CHAPTER 13
The crash in the Lotus Elan at Brands Hatch didn’t put me off racing altogether, and when the Super Saloons was at its height in Britain I was there. Super Saloons racing, or ‘Super Loons’ as it was colloquially known, was an event where specially prepared saloon cars would compete. The prize money was good and the events were always well attended. My husband had sponsored Eddie Jordan in his rallying career and we were friends. Eddie started racing back in the 1970s at a professional level and went on to win the Formula Atlantic Championship. After retiring from racing, he founded his own team, Jordan Grand Prix, in 1991, where he gave many young drivers their first opportunity to compete, including Michael Schumacher.
Eddie was only at the start of his spectacular career when he helped me to get around to the various motor racing circuits in Britain. On one occasion we drove from Edinburgh to Liverpool, towing the Ford Escort, which was my ‘super saloon’. We were both exhausted by the time we reached the outskirts of Liverpool and had no idea where we were going to sleep. I needed a good night’s rest as I was racing the next day at the Aintree Motor Racing Circuit. We were short of money and barely had enough for petrol.
It was ten o’clock at night and Eddie pulled over beside a row of houses. He knocked on the door of one of them and asked for Mrs Grimshaw. When the lady told him there was no Mrs Grimshaw living there, he pointed at me sitting in the car and told her that I was racing tomorrow and we were sure Mrs Grimshaw was going to put us up. Eddie had such a way with him, he could charm the birds off the trees, and the woman looked at him and then at me and took us in. We slept well in separate rooms, and in the morning the lady of the house cooked us breakfast and refused to take any money, not that we had any. We gave her tickets for Aintree in return and went on our way. Eddie is a charming man who can talk his way out of every situation.
I have tried all sorts of ventures over the years, some more successful than others. When Bord Fáilte asked me to go to America in 1974 to promote Ireland as a tourist destination, I couldn’t refuse. I was honoured, of course, but also a little reluctant. The only reason I agreed was because I thought my companions on that trip would do most of the talking. I was in illustrious company: David Cabot, environmentalist, ornithologist, broadcaster and writer; Jeremy Ulick Brown Altamont, the 11th Marquess of Sligo, who made his ancestral home, Westport House, into a viable tourist attraction; and Monica Sheridan, the TV chef and writer, much loved by Irish viewers.
We travelled first class with Aer Lingus to New York, a limousine was there to meet us and we went straight to the Waldorf Astoria, no less – such luxury! I knew all the best people stayed at the Waldorf, but nothing prepared me for the sight of the surrealist Salvador Dalí in a black mink cape, its red satin lining showing every time he swished it over his shoulder. He was talking to a crowd in the foyer of the hotel and there was a tall black girl to his left and a tall white girl to his right, and with his upside-down moustache twitching away I was mesmerised.
But we had work to do and I was disappointed when I found that David, Jeremy, Monica and I were each to go our separate ways. I had imagined that at least two of us would stay together the whole time. In the hotel, Joe Malone, Bord Fáilte’s manager in North America, handed me my itinerary, wished me good luck and off I went to my first assignment in Boston. I thought we would have at least one night in the Waldorf and I might catch another glimpse of Dalí, but no such luck.
I discovered that persuading Americans to visit Ireland was not helped by the compulsory Shannon stopover. At that time every transatlantic flight had to touch down at Shannon Airport, and most visitors wanted to fly straight in to Dublin, the capital city. They didn’t like the idea of wasting time on a stopover, they wanted to get the most out of their holidays. I had 14 cities to visit over the seven days of that St Patrick’s week. Television in the US went on for 24 hours and my job was to go to the TV studios, do the interview to sell Ireland, and move on to the next place. What with the jet lag and the constant travel, I was hardly able to stay awake, never mind tell the Americans how wonderful dear old Ireland is. Driving and racing cars was easy work compared to this!
I did my best, but after three days of talking about Ireland I was feeling low and homesick. I was ready to take the next flight home and the only thing that stopped me was meeting Deirdre O’Callaghan in a country club on St Patrick’s Day, where she was singing and playing the harp, as only she could. Deirdre was a big Irish and international star and the Americans loved her singing wistful Irish songs, especially ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’, and even though their ancestors had left Ireland a hundred years ago there were tears in their eyes. Her rendition of ‘Raglan Road’ was so moving that it nearly sent me running back to Dublin.
I was obliged to finish what I had started and I completed the job of promoting Ireland, but I was so happy when the time came to leave America. It had been a great experience being in the TV studios and I met some interesting people, but it would have been so much better if I hadn’t had to do it alone.
At home in Ireland, I competed at Mondello, Phoenix Park, Dunboyne, anywhere there was a chance to race. In 1978, when the Irish Land Speed Record was up for grabs, Danny Keany and I had dinner together in the Milltown Golf Club and over a few glasses of wine we talked about setting a new land speed record, with me in a car and Danny on his motorcycle. At that time Danny was the sole importer for Yamaha in Ireland and a very successful motorbike racer.
