Michele Hewitson Interview: Greg Murphy

Four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Greg Murphy's car racing career was derailed by a crash in 2012. Idleness, though, doesn't sit well with him. Photo / Dean Purcell

Competitive and opinionated, Kiwi racing driver is a perfect fit for Speed, Sky's new show for petrolheads

Greg Murphy, the celebrated racing car driver and co-host of Sky's motorsports show, Speed, seemed a pretty good egg, I thought, in his hard-boiled way. You wouldn't expect to compare him to a coddled egg. He's a pretty tough guy, as you would expect - the fastest he has gone is about 320 km/h, and that's not for wimps, although to note it might be. He said: "But that's nothing. That's not what it's about. You don't feel that once you've got used to it."

He takes a bit of getting used to. He is, he said, stating the obvious, blunt and abrasive at times. He has never been known to lack an opinion, or to shy away from expressing one, so he's probably the perfect choice to front a TV show for petrolheads.

He might also have had to be a bit of a bastard, at times, I suggested, meaning you probably have to be, to be a great racing driver. "Yeah," he said, "to do anything competitive, I think you do. Yeah. You've got to. And selfishness. Massive selfishness." The person he is bluntest with might be himself.

It would be a close run thing. Sometimes, he said, he says things and then five minutes later: "You go, sheez ... I wish I hadn't said that." He was talking about dealing with the politics of the motor racing world which, like the politics in every sporting world, are complex. He said: "I definitely created a bit of a path because of the way I was. My personality and that kind of thing because I didn't want to have to deal with having to stick my nose, you know, up someone's backside. If that's the way it's going to go, I'd rather not ... But, you know, I probably said things that I probably shouldn't."

This is not the same as regretting having said things. He does not do regret, or sucking up, or holding back. He said: "We don't like hearing the truth all the time, do we? Truth hurts."

Murphy intensely dislikes the label "living legend". Photo / Dean Purcell

We had a pretty good interview, I thought. I asked him things and he answered them, truthfully. He only objected to one of my questions which wasn't really a question. I said that he was a living legend. He said, vehemently: "I am not." I'd read that he was, on the internet. He said: "Well, it wasn't something I wrote! I don't like that label." I didn't think he would. It is too effusive, for one thing, and so probably also embarrassing. "Well, I just think that word gets used a little bit too commonly. Legends are people who have done some pretty heroic amazing things and I certainly haven't done anything heroic. I've been a racing driver. I've been fortunate enough to be a sports person and made a living out of doing something that I love. That doesn't make you a legend."

But he wasn't cross about this and he didn't object to any of my other questions and he answered them in his usual, blunt and honest way that some may think abrasive. I didn't. He has nice manners and said thank you for the coffee and that he appreciated me coming to interview him. He is, I thought, actually, and unexpectedly, rather sweet.

The day after I saw him he seems to have thought: "Sheez ... " He left a message asking me to call him, about which I thought "sheez" because I know what that always means. He'd had a thought. He had and it was that he didn't want me to put in anything about how much money he does or doesn't have. That would be difficult because I don't know how much money he does or doesn't have other than he doesn't have gazillions - because I said, as a joke, surely he did. It doesn't work like that, he said. I said that there might be an idea that it did work like that and he said that "there are some guys earning a lot more money than others, that's for sure". And that was about it. But this was, he said, personal and nobody's business and that he didn't know the interview had started (er, two recorders on, on the table) and that he thought the interview was supposed to be about his TV show. I pointed out that I had never said it was, and that the interviews for this column were personal. He said he didn't know that because he didn't read it. He wasn't being rude. He really is hopeless at sucking up! Anyway, he didn't seem to have any issue with the interview at the time, so all I can surmise is that he was having one of his "sheez" moments, much delayed. Also, he likes to be in control, of cars, obviously, and interviews, presumably, and so gets a bit tetchy if the mechanic (me, in this case) disappoints him.

Murphy has never been able to bring himself to care what other people think. Photo / Dean Purcell

We had, during the interview, been talking about this abrasive personality of his and his failure to suck up to people. I asked whether he was sometimes his own worst enemy and he said: "Pretty much. Pretty much." Would his wife say so? "Yeah, for sure. But at the end of the day, that's who I am. I think some people sort of respect that because often we're too scared to say what we really think, aren't we? Because of what's going to happen and how people will judge you and how you'll be looked at and all that kind of stuff." He has never been able to bring himself to care what other people think. "Yeah. I find my abrasiveness obviously doesn't rub off the right way on everybody. That's how it is. We're too PC in this world now. We are just too PC about the most ridiculous things." I did ask about what things and he said oh, just look at the news, or politics. I asked about his politics and he said he didn't know what right-wing or left-wing means but that "it's probably quite obvious" who he voted for in the last general election.

