Murray Walker OBE b.1923
THE DOYEN OF motor racing commentators and the British voice of F1 has passed away at the age of 97… and no-one would have been more taken aback at the fuss caused by his death than this supremely modest, relentlessly enthusiastic, positive and unmannered man.
Born into a motorcycling family, he was a tank commander in WW2 and briefly raced and trialled bikes himself before first picking up the microphone at Shelsley Walsh in 1948. As Murray spread his wings, he formed a commentary team with his father Graham until the latter’s death in 1962. He became the BBC’s full-time F1 commentator in 1978 and was a fixture thereafter, also lending his excitable tones to all manner of other motorsport, from scrambling to Touring Cars.
The glamour really only came latterly with his fame, few people outside the BBC realising that, for many years, the star commentator didn’t actually travel to many overseas races but stoically carried out his work from a small studio in Television Centre while watching a live feed. This, of course, made it easier for him to maintain his successful day job in advertising, a role that, surprisingly, he didn’t relinquish until he reached the age of 59 in 1982.
When F1 moved to ITV in 1997, Walker inevitably went with it and continued to commentate on F1 until his official retirement at the 2002 United States GP at Indianapolis. Apart from his much-lamented absence from F1, however, it was hard to tell that he had slowed down at all, as book-writing, commentating, voicing kids’ TV shows and his journalism continued unabated.
To crown it all he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 International Historic Motoring Awards to go with his OBE (1996) and his Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2002), plus a wealth of other honours.
W hile some people will inevitably remember him for his gaffes (or ‘Murrayisms’ as he preferred to call them), try to name anyone in any field who so effortlessly established so many successful double acts and genuine friendships, as Murray did in and out of the commentary booth. First with James Hunt from 1980 to ’93, but also Jonathan Palmer, Martin Brundle, Jackie Stewart, Alan Jones and notably Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill.