Barry Sheene 1950–2003: The Biography (Text Only)
()
About this ebook
The definitive life story of the seventies world 500cc motorcycle champion Barry Sheene – the Brit whose death-defying crashes and playboy lifestyle made him the most famous bike racer on the planet. Written by the only journalist to have ridden on the roads with him, and featuring interviews with closest friends, team mates and former rivals.
Born in London's East End in 1950, Sheene was introduced to motor sport at the age of five, with his father Frank building him his first ever motorbike.
His story traces his humble beginnings as a maverick opposed to every educational influence, through an apprenticeship as a part-time rider and full-time mechanic, to a works team racer, with a host of diversions in pursuit of the opposite sex.
It charts his success between 1975 and 1982, a golden period during which Sheene won more international 500cc and 750cc Grand Prix titles than anyone, including the world 500cc title in 1976 and 1977. This despite the horrendous carnage from a series of near-fatal crashes from which Sheene miraculously survived and overcame, against all odds.
Outside the sport, Sheene discovered an acting talent, appearing in the ITV show Just Amazing and in numerous TV commercials, making him a household name. On his retirement, he found fulfilment (and a friendlier climate for his battered body) in Brisbane as an expert motor sport commentator and an accomplished businessman. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2002 he shunned conventional treatments, preferring natural remedies, but died early in 2003.
This is the complete portrait of perhaps the greatest circuit racer of them all.
Read more from Stuart Barker
Life of Evel: Evel Knievel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Niall Mackenzie: The Autobiography Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Barry Sheene 1950–2003
Related ebooks
Mansell: My Autobiography (Text Only Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Race: Inside the Indy 500 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Riders: Australia's Motorbike Champs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLe Tour: A History of the Tour de France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rolling Thunder Stock Car Racing: Young Guns: A Stock Car Racing Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLone Star J.R.: The Autobiography of Racing Legend Johnny Rutherford Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pironi: The Champion that Never Was Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFull Throttle: Robert Dunlop, road racing and me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful Danger: 101 Great Road Racing Photographs, Road Racing Legends 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Limit Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hit Wonders: The Story of One Off Grand Prix Winners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWall Smacker - The saga of the speedway Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Staying on Track: The Autobiography Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manos: Talons of Fate Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife At The Limit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Icons: My Inspiration. My Motivation. My Obsession. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChequered Conflict: The Inside Story on Two Explosive F1 World Championships Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lights Out, Full Throttle: The Good the Bad and the Bernie of Formula One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrabham: The Untold Story of Formula One and Australia's greatest ever racing driver Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld School: Beckett, bikes, balls and all Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe True Story of Marco Simoncelli Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeorge Russell: A Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCARS AT SPEED: Classic Stories from Grand Prix’s Golden Age By Robert Daley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inside Line: The High-Speed World Of A V8 Supercar Legend Driver Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStarting from the Back of the Grid: Misadventures Inside Formula One's Flying Circus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Indianapolis 500, a History - Volume One: Resurrection and Blue Crowns: The Indianapolis 500 - A History, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Indy 500: 1956-1965 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Sports Biographies For You
Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Things That Make White People Uncomfortable Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Baseball 100 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ball Four Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organizaion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Man-Eater in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LeBron Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Little Thing Called Life: On Loving Elvis Presley, Bruce Jenner, and Songs in Between Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taming the Beast: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCoach Wooden's Pyramid of Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Horse God Built: The Untold Story of Secretariat, the World's Greatest Racehorse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Kobe Bryant's The Mamba Mentality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related categories
Reviews for Barry Sheene 1950–2003
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Barry Sheene 1950–2003 - Stuart Barker
INTRODUCTION
‘I’m not going to let fucking cancer get in the way of me enjoying myself.’
It was like nothing had ever changed. The famous Donald Duck logo on the black and gold crash helmet could just be made out as the tall, gangly rider tucked in behind the bike’s screen, reducing wind drag to gain a fraction of a second over his pursuer. The equally famous number seven, crossed through European-style, was emblazoned on the bike’s bodywork as it had been almost 30 years before. It had always been lucky for him. Maybe it could be again.
