The full Monte Carlo
ON January 26, 1964, 20 million viewers sat down to watch the nation’s most popular show, ATV’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Bruce Forsyth’s guest stars that night were singer Kathy Kirby, comic-magician Tommy Cooper—and a very small, red-and-white car. When the orchestra struck up Rule, Britannia!, the audience broke into applause to celebrate a most unlikely and peculiarly British triumph. The car was a Mini Cooper, which, just a few days before, had achieved the unthinkable: first place in one of the world’s most glamorous and demanding events, the snowy, icy Monte Carlo Rally.
Not only had the diminutive Mini upended motorsport, it would also become the car of choice for London’s beautiful people: Peter Sellers, Twiggy, Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, as well as the mop-headed Beatles from Liverpool, who also made their TV debut on the London Palladium, just a few weeks before.
The Mini Cooper might never have happened, but for a chance encounter on Brighton seafront in September, 1946. It would be the automotive equivalent of Mick Jagger finding Keith Richards
