AT LUNCH WITH ROBIN MILLER
The Grand Prix reporter and Motor Cycle News editor became one of Britain’s most successful businessmen. But it’s his motorcycling days he remembers most fondly
The man behind MCN Superbikes (and MCN at the time) tells all
Get Robin Miller talking about the 1960s GP continental circus and anecdotes about Hailwood, Read and Agostini tumble out like racers exiting a late-night bar. Robin went on to achieve extraordinary things as editor of Motor Cycle News and later as a business titan, but you get the impression GP reporting days were a lot more fun.
“I just thought it was wonderful. And it was,” he says, reclining in an armchair at his home in Cambridgeshire. “The paddock was a very friendly place in those days and you could talk directly to the riders – there were no PR people in the way. You’d walk into the paddock and Hailwood would shout out: ‘Oi! Miller, where’s bloody MCN?’”
Robin started as the paper’s GP reporter in 1966 at the Spanish GP: “As a greenhorn from Penrith it was a new world, but you got to know people very quickly. A lot of the back-of-the-grid guys were delighted to see me because they might get a mention in MCN, and it didn’t take all that long to get to know the top guys because we enjoyed the same things – the nightlife would get you together.”
Robin’s penchant for a party was particularly important because at the time there were only two UK reporters in the paddock, and his rival – the well-respected Mick Woollett – was less keen on racing’s social side. “Mick was a good bloke, but he was a happily married man and wasn’t a funloving person, so he didn’t get involved in the way I did.
“After every race, all the single guys like Bill Ivy and Mike Hailwood got pissed at the prize-giving party. It was great fun. And of course plenty of the star riders were getting their leg over, and no one said anything, partly because there wasn’t much media attention and partly because you had to be careful. As a reporter, you didn’t want to disclose too much because you needed the stars to keep you going so you didn’t want to annoy them or lose their trust.”
Besides the parties, Robin was also impressed by the solidarity of the paddock. “A lot of the racers were surviving on £20 start money, which would be just enough to get them to the next race. Some of the better-off guys towed a caravan behind their Thames van, but the rest slept in the back of their vans. Obviously the works riders were getting a lot more money, but they were all as one – there was no differentiation day-to-day, it was like a big family paddock.
“I remember at Brno in Czechoslovakia the organisers weren’t going to pay the Irish rider Chris Goosen the start money he was expecting and Hailwood and Jim Redman went to the organisers and said: ‘Look, if he doesn’t start, we aren’t starting’. That’s how close they were – they stuck up for him and, of course, the organisers had to cave in. Incidentally, Brno was an interesting place to go to. The riders were very popular there, because some very attractive women would try to persuade them to take them back from behind the Iron Curtain to the West and a few succeeded.” Naturally, Mike Hailwood crops up a lot in Robin’s GP tales – he was at his peak at that time. But it’s clear it wasn’t just Hailwood’s riding that impressed Robin. “I met a lot of wonderful people doing the GPS, and of course great riders, Mike being the greatest of all. But he was also a very good guy – there was no side to him.
“At the time, a lot of people resented him a bit – I did to start with – because we knew he had money [Hailwood’s father Stan was very wealthy]. But the fact is that he could really ride, and even at 19 he was getting excellent results. It was a pity for Phil Read in some ways, because he came at a time when Mike was around. It made it hard for him, and he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about that – even though he won all those world championships, he was still a greatly underrated rider.”
Despite his good nature, Hailwood was not above stitching up his fellow riders. “Mike used to take the piss out of Ago, because his English wasn’t great back then. I remember Mike once told him that whenever he gets an award –
‘YOU’D WALK INTO THE PADDOCK AND HAILWOOD WOULD SHOUT OUT: ‘OI! MILLER, WHERE’S BLOODY MCN?’’
which he did a lot – the polite thing to say was: ‘Thank you and f*** your old boots’. And Ago used to say it. I suspect he knew what he was saying, but he was a very good sport.”
Of course there was a dark side to the GP paddock in the 1960s. None of the circuits were safe, but some of them were shockingly dangerous. “Ago told me once that whenever he left home to race he’d say to his mother: ‘Goodbye mama, I hope to see you again,’ because he knew there was a chance he wouldn’t be coming back.
