The Tour of Britain was a ‘race-cum-rally.’ Roger Clark and I were entered by Ford in a Capri 3-litre.

A new experience for Vic Preston Jnr from Kenya, driving in Scotland in 1973.

A new car for Roger and me for the 1973 RAC – and seeded number one.

Sue and I were married in 1973 – the day I met my match!

Sideways, as usual.

The Daily Mirror sign above the number is missing, as a new door had been fitted after a shunt in 1974.

The 1974 RAC was a bad year for us, as we finished seventh.

The things you have to do for sponsors. Roger and I selling tins of hairspray in Boots chemists before the 1975 RAC.

The biggest rally show ever staged was Pirelli ‘Star-talk’ at Wembley in 1977. We had 19 guests, including Timo Mäkinen, Hannu Mikkola, and Erik Carlsson, seen here at rehearsals while I pontificate!

One of the many Clark and Mason performances.

Top billing in Oldham!

1975, and another second place on the RAC Rally.

More water. We were trying!

In full flight at Scarborough’s Olivers Mount.

Timo Mäkinen and Henry Liddon (centre) got their hat-trick in 1975. We were second. The baby on the left is my tiny daughter, Emma, in Sue’s arms.

What’s your name? Autograph signing at the Autosport Racing Car Show was a regular assignment.

A little more sedate! A get-together of Segrave Trophy winners. Here, I’m next to my boyhood hero, test pilot Peter Twiss. Also, left to right, pilots John ‘Cats Eyes’ Cunningham and Bill Beaumont, Peter Ashcroft of Ford, and world land speed record holder Richard Noble.

Our home from 1975, on the border of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.

In 1987 I was brought into the full BBC team for the RAC Rally coverage with William Woollard, Sue Baker, and Barrie Gill.

Sand racing at Weston-Super-Mare.

Stirling Moss always saw the funny side of me losing my hair (and catching up with him!).

Back in action! With Louise Aitken-Walker in a works Peugeot 309 on the Cumbrian Rally for Top Gear in 1988.

We made it!

More Top Gear adventures. Trialling with champion Julian Fack.

The Reliant Robin world championship. I still finished fifth!

With Carol Vorderman filming an Antiques Roadshow spin-off for BBC.

Every boy’s ambition: to be an Eddie Stobart driver.

Another boyhood dream. Meeting (and driving) John Cooper of Mini-Cooper fame.

The ‘Mason pounce.’ Well, it certainly frightened four-time World Rally Champion Tommi Mäkinen.

Ready for the off. The Pirelli Classic Marathon started at Tower Bridge, London in 1989.

With Roger Clark, navigating my way through the Italian Dolomites.

We got there!

Ove Andersson, Timo Mäkinen, you-know-who, Roger Clark, Paddy Hopkirk and Stirling Moss after the final hill-climb.

Of course, I had to ‘sing for my supper.’At least Paddy Hopkirk and Alec Poole enjoyed it.

The propeller-driven Helicar was the weirdest thing I ever drove on Top Gear.

Mind you, I was dressed for the occasion!

The Alpine Trial for vintage Rolls-Royces made a one-hour Top Gear special programme.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: the last of the Russian-built Ladas.

The centre of our little empire.

My former rally partner, HRH Prince Michael of Kent, visited our stand at a Frankfurt trade show. Lord knows what we were looking at!

The dreaded anti-static strip, which brought me to court with a lot of publicity.

TV presenting in the Isle of Man with legendary TT rider Geoff Duke. I know nothing about bikes!

When seat belts were made compulsory in 1983, this product became a great success.

Not long after interviewing the Prime Minister of Malaysia, I was hauled off towards jail.

The Asian Automotive and Accessories Exhibition in Singapore in 1984 saw Sue and me in selling mode.

Fourteen

Further into the forests

The RAC Rally went from strength to strength in the early sixties, and I was lucky enough to be invited to compete a great deal, taking a week’s holiday from wherever I was working at the time. On these outings I accompanied seven different drivers (which, you may think, indicates that no-one would have me more than once) in their privately owned cars. I enjoyed every trip, but the old memory isn’t what it once was, and I certainly can’t give you a blow-by-blow account, you will be relieved to know! I do have memories of relatively spectacular incidents that befell me, of course.

