At the age of 84, Sir Jackie Stewart has a fair bit in his rear mirror. That’s apparent even from his home office in Switzerland as he’s talking to the Listener. Behind him, as he sits arms-crossed, serious but given to the occasional laugh at his own expense, are large paintings of the blue cars he drove in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those were the days when he became three-time Formula 1 champion and the most famous Scotsman – with the most famous sideburns – in the world. Beneath the artwork and sitting on a printer is an old open-face racing helmet with his trademark tartan band.
Of course, New Zealand kind of knew him before he was famous. He came here to race in the Tasman Series in 1966 and 1967, before his F1 glory days. And, while here, he risked getting his racing licence taken off him after he was pulled over and cited for dangerous driving as he drove two fellow competitors to Levin. He got off thanks to the quick work of a local lawyer and future government minister. More on that later.
The reason for talking to Stewart is a new feature documentary about him. Stewart is narrated by him and executive-produced by Mark, the film-making younger of his two sons.
Stewart uses that surname-only title cannily. It might be a film about his life in the fastest lane but it’s a touching portrait of the relationship between him and his wife, Helen, Lady Stewart. The teenage sweethearts married before his racing career took off. The film follows their transformation from that nice young Glaswegian couple next door to the king and queen of the early 1970s Grand Prix jet set and doting parents.
Helen has been living with dementia for some years. Near the end of the doco is a contemporary shot of her on one of the many garden seats the family have with plaques dedicated to the friends they lost in those dangerous days of racing. The bench shows the name of François Cevert, Stewart’s team-mate who died in 1973. It was during a qualifying session for the US Grand Prix, which Stewart had planned as his penultimate F1 race before retirement.
He may have quit racing but through his US television commentary work he has stayed famous. His life is still the pits – or a victory lap of luxury. He still flies to races to show his face as brand ambassador and living legend.
He reportedly suffered a small stroke in June. Some of the film’s early focus is on another diagnosis he didn’t get until he was in his 40s – that he was severely dyslexic, a condition that had made his school days hell and which was passed on to Mark.
The young Jackie Stewart, working as a mechanic in the family garage, found himself a natural at other things. The first sport he excelled at was clay pigeon shooting. This teenage grandson of a gamekeeper made the Scottish skeet shooting team. But it was the 20-something son of a garage owner who happened upon a racing career after a well-off customer suggested he try out on the track behind the wheel of one of his sports cars.
Obviously, there’s a family connection between you and those who made the film. How involved were you with how the story was told?
Mark made the movie entirely on his own and I had nothing to do with it at all. Since he was a little boy, he, like me, is very dyslexic. Early on in his life, I got a little video machine that would allow him to record things. Since then, he’s taken a great interest in it and he’s made some beautiful films. Anyway, he and his pal, who I’ve also known for a long time, decided to do the movie all on their own. I can’t take any credit for it.
The film might be called Stewart but it’s not just about you.
The film is as much about Helen as it is about me because she was doing all the lap charting and all the timekeeping. That’s what the wives did in Formula 1 in those days. Helen was very good at that and was a major part of the team. She went to most of the Grands Prix. So, Mark has covered the Stewart issue in a broad and nice way.
It’s not just a family photo album, either – you were quite the glamorous young couple.
Well, the sad part of it is that Helen’s now got dementia and she’s had it for about seven or eight years. So, it’s no fun from that point of view, but it’s lovely to see what she was doing.
It was a very male world she was in.
Yeah. It’s a totally different world today. The camaraderie that we had in Formula 1 in those days was so much deeper. But the sport developed beautifully. It’s never been better than it is today. It’s terrific. I think it also gives people a look back at those halcyon days of the Graham Hills and the Jim Clarks and the Jack Brabhams and the Chris Amons. And, of course, we used to come to the Tasman Series, where we had four Grands Prix in New Zealand and then four in Australia. So, Helen and the kids usually came to one of them, but not all of them.
Considering your early success at shooting, were you blessed with fast reactions that gave you an edge as a driver?
Well, I think my clay pigeon shooting days had an awful lot to do with any success I achieved in racing because I am a severe dyslexic. I was a complete disaster, because in those days, teachers didn’t know about dyslexia. I left school with little or no education, but my grandfather was a gamekeeper. My father shot and so my brother Jimmy and I started clay pigeon shooting. I won my first-ever event that I entered, because it was New Year’s Day in Scotland and everyone else was completely pissed. I was the only one who wasn’t.
So that gave you confidence to tackle a racing career?
I shot from the age of 14 until 24 and won most of the big events … but I got married and you couldn’t afford marriage and clay target shooting because it was an amateur sport. I was a mechanic in the garage, and I was given a chance by a very rich young man who was not allowed to race but could have all the fancy cars.
Shooting had an awful lot to do with any success I had in racing because emotional management is about the most important thing in any sport, or any business, for that matter. I learnt how to control emotion. I never got upset. I never was in a position where my decision-making was aggressively going in one direction or not. Shooting was responsible for that because when you’re trap shooting, if you miss a target, you never get it back. I was very lucky in the respect of having had a sport that taught me so much about emotional control.
In your early years, you met Bruce McLaren, and you had Chris Amon as a teammate, and Denny Hulme. Did you see any parallels between yourself – after all, McLaren also grew up as the son of a garage owner – and that generation of drivers from New Zealand?
Well, keep in mind that Scotland and New Zealand are similar in many, many ways. Bruce, of course, came up and did a remarkable job to bring not only his own titles driving racing cars but making a huge leap forward with his cars. Bruce really was a gentleman apart from anything else, a very good racing driver, and the creator of some of the best racing cars in the world. Chris Amon was a top-line racing driver as well with Ferrari and so forth. So small countries can sometimes breed some great talents … like Kiri Te Kanawa!