I asked him whether he'd take the keys off a dangerous tourist driver and I really shouldn't have because I had just handed him the keys to take off a very long rant about terrible drivers and our "shocking requirements" and how nothing ever gets done. He was sounding like a politician (it's probably quite obvious of which hue) but he is unlikely to entertain becoming one because: "I would probably bang my head against the wall too often. Nothing happens fast enough for me. Nothing happens fast enough." The short answer is that he "probably" would take the keys off a dangerous driver.

He must be exhausting to live with. He's competitive about everything and now he is, sort of, retired from racing - "sort of, but I hate that word. It's a shocking word - and he is only 42. I wondered what you do with his sort of competitiveness, off a race track, because it must be impossible to replicate. "No. You're right. It can be quite difficult, so I do need to find something else to do. I'm competitive in just about whatever I do. If I go out and do dirt bike racing with mates, it's all about who can take the first corner ... Well, I don't see the point in going and doing something if you're not going to be the best at it." He's probably competitive at playing Snap, with his three kids. "There's no prizes for second."

What must he be like to be married to? "Similar to what it's like being married to anyone who wants to achieve at the highest level. You go home upset and disappointed and frustrated and all those kinds of things ... I was lucky enough to be involved in the sport for a very long time and [to] receive payment for it. But, you don't jump out of the car when you finished 22nd and go: 'Wow! That was fantastic!' You walk off with your tail between your legs and you drag that home."

He had said, earlier, and possibly redundantly: "My wife ... She shakes her head a lot."

Murphy has had a celebrated career, but you won't catch him celebrating it. Photo / Dean Purcell

He's had a celebrated career - he won the Bathurst 1000 four times - but you won't catch him celebrating it. He has a strange relationship with success, which he craved, but it's hard to know how much enjoyment he got from achieving it. He had had quite a lot of success, I said, sucking up and to cheer things up. He seemed a bit gloomy about his sort of retirement, although he'd deny that - he deals in the facts of the matter and he doesn't hang about dissecting them. He had a crash in 2012 and buggered a disc in his back which he'd buggered once before. 'I'm looked at as being someone who is not at the top of his game any more."

He said: "No. No," about the successes. "But I've never been satisfied with it." He probably wouldn't have been satisfied, then, no matter what he'd achieved. "Potentially. But the fact is, and as I say, it's not regret." The fact is, he says, he went one way (he means with certain teams) when he might have chosen another way, in which case: The path might have been quite different."

I thought he was sounding slightly regretful but he said he absolutely wasn't but that he obviously "didn't want it to stop; you don't want it to end" and "when it wasn't going the way it was supposed to or the way I intended there's no point in putting a bloody smile on your face and pretending everything was fantastic." Some people do just that. "And I don't like it. It's fake. Be real. I was never fake and some people didn't like that, you know, when they come up and say: 'That was a pretty good day.' Finishing twelfth? No. It wasn't. It was a shit day. 'Well, you know that you're lucky enough to be out there.' No. I've worked bloody hard. Don't tell me I'm lucky enough to be f***en out there. 'But you're a V8 Supercar driver!' I don't give a shit. I'm here to achieve and be successful. Making up the numbers? Making up the numbers doesn't cut it. They never come up to you when you don't drive any more and say: 'That's no good' or 'that's bad luck'."

Would he like them to? "No."

I still can't make up my mind whether he's amazingly complicated, or completely uncomplicated. He's very funny, but I'm not entirely sure either about whether he intends to be. I wondered whether car racing had psychologists and he said they did and that he "went to a guy" that he thinks was a sports psychologist "for a little bit". To talk about? "Stuff." What stuff? "Just stuff. Nothing too exciting." And how did that go? "Didn't last long."

I imagine that it would be like attempting to psychoanalyse a hard boiled egg and how much you enjoy that challenge might depend on your liking for hard boiled eggs. I like them, but they can be a bit tricky to peel, that's for sure.

• Speed screens on SKY Sport 1, Wednesdays, 9.30pm.