His 51 years counted for nothing when he was on a motorcycle; it was as much a part of him as the plates, pins and 27 screws that held his legs together. The smooth but aggressive riding style, the determined and sustained attack, could all have belonged to a 20-year-old kid with a fire in his belly and a burning desire to win against the odds. Any odds.
Behind him, the 1987 500cc motorcycle Grand Prix world champion Wayne Gardner tried everything he knew to close the 1.3-second gap. But despite being 10 years younger and having a bike which was 20mph faster than the man out front, there was nothing he could do to get past. The distinctive riding style of the race leader hadn’t changed since he’d started racing bikes in 1968, and his desire to win appeared to be no less now than it was then. It was as if he still had something to prove.
The crowd, as ever, yelled their delight at the on-track bravado of the man in black, urging him on, willing him to make that decisive break, wanting him, needing him to dig deeper to secure a victory. Many of them had been teenagers when they first thrilled to their hero’s titanic battles with the best riders in the world, most of the races televised on ITV’s Saturday-afternoon World of Sport programme – warm, comforting memories of a childhood long gone. There were thousands in attendance who wouldn’t even have had an interest in motorcycles had it not been for the influence of the man who was out there throwing his bike hard over from side to side, skimming his knees off the Tarmac with a grace and style all of his own and gunning his steed down the straights as fast as the laws of physics would allow.
For the vast majority of the crowd, there was only one rider in the race; they would love him, applaud him and later mob him whether he came first or last. But Barry Sheene wasn’t accustomed to coming last. Even after 18 years of retirement from the sport that made him an international superstar, a multi-millionaire and one of the true icons of the seventies, he was out there proving he still had what it took to win races.
The more imaginative among the packed grandstands and trackside enclosures could have transported themselves, mentally if not physically, back to the halcyon days of the seventies when Sheene was on top of the world as the most famous motorcycle racer in history, a pin-up glamour boy for millions of teenage girls and a Boys’ Own hero for an entire generation of lads. Dads and mums alike now took great pleasure in pointing out to their own kids the very man who had quickened their young pulses nearly three decades earlier.
But even the most nostalgic of spectators were forced, however reluctantly, to admit that things were different this time round. For starters, it was 2002, not 1976. And this was not a 500cc Grand Prix World Championship race, it was a classic bike race being staged at the Goodwood Revival event organized by Sheene’s close friend, the Earl of March. Sheene’s bike, a classic sixties Manx Norton, was a far cry from the vicious 130bhp, 170mph monsters he used to tame on race tracks around the world for the pleasure of millions. But the fans didn’t care. It was still Barry Sheene out there, he was still racing a bike, he was still winning, and that was all that mattered.
The most significant change of all, the thing that really brought a lump to the throats of so many and which made Sheene’s eventual victory over Gardner even more remarkable and emotional, was the recently divulged fact that Barry had cancer. This was the first time he had appeared in public since being diagnosed. The poignancy of his win was not lost on the 80,000-strong crowd who realized they were probably witnessing Sheene’s last-ever race.
Barry had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and upper stomach just a few weeks earlier, and there were more than a few tears shed as he crossed the line, removed his helmet and waved to the masses on his victory lap. He had come a long way to get to Goodwood in the sleepy West Sussex countryside – from the other side of the world, in fact. An 18-hour direct flight from Australia is gruelling enough for most passengers, never mind one suffering from cancer. But to ride flat-out against some supremely talented opposition, including former world champions Gardner and Freddie Spencer, and to eventually take the race win gave all his fans reason to believe that this time cancer had picked the wrong body. Sheene was a fighter and a winner; he had proved it many times before. Surely, if anyone could beat the most dreaded of diseases, it was he.