“The racers weren’t children, they all knew what they were getting into and that one or two of them wouldn’t be there at the end of the year. But it’s a human trait that you never believe it’ll happen to you. All the circuits were pretty dangerous, and although it’s better now – and so it should be – I think it’s a real pity that we’ve lost some of the great old circuits like Nürburgring and Spa.”
Mind you, Robin had to face a few dangers, too. “Finland turned out to be dangerous for me. I was in a swimming pool with various riders and was walking in the shallow end when it suddenly got deeper and I couldn’t touch the bottom. I couldn’t swim and was waving and gasping for air – I was drowning. In the end Billie Nelson [fourth in the 500cc World Championship in 1969] dived in to save me.”
There were more prosaic downsides to Robin’s job. To allow MCN to hit the newsagents’ shelves on a Wednesday, it had to be printed on Monday night – a tight schedule after a Sunday race. “In those days I had to get the rolls of film from Volker Rauch [the famed German Grand Prix photographer] and drive or catch a plane back to get the film to the dark room. Also, calculators didn’t exist, so I had to do all the conversions of average lap speeds from kph to mph with every bike by hand. It would take hours.”
After two seasons, Robin’s relationship with his editor was deteriorating and he took a more senior job on a title called Angling Times. His decision surprised almost everyone, especially those in the GP paddock. “When I see Ago now at events or give him a call to see how he is, he still greets me with: ‘Ah, eeets the fisherman,’ because he just couldn’t believe that someone would leave motorcycling for fishing.” But giving up Ago, Hailwood and Read for carp, roach and maggots wasn’t the first time that Robin had displayed a focused drive to climb the career ladder. As a bike-mad lad in Penrith, he’d got into racing – even getting as far as the Manx – but gave it all up when he was offered a job as a reporter on MCN.
“I couldn’t see much of a future in Penrith,” he says. “I was a junior reporter at the Penrith Observer and when I saw the MCN job advertised, I applied. I went to the interview and the editor asked if I socialised much and whether I drank. I said: ‘In moderation’. The other candidate was as well equipped as me to do the job, but his answer was: ‘No – I never drink’. And that was that, I got the job on the basis that I liked a drink – the ex-fleet Street editor couldn’t imagine a successful journalist not drinking. I had to give up racing because I’d be working at weekends, but I didn’t mind – I wasn’t very good anyway.”
After two years away from MCN, Robin’s gamble of moving to Angling Times paid off – in 1970 he was offered the MCN editorship. “Of all the things that have happened in my life, getting asked to go back to MCN as editor was
the greatest. It was just fantastic.” Surely getting knighted in 2003 beat that? “Oh no, that was recognition for the company [EMAP] which, thanks to the top quality people there, had transformed from a family-run operation to a an international business worth £2bn. The conversation when I was offered the editorship of MCN was infinitely more memorable.”
False modesty? Unlikely – throughout his business career Robin showed little interest in status and the trappings of wealth, often turning up to offices in a ratty VW Polo pick-up and once famously being mistaken for a coach driver by a receptionist at an office of the multi-national publishing empire of which he was then chief executive.
This down-to-earth attitude is allied to an uncanny ability with people. It’s not just that he effortlessly makes you feel at ease, but he manages to forge and maintain a seemingly limitless number of friendships – whether it’s Phil Read (“Spoke to him the other week”) or Agostini (“Had a chat about Covid around his place in Bergamo”) or Paul Smart (“I needed to check up on some facts for this chat”). When he got the MCN job in 1970, Robin immediately put his racing contacts to good use. “That’s when we started the MCN Superbike Championship [now called British Superbikes, see p36]. I got to know Chris Lowe [accomplished race promoter and manager of Brands Hatch] and we were talking about the move to 750 machines and we thought: ‘Why not introduce a series that caters for superbikes?’ “We got it going in a very low-key way and there was a very small line-up of bikes for the first event at Brands. Paul Smart and Ray Pickerell were down to ride – but they were big time, and Chris Lowe told Paul that he wanted him for bigger events. Lowe was also thinking that Paul and Ray would walk away with it on the works Triumphs.
