him in 1976 and 77, he was a real diamond in the rough, living on the dole in a council house and digging peat to keep his young family warm in winter. Yet even then, the unkempt Irishman showed signs of the greatness that was to