When news of his illness broke, Sheene shocked fans around the world by announcing he would not be undergoing invasive surgery or chemotherapy to treat his condition. Instead, he would rely on alternative cures and a special frugal diet. Sheene had already lost a stone off his slight frame by the time he appeared at Goodwood, and orthodox oncologists warned that he risked malnutrition by continuing with the diet. But Sheene has always done things his own way, and he was adamant when interviewed by Motor Cycle News: ‘I’m not going to be fighting this in the conventional way. I won’t subject my body to chemotherapy. I’m putting my faith in the natural way.’
Typically for a man who had made a living out of cheating death, Barry put a brave face on his illness and already had his quips and quotes worked out for the media. ‘I don’t like cancer, but it’s growing on me’; ‘If I don’t beat this my wife’s going to kill me.’ These were just two of the lines he bandied about like a stand-up comic living in denial of the very real risk to his life. Sheene also insisted that he wasn’t ‘going to let fucking cancer get in the way of me enjoying myself’ and admitted that his second thought upon hearing his diagnosis was that he might have to miss the Goodwood event. It hadn’t taken long for him to re-establish control, pack a suitcase and catch a flight; he wasn’t about to let down his fans. Anyway, it wasn’t as if fighting for survival was something new to Sheene. In the past he had astounded some of the most respected doctors and surgeons in the world with his ability to recover from serious injuries in unheard-of time spans.
Well-publicized X-rays of his shattered legs from two horrific high-speed crashes played as much a part in making him a household name as any of his victories on the race track. In 1975, his rear tyre blew out at 178mph on the notorious banked section of the Daytona Speedway in Florida. The crash, captured by a television documentary crew who were following Sheene at the time, was shown on TV news programmes around the world, and the incident made Barry famous overnight. His leg was broken so badly it was twisted up behind him, out of sight, making him think he had lost it. He also lost shocking amounts of skin and broke his forearm, wrist, six ribs and a collarbone, as well as suffering compression fractures to several vertebrae. On top of that, damage to his kidneys meant he urinated blood for several weeks. Despite the serious nature of his injuries, Sheene did not lose his 60-a-day passion for strong, unfiltered cigarettes – he preferred the French brand Gauloises, but would happily smoke any brand that was being offered around – and insisted on being wheeled out of the hospital on his bed from time to time so that he could smoke. The hole he drilled in the chin bar of his crash helmet so that he could have a puff on the starting grids at race meetings remains the stuff of legend in bike racing circles, but no one was laughing any more. Sheene’s heavy smoking habit, which had started when he was just nine years old, was one factor cited as a possible cause of his cancer.
The Daytona disaster was the kind of accident that would take ‘normal’ people months, if not years, to recover from. Many would never overcome the psychological scars of remembering every bone-crushing, skin-shredding second of their crash, and would certainly never contemplate getting back on a motorcycle again, but then most people aren’t Barry Sheene. He was racing again just seven weeks later with an 18-inch pin in his left thigh bone, and went on to win his first World Championship the following year.
Crashes are common in bike racing, but big ones like Sheene’s Daytona incident are rare – at least, it’s rare to survive them. Broken arms or legs are frequent injuries, as are abrasions, damaged tendons and general cuts and bruising, but few people live through, or are unfortunate enough to have in the first place, crashes at such extreme speeds. Sheene had not one but two. The second happened seven years and two World Championships later (Barry retained the title in 1977 and was awarded an MBE for doing so) at the Silverstone circuit in England, and it was every bit as bad, if not worse, than the first. Sheene struck a crashed bike which was lying on the circuit just above a blind rise and its fuel tank instantly ignited causing a massive explosion. He had been travelling at around 165mph at the moment of impact. Moments later, another bike hit the wreckage causing another explosion; the resulting carnage resembled the aftermath of a terrorist bombing. Sheene’s already fragile legs had been smashed again, this time more gravely than before, and he also suffered injuries to his head, chest and kidneys.
But while his body was in bad shape, his mental attitude remained as gritty as ever. He told gathered reporters from his hospital bed that ‘Broken bones are a mechanical problem. You can fix them.’ Sheene’s surgeon, Nigel Cobb, inserted plates, pins and a total of 27 screws into his famous patient’s legs and triggered a barrage of schoolboy gags about Barry Sheene and airport metal detectors. But his rate of recovery, once again, was phenomenal.