“There were some good guys in that first race – Brian Kemp, Alex George, Charlie Sanby – and Percy Tait ended up winning, and he was a very popular guy. As the season went on, it got more popular and we ended up with Barry Sheene and Peter Williams competing. Eventually all the top guys were in it.
“It was the start of a new era in British road racing, because previously it had been all about people like [John] Cooper and [Derek] Minter on 500 Nortons and this was a move from G50s and Manxes to something completely different. And because the bikes were all based on road bikes, the manufacturers liked it, too.” And, of course, Robin organised a huge party at the end of the season. “We used to get a deal on the champagne, so there was plenty of that about. It was a highlight for lots of people – Dave Croxford in particular loved it.”
The emerging superbike class encouraged Lowe to try another new racing format, called the Match Races, pitting an American team against the Brits, initially as a BSA/ Triumph marketing exercise. Says Robin: “That became a fantastic series. Chris Lowe and Gavin Tripp [an EX-MCN journalist who was promoting races in the States] got together with Peter Thornton [boss of Bsa/triumph in America] and put together the Easter series.
“You’d have top riders – Barry Sheene and Cal Rayborn, for example – and of course the Yanks turned out to be better than the British thought. And then we thought: ‘We’ll get them in the rain,’ but people like Rayborn were extraordinarily good in the rain, too. There were huge crowds – much bigger than these days. If you look at the pictures of Mallory at the Devil’s Elbow, it was heaving with people.
“It was similar to the Mallory Park finale [the Race of the Year] where you’d get world champions – Ago, Hailwood – all competing, which of course they wouldn’t do now. These days the Motogp and the World Superbike rounds are your only chances to see world class riders. The racing in BSB is very good, but it doesn’t have the star-studded nature of those Transatlantics or end-of-season races.” Perhaps the most famous Race of the Year was in 1971, when John Cooper beat the seemingly invincible combination of Agostini and his MV. Naturally, as MCN editor, Robin had a ringside seat. “That was a fantastic race and there was a huge crowd. When Coop on the BSA got it sideways, everyone thought it was over – but he hung on and eventually outbraked Ago and won. For Coop to beat Giacomo Agostini on the unbeatable MV was astonishing.”
To persuade superstars like Sheene and Ago to show up required vast amounts of cash. “To get a top rider like Barry along, you’d have to have about £10,000 in a brown paper envelope, but having him there would make a huge difference to the gate. People talk about the difference between great riders and stars – and Barry was definitely a star. He was as much on the front page of the tabloids as he was on the back – people like that only come along once every generation.”
By then MCN was flying, with sales eventually hitting 170,000 a week. “Barry has to take some credit for that, because his fame played a big part in MCN’S success, no question. He made the national papers for all sorts of reasons apart from motorbike racing, but that’s what people loved about him. I always found him to be a good bloke – he knew what he wanted and would get it. It’s a dull old world, so you need personalities that liven things up a bit like Barry. He gave everyone a lot of fun.”
After four years of editing MCN, Robin got another one of those opportunities he couldn’t resist and became the managing director of EMAP’S magazine division, going on to launch or buy Bike, Car, Smash Hits, Q, and dozens of other magazines. He eventually became Chief Executive of the entire company, then went on to be a director of Channel 4, HMV, Moss Bros and several other major corporations.
He’s still working hard these days and I’m aware drinking tea with me isn’t progressing matters for him. I ask if he’s enjoyed chatting about the old days. “Generally I find it rather boring talking about the past – I’m more interested in tomorrow, because I can influence that. But the exception is when something is very interesting, which I think motorcycles are – the people, the events and the machinery.
“I’ve been immersed in business for a long time, but bikes were my first love and now both my sons are involved – David runs bikesportnews.com and dirtbikerider.com while Will manages crash.net, visordown.com and golfmagic. And I still like going to bike meets, though I have to say, mostly for the social side.” You can take the man out of the party, but you can’t take the party out of the man...