Mick Hill, a racing driver from England, who was famous in the Super Saloon racing scene, lent me his Jaguar, which had a Formula 1 engine bolted in. He raced it all over the English circuits, which are mostly right-hand, so Mick had the car set up to go slightly to one side. The wheels had racing tyres fitted, which were smooth and perhaps not the best to deal with the ridged concrete of the Carrigrohane Straight in Cork. Someone said that if the drive shaft snaps, you’ll be dead. I realised what they meant: the drive shaft was right beside me in the cockpit, and if it snapped it would fly up into my face and shoot me like a bullet from a pistol.
I nearly died before I even got there at all. The day before, I was on the Donegal Rally and my good friend Henry Martini offered to give me a lift in his two-seater plane from Letterkenny to Cork, where the event was to take place. He had flown up from Dublin to Donegal after the rally and landed his plane in a field. The rally had been delayed and it was getting dark as we took off. We were flying very low and it looked to me as if we wouldn’t make it over the gate that was immediately in front of us. A farmer standing nearby must have had the same idea, because he got to the gate just in time and quickly swung it open; we managed to get through and up we went. If he hadn’t done that, the wheels would have hit the gate and we would have crashed. The rest of the journey didn’t go much better and my heart was in my mouth by the time we got to Cork.
The only acceptable place for the Royal Irish Automobile Club (RIAC) timekeepers to stage the event was the one-kilometre, perfectly flat stretch of road from Cork County Hall to Ballincollig, known as the Carrigrohane Straight. The Straight ran parallel to the River Lee on the right, and a public dump on the other side. Because we were so near the dump, seagulls were a problem and marshals on motorbikes drove up and down the road, shooting air pistols, to scare them away. It was a main road so it was closed off from 5.30 to 7 a.m. on the morning of 21 June 1978.
Danny and I drove up and back, and an aggregate was made of our speed. I went from 0 to 60 in a flash, and as I was driving over that ridged concrete road my helmet kept falling down over my eyes, so I had one hand keeping that up and the other on the wheel. I did well and for a few minutes I broke the land speed record, clocking 178 mph until Danny aggregated 185 mph on his 750cc souped-up Yamaha motorcycle and beat me. I hadn’t really thought about wind resistance, and with the width of his motorbike against the width of the Jaguar, of course he was going to be faster. After two runs, one of the onlookers noticed my front left-hand tyre had an enormous bulge on it and if I had tried another run it would have burst. Someone up there was looking after me.
There were crowds there, even though it was so early in the morning, and as I stepped out of that Jag, took off my helmet, flicked out my long blonde hair and fluttered my false eyelashes, I felt like that one from Charlie’s Angels! It was a great day for Danny Keany and an exciting one for me.
That same year I was asked to co-present a motoring magazine programme, Motorways, for RTÉ TV with Paddy McClintock. The producer was Peter Kenneally and the content of the programme was good, and I was fine when I didn’t have a script. My problem was that I found it difficult to learn my lines. At the end of one session I was told to close the show with the words, ‘The most important thing is to concentrate.’ I kept getting it wrong, and in the end Niall Andrews, the director, got an idiot board so that I could read from it. Talking off the cuff is no problem, but don’t give me a script or ask me to remember lines!
I was thrilled to be invited to host a TV talk show on RTE 1 in the 1980s. I was allowed to choose my own guests, which I did with care as I had never done anything like this before. It was a live show on Saturday night and I needed guests who could talk. My first guest was a then well-known young male fashion designer who was due to talk about the famous women he had dressed. He had also agreed to talk about his childhood and the abuse he had suffered. He wanted to let it be known that the abused should not feel shame for what had happened to them. However, when it came to the point when he was to talk about this he clammed up and would not speak. I remember the floor manager nearly had a heart attack. With 12 minutes left to fill on live TV I had to revert to talking again about designs and fabrics. Luckily, he had brought a number of large photographs of his designs worn by celebrities and we used up the time talking about those. Very sadly, years later I learned that he had committed suicide.
One of the guests I hoped to have on was Bill Cullen, who was just making a name for himself and had recently bought the Renault franchise in Ireland for £1. Bill had agreed to come on and had spoken to the producer Paul Cusack. But a few days before the show he pulled out because he thought that appearing on my show might jeopardise his chances of getting on The Late Late Show.
My other guests included Tony Kenny the singer, Bill Whelan of Riverdance fame and Marguerite McCurtain, who had hiked the Inca trail. My final guest was the legendary Paddy Hopkirk, who had invented a petrol can that would not burn or blow up if the car caught fire. Of course, a practical demonstration in the studios proved impossible. The rest of the show passed off in a daze and I was very glad when it was all over.