If Barry Sheene had been a star before his Silverstone crash, he was a superstar after it – and, it appeared, an invincible one. No bike racer before or since has commanded anywhere near the same amount of media coverage as Sheene. It is inconceivable in the current climate of the sport to imagine a national newspaper running a front page story on a bike racer just because he’d met a new blonde girlfriend, and how many other bikers could have starred alongside boxer Henry Cooper in a terrestrial TV advert for a body scent encouraging users to ‘Splash it on all over’? How many racers counted members of the Beatles as close personal friends and dined with Hollywood legends such as Cary Grant? None.
As well as being a world champion racer, Barry Sheene was a marketing phenomenon, gaining exposure for his growing attachment of sponsors in areas even they couldn’t have imagined. He co-hosted ITV’s Just Amazing! show in the eighties and was the star attraction at the 1982 BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards when he rode his new Suzuki onstage and announced he’d be leaving Yamaha to join Suzuki for the following season. He starred as himself in the (very bad) movie Space Riders, and appeared on every major television show of his time from Parkinson to Swap Shop and Jim’ll Fix It to Russell Harty. But perhaps the most enduring legacy of Barry’s fame is that he’s still the only biker the general public as a whole have heard of. Ask any one of them to name a motorcycle racer and they’ll invariably say Barry Sheene. The same thing happens whenever anyone, young or old, is attempting to go too fast or to do something stupid on a two wheeler, be it a motorcycle or a pushbike. The response from policemen and dads alike is always the same: ‘Who do you think you are, son, Barry Sheene?’
Everyone appreciated a British sportsman who was capable of beating the world in an era when such a thing wasn’t (and, sadly, still isn’t) commonplace. Sheene remains the last British rider to win a Grand Prix World Championship despite the fact that he last held the title 25 years ago. Even more than his ability to win, the public applauded his guts and bravery as he came back not once but twice from injuries that would have ended any other sportsman’s career. After his Silverstone crash, Sheene was extremely lucky to be able to walk again, let alone be fit enough to win motorcycle races.
It was this fighting spirit, this never-say-die attitude, which gave hope to millions when Barry announced he was ready to battle cancer and wouldn’t be beaten in the fight. With typical bravado, he commented shortly after being diagnosed that it was ‘a complete pain in the arse’, and vowed to deal with it.
It was a great irony that a man who had spent 16 years risking his life on a motorcycle should retire from the sport still in one piece only to face death from a creeping, silent and devastating opponent from within. The irony was not lost on those who remembered that Britain’s other great champion motorcyclist, Mike Hailwood, was killed in retirement by an errant lorry driver while returning in his car from his local fish and chip shop. Sheene’s former rivals, as well as his constant supporters, were without exception shocked by the news of his cancer, and all of them rallied round to offer words of support and encouragement. Old differences were forgotten. The only thing that mattered was for Sheene to concentrate on beating his disease.
Barry Sheene was the first, and arguably the last, truly mainstream motorcycle racer who could genuinely lay claim to being a household name. In truth, there was no need for him after 1982 to continue to risk life and limb on a 180mph motorcycle when he was already a multi-millionaire with a twelfth-century, 34-bedroom mansion in Surrey, his own helicopter and a guaranteed career outside racing whenever he decided to call it quits. But that’s what made him Barry Sheene: his determination to be the best, to be the fastest, never to give up, to push a 130bhp motorcycle past its limits and bring it back safely again. Sometimes he didn’t bring it back safely; sometimes the bike would savagely bite back and spit Sheene off like an angry rodeo steer ditching its rider. But Sheene always got back on. He always returned to show the bike, and his public, who was boss.
But at the age of just 51, Sheene had a new and even more deadly opponent than a badly behaved, viciously powerful motorcycle, a more lethal foe than speed itself, and a more cunning enemy than any he had faced off before. He had cancer. Without doubt, it would prove to be the toughest battle of his impressive but painful career, but on that day at Goodwood there seemed to be no one in the world with a mindset more suited to combating the biggest killer of modern times. He had cheated death many times before. All he had to do was cheat it one more time.
