“THE CAR IN FRONT IS ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE, EXCEPT FOR THE ONE BEHIND IT, WHICH IS IDENTICAL”
MONACO GRAND PRIX, 1995 AND A KEY MOMENT in my career as a commentator. Not only was it the first time that I walked the streets and absorbed the sheer complexity of the place, but it was also the first time I shared a commentary box with Murray Walker.
We weren’t actually working together; the open-plan style of the booths above the grandstand on the start/finish straight meant we were encapsulated in a large Portakabin with commentators from all over the world separated by short Perspex screens. Murray was teamed up with Jonathan Palmer for the BBC coverage overseen by producer Mark Wilkin while I was sharing the Eurosport TV space with John Watson. It felt so bizarre; to look across and see the man whose every word I had hung onto while falling in love with motor sport and to find myself shouting about the same dramas on track.
The passion for racing that Murray helped ignite in me began with his rants in rallycross. I grew up on a small farm, riding on tractors and occasionally being whizzed around in my brother’s grasstrack Ford Anglia. Watching Minis and Escorts battling through the mud at Lydden Hill on the BBC in the early 1970s captured me as each sprint race was