In 1963 Bob Lamb decided to enter the RAC again, and asked me if I wanted to come along to enjoy the 400 miles of forest tracks over a Blackpool-Bournemouth route not dissimilar to our maiden voyage the previous year. We were starting to think we were old hands at the game! Bob had recently acquired a Humber Sceptre, supposedly a sporty saloon in the Humber range from the Rootes Group in Coventry. Until then, Humbers had been best known for supplying limousines to Prime Ministers and a staff car to Field Marshal Montgomery in North Africa during World War II. In fairness, I should mention that well-known broadcaster-cum-rally driver Raymond Baxter actually achieved a class win and high position driving a Humber Super Snipe in the 1961 RAC Rally. The red Sceptre that Bob and I would take on the RAC was very comfortable, fairly luxurious and reasonably powerful, but it was a bit of a lumbering machine by today’s standards. However, starting at number 125, we had a good run with no mechanical problems and not even a puncture, finishing in the twenties.

I was back with Bob Lamb a couple of years later when the RAC Rally started and finished at a London airport hotel. Bob had, by now, purchased a Ford Cortina GT, and we hoped for great things. However, our plans went somewhat awry when the northern part of Britain became blanketed in snow. Cars were slithering about on main roads, let alone in the forests. In fact one such main road, the steep Sutton Bank on the A170 east of Thirsk, became virtually impassable, and the rally almost ground to a halt. We got up the hill eventually by fitting snow chains to the rear wheels. However, we were having to go pretty quickly to avoid running out of time. After a few Yorkshire stages there was a cacophony in the rear of the car as the snow chains started to break. The noise was unbearable, but we pushed on merrily until the noises became even more peculiar. The flailing chains had torn holes in the inside of the rear wheel arches, would you believe? How we struggled to take off the broken chains and how frozen our hands became. It was a nightmare.

In the intervening year of 1964 the weather in Britain was much kinder, thankfully, and I enjoyed a trouble-free run with top British rallyist (and former TT rider) Phil Simister in his red Cortina GT. For the first time the start and finish would be in the centre of London, at the Duke of York’s barracks, to be precise. It seemed a bit bizarre walking through busy streets between the rally headquarters and our hotel, carrying crash helmets and other rally paraphernalia. Being a bit of a hoarder, I found the brochure of our hotel not long ago. We stayed at the Prince of Wales Hotel in DeVere Gardens in Kensington, where the price of a room was 45 shillings a night – that’s £2.25 to you! Phil Simister had a very strong finishing record, and had been competing in the RAC since the late fifties. I hoped my navigation would be up to it. Thankfully it was, and we finished 21st out of the 158 starters.

Phil, who owned a Ford main dealership in Macclesfield, was a gentle, peaceful, man and far from the image of a very rapid driver. I remember he wore a woollen cardigan with a packet of cigarettes in one pocket and a lighter in the other. You don’t really expect cardiganny sorts of people to drive at breakneck speeds through forests. You probably also don’t expect rally drivers to smoke cigarettes during events, but Phil and many others did, sometimes even on stages. The brilliant Pat Moss was a heavy smoker, and in his eulogy at Pat’s funeral in 2008 Stuart Turner recalled that rally drivers could always tell if they were on the right route by following her trail of cigarette ends!

I suppose I should let you know the co-driver’s navigational duties on road sections of the rally. The road book had to be read constantly, noting all mileages – one could obviously be penalised for lateness, but other penalties could be applied if you exceeded an average of 40mph over more than 20 miles of public road. On the stages, it was a matter of looking for arrows provided by the organisers and keeping the timecard safe. Later on in my career, when I became more proficient, I would read the tracks from the Ordnance Survey maps during stages. I would also take the wheel occasionally, if there were long sections between stages. So you’ll see, it was a busy little life.

I remember staying in Perth for the overnight stop in 1964, and the freezing cold hotel that most teams were patronising. Don Barrow, who was co-driving the great Finn Timo Mäkinen in a works Healey remembers the cold night and his icy bedroom. Next morning he asked Timo how he had managed. “No problem, Don,” Timo replied. “It very cold so I turn on all hot taps in bathroom and leave on all night!” At that moment Paddy Hopkirk appeared in his dressing gown, complaining that there was no hot water for a shower anywhere in the hotel! After a long trek back south, via East Anglia, the final hurdle the following evening was the rush hour traffic in London, as the route passed by the Tower, Parliament Square and Knightsbridge. What a strange place to start and finish a rally.

