JOEY DUNLOP By those who knew him best
Much has been written about William Joseph Dunlop in the two decades since his death at an obscure road race meeting in Estonia on July 2 in the year 2000.
His incredible life and career have been the subject of numerous books, documentaries and films but despite such intense scrutiny from the media, much of Joey's life remains a mystery. Few people outside of the close circle of friends and family he grew up with got to know him at all, not because he was aloof, but because he was an intensely shy and private man who preferred to let his riding do the talking.
But despite this, the success of Joey's career meant he had to work with countless people he would otherwise never have associated with including mechanics, team bosses, photographers, team-mates and even documentary film-makers. And such was the power of Joey's personal charisma and his unique approach to life, that he left an indelible impression on all of them. Everyone who ever had any involvement with the 26-time TT winner has stories to tell and David Wallace is no exception.
“WHEN I SHOWED THE FILM TO PEOPLE IN THE UK THEY COULDN’T UNDERSTAND A WORD”
Wallace is now a well-established, double BAFTA-winning, documentary film maker, but back in the summer of 1977 the Irishman set out to make his first film about an unknown local rider called Joey Dunlop. The result is the classic bike racing documentaryThe Road Racers which followed the Armoy Armada (Joey, Mervyn Robinson, and Frank Kennedy) as they struggled to make ends meet throughout the 1977 Irish road racing season. Wallace noticed at a very early stage that the world was going to struggle to understand Joey’s mumbling local dialect.
“When I