CHAPTER 1
COCKNEY REBEL?
‘For me, school was like a bad dream. Every minute of every day was murder.’
If you’re going to be a motorcycle racer, you’re going to have to get used to pain, discomfort and hospital food. Barry Sheene had a very early introduction to all three. Almost from the moment he was born he suffered from infantile eczema which caused him, and his mother Iris, years of sleepless nights as Barry tossed around in his cot scratching and clawing at every part of his tiny body seeking a moment’s respite from the maddening, all-enveloping itch. As anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to suffer from severe eczema will testify, it’s not a very pleasant condition. Barry’s torment increased at the age of two when he also developed chronic asthma. The infant Sheene therefore had to endure the double misery of an infernal itch while struggling for breath at the same time. Almost from the moment he was born, he learned about tolerance to pain, about how to overcome illness, about how never to give up in the struggle back to health. These experiences would stand him in good stead.
Sadly, 11 September is a date that will now always be remembered for the wrong reasons following the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001, but in 1950 the date was significant in the Sheene family’s London household because it was when Frank and Iris welcomed into the world their second child, having already given birth to a daughter, Margaret. Barry Stephen Frank Sheene was born at 8.55 p.m. on a Monday evening and was later taken home to a four-bedroom flat in Queens Square, Holborn, just off Gray’s Inn Road in London WC1.
Much has been made of whether or not Sheene, having been born and raised in WC1, can actually lay claim to being a genuine cockney. Traditionally (and according to the Collins Dictionary definition), the only qualification required for the title is to be ‘born within the sound of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church’, or the ‘Bow Bells’ as they are more commonly referred to. Since weather conditions, white noise and the relative abilities of one’s hearing will naturally affect the range of the bells, it appears to be a moot point in Sheene’s case. There is no strict dividing line painted around London to define which streets are ‘cockney’ and which are not, but it’s probably fair to say that those living further east in the city disputed Sheene’s claim while the rest of the world happily accepted it. Still, Sheene was proud of his cockney roots and no one is in a position to deny him those roots with any authority.
Sheene’s father Frank, or Franco as he has always been affectionately called by his son, was the resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons. The family’s flat went with the job, as did a fully equipped workshop out back which was to prove of significant importance to the young Barry in the years that followed. The family was neither wealthy nor poor; Barry would later describe his family’s socio-economic status as ‘slightly above average’. Iris worked at the college as a housekeeper to top up the family income and Frank brought in some handy extra cash working as a mechanic and bike tuner in the evenings. By the mid-sixties he had earned such a good reputation as a two-stroke tuner that world champions including Bill Ivy and Phil Read came knocking on his door. The former was a hero to Barry, but he was sadly killed in a racing accident when Barry was still young. The latter would start out as a friend before falling out with Barry in 1975 over an alleged bribe attempt, more of which later.
Work became plentiful for Frank, and his skills were highly valued by any racer who had the money and wanted his motorcycle to go faster. It was Frank’s skill with all things mechanical that saved his son’s manhood after a nightmare incident when Barry was just four years old; eczema and asthma notwithstanding, his well-being suffered a further setback, as Michael Scott related in his 1983 book Barry Sheene: A Will to Win. According to Iris Sheene, Barry had been playing with a clockwork toy train while being bathed in the kitchen sink when he suddenly let out a terrible scream. When a panicked Iris turned to see the cause of the commotion, she noticed that the bodywork of the train was missing (probably due to Barry’s early curiosity for all things mechanical) but the cogs and mechanisms had caught his foreskin and were still churning away, tearing into the sensitive flesh of her child’s genitalia. A traumatized Barry was rushed to a nearby hospital where his father exercised all his skill in dismantling the train’s workings while desperately holding back the tightly loaded spring that was the cause of his son’s agony. Eventually Frank worked the train loose at the expense of much blood and some tissue, but Barry would have much to thank his father for in later years when he came of age. Had it not been for his father’s skill and quick thinking, Barry Sheene the playboy might never have been. It was a fortunate escape, and by no means Barry’s last.