As expected, my trip on the RAC Rally of 1966 with Roy Mapple brought a lot of laughs. Roy had won his class in his 998cc Mini-Cooper on the 1965 event. We were, and still are, great friends, and I knew we would enjoy our trip, which again started and finished at one of the big hotels at London Heathrow airport but took in 63 special stages, totalling over 400 miles. Roy had the somewhat unique habit of chuckling and giggling out loud at times of drama and excitement. I wouldn’t say I found it disconcerting, more slightly surprising – no more so than in the dreaded Kielder forest, which was so rough and rocky that stones were pushing their way inside the car, beneath my feet. He found this very funny.

Before that, the route had taken us up as far as Aviemore in Scotland, with all the usual Scottish classic stages including the fast ones in south-west Scotland. The rally attracted more than its fair share of publicity in 1966, because two Grand Prix stars, Jim Clark and Graham Hill, were competing. Clark was in a works Lotus Cortina, and Hill in a works Mini-Cooper S.

Graham Hill’s assault was unspectacular, and he never really came to terms with the tiny front-wheel drive car. He retired on the second evening in Grizedale Forest in the Lake District. Jim Clark, however, was a different kettle of fish. He had been tutored by Roger Clark at Ford’s testing sessions, and really took to the idea of driving flat out on rough surfaces. He was partnered by Brian Melia, a Ford works co-driver, former British champion navigator, and successful driver in his own right. Jim Clark had, in fact, started his motorsport career rallying as a member of the Berwick and District Motor Club near his home village of Chirnside in the Scottish borders, when he drove a Sunbeam Talbot 90 and had a reputation of either winning or crashing.

On the 1966 RAC Rally, Jim Clark astonished everyone by getting up to sixth place overall, mixing it with all the Scandinavians and actually taking the fastest time on one stage in the snow. He was phenomenal, and I was lucky enough to talk to him at various times during the rally. Although Jim had had one or two brushes with the countryside, it was in one of the fast stages in Dumfries and Galloway that he ‘came a cropper.’ The track featured a very fast crest followed by a left-hand bend, which caught out the great man. The Lotus Cortina left the road and rolled among the rocks two or three times. It was the end of a brave and brilliant drive. Jim and Brian Melia joined us at a dinner halt at the Station Hotel, Dumfries shortly after the incident. I shall always remember this. Jim said “I analysed it and knew what I had done wrong when I was halfway through the second roll. I wouldn’t do it again.”

My memorable trip with Mapple continued throughout the five-day event, and we really enjoyed our journey, which had included the famous Hardknott pass with which we were both so familiar. On the route back from Scotland to London there were more stages, including Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire and Silverstone race track. Now nearing the end of the event and positioned in the top twenty, there was a great happening – another memorable Mason incident. In the first Sherwood stage Roy indulged in a bit of ‘ditch-hooking,’ and hit a large tree trunk lying in the gutter. The Mini’s tie-bar broke, and we emerged from the ditch with one front wheel hanging off. We realized that our service crew, consisting of Roy’s father and ‘Uncle George’ from the family garage near Blackpool, would be at the exit of the forest stage a few miles away, and would have a spare tie-bar, of course. By this time we had been surrounded by spectators, so I asked if anyone could get me out of the forest, avoiding the rally stage route, so I could get a replacement. There were several volunteers and one young man offered to take me there. We set off in his Mini-Cooper like a bat out of hell, and I noticed we had two or three other Minis behind us. This was exciting stuff for them. It was quite exciting for me, too, as this enthusiastic spectator was driving me on the forest tracks between the trees faster than Mapple had ever gone! I was petrified, and as I feared, one quarter of a mile later we slid wide on a bend and fell on our side in a ditch. The driver of number two Mini-Cooper in the procession then offered to transfer me to his car to complete our journey to Uncle George. You probably won’t believe it, but this driver then set off like another bat out of hell, and after a mile or so of extremely hairy driving and within sight of the forest exit we were aiming for, went off the track into another ditch! I must be the only person ever to go off the road in one special stage with three different drivers! I did take the new tie-bar back with yet another lunatic driving me and we happily finished the event, albeit out of the top twenty, in 34th place.