Also, a hell of a driver in her day.
Ha, ha. She’s been such a great artist. We’ve had good Scottish racing drivers. So, coming from small countries, you try harder. That is true of my life, and I think it’s true of many of my colleagues. In my case, I went down south to England thinking, well, they’re dressed better than I am. They had better cars than I had. The whole thing was a bigger, fancier field. So, you tried harder, and you committed yourself more towards a sport or business or activity … I think that’s part of the small-country factor.
Growing up during your racing heyday, both your sons would have been aware there was a danger attached to Dad going to work. But when you retired, were they relieved?
Well, they were very young when I retired it wasn’t something they would understand at that time. Paul and Mark were brought up in a fairly fancy way in a sense in Switzerland, but it was still very Scottish. But they lived and went to a wee school here. Jo Bonnier [who died in 1972], the driver from Scandinavia, had his children at the same school as my boys … and they grew up with the children of [German driver] Jochen Rindt [who died in 1970]. So, it was a community in a way, and we didn’t get carried away with our own importance, because somebody was going to win that weekend and somebody else wasn’t going to win that weekend.
You would have known men who fought in World War II. The camaraderie you’ve mentioned among the F1 drivers of the time, might it be something akin to the soldiers or pilots of that generation?
I think very similar because there was death. A little bit like fighter pilots in WWII. I went to more funerals, I think, than any other man that I know. We were a close family at that time. François Cevert, my teammate, was the only one who never went to a funeral. He couldn’t face his friends dying and in those days a lot of friends died. It was a great character builder.
Did you have survivor’s guilt?
I don’t quite understand the question.
Well, throughout your career you successfully campaigned for greater safety standards but at the same time, do you have any regrets about being involved in a sport that killed so many?
Well, I still keep going to Grands Prix. I go to 16 or 18 a year because I love the sport, right? I like the people. I like the competitiveness of it. I like the attention. I like the winning effort. So, I think that I’m lucky that I’m in a sport that has had legs on it beyond me being a driver.
And, of course, you’re still a sponsored star of the sport.
I’m still with Rolex. I’ve been with them since 1958. I’ve been under contract with them and with Heineken. I was with Ford Motor Company for 40 years. Goodyear for 40 years. So, you’re mixing with very successful people. My life came about because I was a racing driver, and after retiring, there’s so much that still can be done within the sport that you can still be part of. I’m not sure that applies to football or rugby. I’ve been lucky to be in a sport that has long legs on it.
I hope Rolex has put up your pay since 1958.
I’m not complaining.
Have to say, it’s rare and nice to have a movie about a racing car driver that has a happy ending.
Yes, but it’s a flashback to Formula 1 and the early days of real, professional Formula 1. Everything’s done in a different fashion altogether now and I’m lucky that I see the past and I love the present and I’m sure I will enjoy the future.
Of course, the film is missing footage of you winning at Pukekohe or Wigram or Invercargill. But it had a lot of life to pack in.
We had good times in New Zealand. It was a great community of people and they looked after us very well, whether it was at the beginning of the season or the end of the season or whether it was Invercargill … It was just a great bit of fun and games. Everybody in New Zealand, particularly, I think, have always been great followers of motorsport. I won your Grand Prix and I’m proud of that and a few other races that I won. They’re very happy memories for me.
Maybe a less happy memory is that time you got nicked for dangerous driving when you were heading to that race in Levin. It’s all in your autobiography.
Ha. Oh, yes.
So, you got pulled over by the cops in Bulls who were going to charge you for how fast you were going. But you got off?
Yes, I had a very good lawyer.
Trevor de Cleene wasn’t it?
Exactly. He became a very important politician, too. It was him who got me out of trouble. He was a very good lawyer indeed.
The others on the starting grid
Sir Jackie Stewart isn’t the only famous person starring in this year’s British and Irish Film Festival.
Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story promises to be a fascinating documentary about the renowned actor, writer, director and bon vivant, narrated by actor Alan Cumming with contributions from fellow luminaries of stage and screen.
More than merely a tale of transgressive talent in an era of straightness, Coward’s extraordinary legacy is one of a true polymath – heralded playwright and performer along with artist, composer and even WWII spy.
In a similar but more sombre vein, Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War is a portrait of the war-time painter, a well-regarded landscape artist who was inspired by war locations across the UK and Europe. It’s the first feature doco about Ravilious, using his private correspondence to help illustrate one man’s enigmatic compulsion for capturing, in antithetical beautiful watercolour, the nature of war.
There’s a clear theme emerging when you hear that Gabriel Byrne stars as playwright Samuel Beckett in Dance First. Perhaps best-known as the creator of Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Beckett the Irish-born francophile also served in the war as a Resistance fighter while living in Paris. His litany of romantic affairs may be less well-known, as with his reluctant receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Byrne leads a strong Irish cast in this sliver of the great writer’s biography.
Multi-Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins plays a real-life wartime hero in One Life, as Sir Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, the British stockbroker who took it upon himself to save the lives of over 600 Jewish children from the Nazis at the outbreak of WWII. 50 years later, his good deed has gone unknown until a discovery sets in motion one of the most moving reunions in British TV history. The cast includes Johnny Flynn, Jonathan Pryce and Helena Bonham Carter, and the story guarantees there won’t be a dry eye in the house.
The film Golda, a portrait of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir set during the 19 tense days of 1973′s Yom Kippur War, received criticism from some quarters for casting the non-Jewish Dame Helen Mirren in the lead. It’s certainly a fascinating period of Arab-Israeli conflict, sadly all the more resonant in current times.
The festival is playing at 24 cinemas throughout the country from October 19 to November 1
