Graham Hill, uncrowned King of Monaco

When Graham Hill became something of a hero for me around 1964, he already looked out of date. Despite the long hair and sideburns that later transformed him into a racing rock star as the Sixties progressed, his laconically courageous speaking style, refusal to take much beyond mechanics seriously, and appalling pencil moustache made him more of an archetypal Spitfire pilot than a racing driver.

This isn’t an idle parallel, because Graham Hill was probably the nearest thing British motor racing would ever get to a Douglas Bader. In fact – metaphors aside – Hill too wound up getting into racing cars competitively again before his horrendously smashed legs were really ready. What he did is what nobody British is allowed to do any more: challenge death, and stick two fingers up at anyone who tried to stop him doing it.

Before Hill there had been Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn – brave amateurs and devil-may-care drivers. But off camera and in the workshop, Hill was a skilled technician who drove his fellow workers mad with a compulsion to do things better and better. This too is something that makes the British these days want to pick up the phone and call in a psychiatrist. Hill would have called them trick-cyclists.

BBC2 honoured him last Sunday night in a rerun of its magical series Driven, a collection of documentaries about achieving British sportspeople. It’s yet another bit of programming that ought to shut up all those who have nothing but hatred for the BBC, because in celebrating the best of what our genes and culture have to offer, this series makes a nonsense of everything from the Health & Safety Executive to the current England soccer side.

In an earlier edition, Driven looked at the flawed career of cyclist Tommy Simpson, still a major hero in France on account of his astonishing achievements as a Tour de France rider, and eccentricity when not competing. But although I remember Simpson, his sport never quite got hold of me as motor racing did. Hill drove, played, loved, drank and laughed hard. He threw historic parties, spawned a later World Champion racing driver, won the Monte Carlo Grand Prix a staggering five times, and then died as he lived – violently – while piloting his plane during freezing fog in 1975.

1975 was a low point in British history. I remember thinking that without some kind of saviour soon, Britain had no future. I remember taking the offer of a job in Australia very seriously. And yes, I do recall seeing Hill’s death as symbolic – almost the demise of the last British buccaneer.

Thirty-six years later, we have come full circle. The false prophets Thatcher and Blair have brought us back to a sort of 1975, only this time with the added ingredient of fear: fear of danger, fear of being an individual, and fear of the future. As a truly professional racing driver, Graham Hill, wisely, had only the first of these – but factored it in anyway as the best way to live a full life.

I applaud BBC2 for commemorating these men and women with all the usual human frailties, but all the unusual bravery required to set an example. I especially applaud the producers for getting away with something so seditious to the cause of Thompson the Armbiter, they too deserve some kind of special  pour le merite.