The following year’s RAC was a disaster, as it had to be cancelled at the last minute. All the competitors were assembled at the Excelsior Hotel, ready for the off the next morning, when a severe outbreak of foot and mouth disease hit the headlines. It was affecting various parts of the country, and obviously, the last thing anyone wanted were rally cars charging through forests and over farm tracks, spreading the disease. I remember a special meeting of all competitors being called late in the evening, and a tearful Jack Kemsley announcing that the rally would not take place. I was due to compete with Graham John from Chester in his Austin 1800, and looking forward to a comfortable trip. I seem to remember we all drowned our sorrows, some people getting to bed around the time that they should have been setting off on the 1967 RAC Rally the next morning.

I enjoyed a surprise visit to Spain in 1970, after being contacted by Cal Withers, whose high-profile company, Withers of Winsford, dealt in rally cars and parts. It also sponsored and supplied rally cars to drivers of the calibre of Roy Fidler and Chris Sclater, among others. Cal wanted me to go to the Sherry Rally in Southern Spain to accompany Ian Harwood, who was servicing Chris Sclater’s Escort TC. Ian and I were in a hired SEAT saloon, and chased Chris round three-quarters of the route before he retired with a cracked cylinder block whilst lying in third place. After this, we embarked on a 600-mile tow to Bilbao for a ferry back to England. Needless to say, mayhem was never far away! In the middle of Madrid, during evening rush-hour, we stopped at a set of traffic-lights and a policeman waved a huge crowd of pedestrians across the road. Unfortunately for them, owing to the darkness, they didn’t quite see the black, greasy tow rope stretched between our two cars. I am sure you can now guess the rest of this story ... yes, you’re right, there were, literally, dozens of Spaniards floundering about on the road with briefcases and shopping bags all over the place! The police constable (or whatever they call them in these parts) was not too happy, and didn’t really like me taking photographs of the melée. Suffice to say, we were all carted off to the police station for a short stay.

More chaos was to come, however, when we arrived at a very steep descent from the mountains above Bilbao. I was driving, and heard (and felt) a ‘clunk’ as the SEAT lurched forward, not far from a sheer drop. Thankfully, Chris kept his foot on the brake pedal of the Escort as Ian and I scrambled about at the front of the car and discovered that a brake pad had fallen out. In the middle of these shenanigans, as we flapped and panicked, we observed a British coach coming down the pass. “Bloody hell! I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Ian, who hailed from the border area between England and North Wales. “It’s a Waggs of Oswestry coach. They run our local school bus service!” It’s certainly a small world. Back to the matter in hand, we used a pair of mole grips to close the rubber pipe to the brake calliper, then continued to Bilbao docks, very gingerly, with three wheel braking. The hire-car office was closed, as you might expect, so we removed the mole grips and I consulted my Spanish phrase-book and left a note on the steering-wheel saying ‘los frenos non funciona.’ I do hope they understood my brilliant translation.

Also in 1970, I had a slight diversion from my co-driving activities as one of the greatest rallies in the world was about to take place. This was the 16,000 mile London–Mexico World Cup Rally, which would start on the 19th of April from Wembley. It would be the longest, toughest, and most ambitious rally that the world had ever known, linking London to Mexico by way of Europe, South and Central America. It would take six weeks to complete this mighty event between two World Cup venues: London’s Wembley and Mexico City’s Aztec stadium. I’m not a great football fan (once, many years ago at a party in Manchester, I asked Bobby Charlton what he did for a living!), but I knew that England had won the World Cup in 1966 in London, and that this was a unique way of conceiving a rally. I then faced a dilemma. The event would be very long, and the immense preparation would take much time, so how could I compete? I could not take two months off work at K Shoes; if I did, there would be no job on my return. Although two or three drivers asked me to compete as part of a three-man crew, I really felt my career would suffer. Therefore I decided that although I’d have to be part of this great extravaganza, it would not be in the capacity of a competitor. Very cheekily, I telephoned John Sprinzel (whom I really didn’t know from Adam in those days), as I gathered he was the inspiration behind much of the event and virtually in charge. I said I would be available to marshal for part of the event, and roped in my good friend Mike Preston from Morecambe Car Club, who was always up for such ventures. Mike and I had enjoyed a few trips here and there, including a trip to watch the Targa Florio road race in Sicily. We had also once ventured to Woburn in Bedfordshire (I think I may have mentioned that venue before, at the very beginning of this book!)

