Dinners with royalty, laughs with Sir Sean and the crazy nights my kids stayed with a Beatle...
Sir Jackie Stewart opens up on his starry days in F1 and
WITH the champagne flowing and one of the world’s most glamorous women sitting next to him – Princess Grace of Monaco – Scots racing driver Jackie Stewart could hardly believe how far he had travelled from his humble beginnings.
Forced to become a mechanic at the age of 16 because his dyslexia meant he had never learned at school to read or write, it was a chance conversation with a wealthy customer at the garage where he worked that would see him enter the world of motorsport and eventually become a three-time F1 world champion.
Now, just hours after winning the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix, he found himself seated at the top table next to former Hollywood icon Grace Kelly, her husband, Prince Rainier, and his wife and childhood sweetheart, Helen, and knew he had finally arrived.
In the years that followed, the royal couple and the Stewarts would become good friends. But a new ‘up close and personal’ documentary about his extraordinary life now lifts the lid on just how many other stars he counted as true pals – and how he went about choosing which ones to hang on to and which ones to cut loose.
In a Life With Legends podcast ahead of the documentary which screens later this month, Sir Jackie, 83, said: ‘Most of the people that I’ve become friendly with are considerably more successful than I’ve ever been, or will be. A lot of people want to hang out with success and these are the people you actually want to avoid as much as possible. To have a bunch of sycophants as friends is a mistake.
‘If you fly with the crows you’re likely to be shot at but if you soar with the eagles you’re above the shot. So, I’m very lucky, and that’s nice because I’m still learning, I’m still seeing opportunities.’
He counts his late friends, Scots actor Sir Sean Connery and George Harrison of the Beatles, with their extraordinary talents as being among some of those soaring eagles.
SIRJackie, who has two sons, Paul, 57, and Mark, 54, added: ‘I could never have been a great friend of Sean Connery if I hadn’t been a halfdecent racing driver. When you’ve reached a certain level, people who are very good at things like to hang out with other people who are just as good.’
On December 30, Sky TV will debut a feature-length documentary, titled Stewart, about the racing star from the village of Milton, Dunbartonshire. Sir Jackie said watching a preview of it was an incredible trip down memory lane.
He said: ‘I was literally lost for words. I knew they were making it but it all happened during lockdown and I had no idea what it would be like. Watching it now, I find it exhilarating, in parts uncomfortable, and at times almost unbearably emotional.
‘For my darling wife Helen and me it brings back incredibly vivid memories of people and places from long ago.
‘In a way, I’m the last person to ask about this, as it’s so personal. But if anyone wants to know what Formula One was like 50 years ago, they should watch this film.’
Reminiscing about what he sees as the heyday of motorsport – his Formula One years were from 1965 to 1973 – the man once nicknamed the Flying Scot said the dizzying mix of races, along with celebrity trackside visitors, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the sight of skimpily clad models mingling around the pit lane, all added to the heady atmosphere.
Sir Jackie said: ‘The fixtures in the 60s and 70s, I think, were probably the best years for a long time. The girls hardly wore any clothes, the Beatles and the Stones were there. Princess Grace was also there and she would attract people because of the Cannes Film Festival being at the same time as the Monaco Grand Prix.
‘On a Sunday night, I sat next to Princess Grace and Helen sat next to Prince Rainier, which was a big deal, and we later became friends. Hanging out with Muhammad Ali was also terrific. He, of course, was dyslexic as well.’
He added: ‘George Harrison came too and became a genuine friend to the very end, to my sons, Paul and to Mark, as well as to me. He loved driving and had a McLaren and all sorts of beautiful cars.
‘And when I was away driving racing cars in around 60 or 70 races a year,
Helen would take the two of them, Paul and Mark, down to George’s home at Friar Park [in Henley-onThames, Oxfordshire,] and live with him and his
wife Livvy.’ Sir Jackie, the son of an amateur motorcycle racer turned car dealer, James, and his wife, Jeannie, also talks on the podcast about how his undiagnosed dyslexia led to him becoming a mechanic after feeling that his schooling at Hartfield Primary, then Dumbarton Academy, failed him.
He said: ‘I’m an extreme dyslexic. I can’t read or write to this day and I don’t know the words of our own national anthem, or the
Lord’s Prayer.’ Sir Jackie, who was 17 when he got his first car, an Austin A30, added: ‘Serving petrol, I made more money doing tips than I did in salary, and in fact I was able to buy a brand new car.’
Back then, however, his passion was not cars – but trap and clay pigeon shooting. And for a decade, from the age of 14, he was a key part of the Scotland as well as Great Britain shooting teams. His life would change forever, however, when ‘a very nice young man’, Barry Filer, a wealthy customer, approached him to race his cars.
Initially reluctant, he was persuaded to give it a go, recalling: ‘I didn’t have any ambitions to be a racing driver. But I drove in a sprint and finished second to somebody in a TVR. The other drive, I won. The whole driving thing then took off, almost too fast for me to, I suppose, really enjoy the elements of finding myself under these circumstances.
‘Within a year of racing in Formula Three, I was being asked to be the number two driver for Graham Hill in a BRM. So then that was the rocket ship.’
Finding himself in the big league, earning large sums of money, he added: ‘Earning a hundred pounds was a big deal but a thousand pounds, you couldn’t believe, so we were able to buy a house rather than stay in a rented apartment.’ Sir Jackie, who pays special tribute to fellow Scots ace Jim Clark, saying he was the best driver he ever raced against, attributes keeping a level head to his years as a competitive shooter.
He said: ‘I didn’t get over-excited because I had already won the Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English, British, European, as well as Mediterranean championships at shooting.
‘So I learned more from shooting than I did actually from racing cars. When you shoot and miss a target, you’ll never get it back. In a racing car, you can make a wee mistake and you can make it up the next time, before the 20th corner in some races.’
Nowadays, it is not motorsport but philanthropic works, which include overseeing the charity he set up in 2018, Race Against Dementia, that dominates his time as he tries to find a cure for the disease that his wife was diagnosed with in 2016.
Speaking previously about her illness, Sir Jackie said: ‘When I was told Helen had dementia and there was no cure, I thought, “This is ridiculous”, especially when you look at the number of people in the world who have it.
‘For every person born in the world today, one in three will develop dementia.’
He thinks Formula One’s technology and out-of-the-box thinking may bring about a cure, adding: ‘I want to, in my lifetime, find a cure for dementia with the type of people that I’m trying to bring together.
‘So through the charity, we’re picking up the best PhDs in the world, mostly women, and we can pay their salaries five years in advance and put them in the best medical institutions to carry out research.’
To have a bunch of sycophants as friends is a mistake