Frank began to pass on his considerable mechanical knowledge to his son from a very early age. Before her death from a brain tumour in 1991, Iris recalled, ‘When he [Barry] was only eighteen months old, I can remember him wandering around in his dungarees with a spanner in his hand.’ There was to be an early introduction to race meetings, too: from the age of four Barry was being dragged around bike events, soaking up the addictive sights and smells of paddocks all over England and, on occasion, overseas as well. Frank had raced a variety of motorcycles as an amateur for many years, both before and after the war (he won a trophy on the famous Brooklands circuit just before war broke out). He was a competent and enthusiastic club racer but never really World Championship material. Nor did he have the longing to be a world champion; his interest lay more in the preparation and tuning of machinery, and he was most certainly world class at that. Further cementing the Sheene family’s ties with motorcycle racing was Frank’s brother Arthur, himself an extremely capable speedway rider for Coventry and a loyal member of ‘Team Sheene’ once Barry took up racing.
Unlike his son, Frank was a keen supporter of the Isle of Man TT races which at that time was still the most important bike event in the world. It was when he took five-year-old Barry to the Island for what was already his second TT trip that the youngster found himself having health traumas yet again, and this time it really did look bad. Set as it is in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man’s wet and misty climate is not particularly suited to asthma sufferers. Barry suffered such a severe attack that he quite literally turned blue. He was rushed to Nobles Hospital where he was detained for three days until his breathing returned to normal. It was the start of an unhappy relationship with the Isle of Man which would have far-reaching consequences in later years.
But Sheene was always quick to spot an opportunity and was extremely adept at turning ill fortune to his advantage. Rather than seeing his asthma as a disability, he found ways to make it work for him. For starters, it was a good excuse for getting out of school sports, of which he was never fond; it was an even better excuse for playing truant, and he regularly told teachers he had asthma clinics to attend. To be fair, sometimes he did have legitimate appointments, but there were many more occasions when he didn’t. His truancy habit was made considerably easier to sustain when Sheene found a pile of pre-stamped appointment cards on one particular visit to a clinic. Spotting a golden opportunity, he promptly pocketed the lot, got a friend to sign them, and from then on enjoyed what amounted to a healthy supply of get-out-of-school-free cards. They were not wasted.
Sheene’s hatred of school has been well documented. It’s not that he didn’t have an aptitude for learning – as he would later prove by teaching himself five languages and learning to pilot a helicopter – it was just that he didn’t like it. And when Barry Sheene didn’t like doing something, he didn’t do it. He didn’t like the work, he didn’t like the discipline, and most of all he didn’t like the teachers. ‘For me, school was like a bad dream,’ he said. ‘Every minute of every day was murder. I hated being told what to do and when to do it by a bunch of teachers who always wanted to try to insult me or belittle me.’ Sheene didn’t respond well to being told what to do. If he was given a free rein, as he was in Frank’s workshop, he displayed a fantastic ability to learn, but he resented the apparently pointless rigidity of the school environment. That stubborn streak would remain with him throughout his life, and it helped him amass a fortune as a property developer in Australia when he stopped racing motorcycles. Barry’s headmaster at St Martin’s in the Fields once told Iris that her son could have been top boy if he had only put his mind to it, but Barry simply wasn’t interested. He had decided at a very early age that he would do things his own way or not at all. That same headmaster sent his former pupil a letter of congratulations when he won the 500cc World Championship in 1976, a fact of which Barry was understandably proud. It was, after all, a written acknowledgement of achievements attained without the aid of formal education.
Sheene brought up the subject of his schooldays again in 1978 when he appeared on the Parkinson show. Speaking of one teacher whom he had particularly disliked (he diplomatically stopped short of naming him) he said, ‘I was caught for This Is Your Life the