Mike and I went to Woburn because the final of the British Autocross championship was taking place in the grounds of Woburn Abbey. We were mere spectators, but had an enjoyable two days. On returning from a pub late one evening we passed Whipsnade Zoo, and to our utter amazement saw an escaped wallaby hopping down the road towards us. I am not sure what possessed me, but I told Mike to stop the car and leave the headlights on to mesmerise the wallaby, which I would then catch and put in the back of the car, so we could return it to the zoo and maybe get a reward. I may have been watching too many David Attenborough TV programmes, but I approached the beast and leapt upon it, and actually manoeuvred it to the back door of Mike’s car. Its legs were flailing about, and in hindsight probably could have injured me. However, the wallaby had had enough, and didn’t seem to want to get into the car – it kicked me in a most sensitive part of my body and scurried off into the bushes! I suppose this is a bit of a diversion, but you might like to know how I spent some of my days and nights when not rallying!

Mike Preston and I were duly enrolled as marshals for the World Cup Rally, and if I remember rightly, he went to the RAC motorsport headquarters in Belgrave Square, London to collect all the paraphernalia connected with marshalling. Flags, banners, control boards, armbands, and goodness knows what else. It was a very impressive package. We were allocated two major marshalling points, one in the French Alps and another in Lisbon, before the cars departed for South America. We would have liked to go to South America, but it was better than nothing, and we were still on the reserve list for possible jobs there.

We performed our duties and met a lot of important rally names, like the Morley brothers and Val Domleo, with whom we shared a hotel in Nice. They were also travelling marshals. Our control was in the tiny village of Sigale, which we pretty much took over. We put banners everywhere, commandeered the pub in the town square, and generally felt very important. Several hours after setting up we were ready for action, and waited for the cars to arrive. It was hectic, as we were on a very tight ‘prime’ section of the rally, but we enjoyed every minute. I am not sure how the rally was seeded, but the start list seemed a bit of a hotch-potch so we were never quite sure who was going to arrive next. I briefly remember speaking to former European champion Sobieslaw Zasada from Poland (we didn’t have a lot to say, as my Polish isn’t too good) and Hannu Mikkola. I remember speaking to Bill Bengry, driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, and the man with the marvellous name of Emanouil Lifchits, driving his Russian state-entered Moskvich 412. I don’t think Major Lifchits had much to say, but I will always remember his name, printed as ‘Lift-Shit’ in the local newspaper and various magazines.

Back safely from our travels, it was time to think about the RAC Rally again. For the 1970 event I was asked to partner George Beever from Yorkshire, with whom I had done one or two smaller events. We were having a good run until George blotted his copy book on a stage on the old toll-road at Porlock in Somerset. Our Escort TC was flying up the hill, which had several tight bends all covered in wet leaves. In fact, ‘flying’ is an appropriate word, as halfway up the mile-long stage George lost it and we sailed over the edge. There was a very steep drop, and as we fell between the many trees I noticed, to my horror, that below us and coming up very quickly was the Bristol Channel. This had all the makings of an horrific accident, and I was convinced that it was the end of our rally, if not the end of the car and us! Thankfully, a sturdy tree halted our progress down the steep hillside. When we alighted, we discovered that the car was not too badly damaged, so we affixed a tow rope to the back and I persuaded dozens of spectators to heave the car back onto the road, despite the marshals’ protestations that it should stay down the bank. We lost ten or more minutes with this little manoeuvre but made it to the finish of the rally some days later in 33rd place. Another Mason moment!

Assuming you’ve read the first chapter, I think you’ve read all you need to know about my 1971 RAC Rally with Peter Clarke. The Woburn Lake incident says it all; apart from the fact we managed to get out of the lake, thanks to the RAC Land Rover. We were almost an hour late, but stayed in the rally and finished 23rd back in Harrogate, still sitting on very damp seats. I’m not sure if you can get rheumatism in the bum but if you can, I’m sure I got it.

Later in 1971, I received a surprise telephone call from the Ford competitions department at Boreham to say that Roger Clark was contesting the British Rally championship in a works Escort. He and Jim Porter had won the championship back in 1965 in a Cortina, and would be competing as a full works entry in 1972. Unfortunately the first event, the Mintex Seven Dales, almost clashed with the Hong Kong Rally, which Ford was also entering with cars for Roger Clark and Timo Mäkinen. Roger could enter the Mintex Seven Dales, but would have to leave immediately after the finish on Sunday morning to fly to Hong Kong, where Jim Porter would be waiting for him, having prepared all the maps and pace notes. With this phone call, I could see another life-changing and amazing moment heaving onto the horizon: Stuart Turner wanted me to co-drive Roger. I’ve never been a great telephone person (probably as a result of never having one in the home when I was young), and surprisingly, I still don’t enjoy telephone conversations, so I suppose I spluttered and said all the wrong things to whomever it was that called me. Nevertheless, I was duly signed.

The Seven Dales Rally, which had had various names and sponsors over the years, has always been the top rally in the north of England, as it included special stages in forests and elsewhere as well as being a night navigation rally. The 1972 event would be no different. Starting on the morning of Saturday the 26th February, the 450-mile route took in 14 forest stages, tarmac stages like Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount, fast airfields, and an eight-hour night navigation section all over the tightest lanes in the northern counties, finishing at Selby in North Yorkshire on Sunday morning. There was mist and fog all over the notorious Stainmore, with its fast roads and blind crests, and there were muddy sections across the moors using difficult-to-read white roads. There was a closed gate, I remember, and I had to rush out to open and close it, but obviously someone behind us rammed into it, head on. The sturdy wooden gate was lying across the track and was practically invisible in the mist. One Mini-Cooper driver hit it at speed, and recalled the incident to us at the petrol stop in Kirkby Lonsdale. “That was a bloody rough cattle grid up on the moors,” he said!

No-one at Ford ever said why I had been selected to partner Roger Clark on this event, but the fact that the rally had a difficult map reading section may have influenced their choice, as I certainly had good knowledge of the roads. My first works ride had been a daunting prospect, made all the more difficult by the fact it was in a left-hand drive car, the ex-Jean-François Piot Ford Escort RS. A rally with hundreds of time controls in narrow lanes is not the ideal place for a full-works left-hand drive car. At every point I had to hand the timecard, attached to a clipboard, across to Roger to give to the marshal, who then handed it back to me when we had checked that the correct time had been written in the appropriate place. It was a hell of a rigmarole, to be sure. A lot of marshals were somewhat flustered when we screamed into the control, with the driver sitting on the wrong side and it being Roger Clark to boot. I had never been so fast in my rallying career; we were charging through the narrow lanes at unbelievable speed. One section – down from Firbank Fell near Kendal – was well-known to me and all other local rallyists. No-one had ever been able to get between the two points where controls were always sited in under ten minutes. We did it in 8 minutes 49 seconds, can you believe?

I am pleased to say I never made a single map-reading error, gave Roger the severity of bends and instructions at junctions accurately, and seemed to have adjusted to his remarkable speed and car control. At the finish control at the Selby Fork Motel on Sunday morning we had a lead over the previous year’s winners Eric Jackson and Ken Joseph of 12 minutes, 48 seconds. To this day, this margin between first and second places remains a record, and has never been equalled on a national British championship event.

Motoring News reported the rally in detail, and was very complimentary about our efforts, saying “Obviously, the combination of Roger Clark’s driving ability and Tony Mason’s superb navigation paid dividends and, for a change, on an RAC Rally championship event it could be honestly said that the skills of both driver and co-driver contributed to the success.” And, just in case you thought I wrote this glowing report, as a regular contributor to the newspaper, I can tell you it was written by regular competitor and rallies editor Mike Greasley. The 1972 Mintex Seven Dales was the last rally in the RAC national championship to feature a map-reading road section, so I was unable to show my prowess in the future.