The Mike Hawthorn books, 'Challenge Me The Race' and 'Champion Year' - plus his 'Carlotti' boys' books - have often been mentioned in these threads.
While engaged in another of my occasional archive blitzes here at home I have just found some notes of a conversation I had with Gordon Wilkins (b. October 6, 1912 - d. April 10, 2007), who is described in his BAFTA biog as follows: "A motoring journalist who combined expertise with a boundless enthusiasm, Wilkins began writing for The Motor magazine in the 1930s and later became technical editor at Autocar magazine. Turning freelance he presented the TV programme Wheelbase (1964-1973), thereafter working only occasionally in television while continuing his prolific output in print".
The conversation I had with him was about his ghost-writing 'Challenge Me The Race' with Mike Hawthorn, for which assignment Gordon was evidently the publisher's second choice after Robert Glenton, Motoring Editor and feature writer for 'The Sunday Express' from 1951...
Gordon recalled: "Kimber the publisher took me to a posh lunch. He told me that Glenton had completed an existing manuscript and all I would have to do was tidy it up, he said. Glenton was evidently out. Kimber just substituted my name for his on the contract and then I found that Glenton had done nothing at all and Kimber held me to the contract by threatening legal action. I ended up doing the bulk of the thing, then Nevil Lloyd finished it off and read the proofs.
"Bloody Hawthorn had never kept a record of his life and I had to dig out the rest, bloody dreadful thing, read the proofs and get it back to Kimber - I hadn't had a penny, Kimber persuaded Nevil Lloyd to read the proofs and get it back to him - the early stuff was a work of fiction.
"We had a flat in Mayfair..." - meaning Gordon and his then spectacularly glamorous (but 'notoriously pushy') wife Joyce - "...Hawthorn would come there to tape the story, couldn't remember a bloody thing of the early days. I made up the visit to Brooklands, etc. Just made it up because it seemed to fit what I could research. Hawthorn's main interest seemed to be trying to get Joyce into bed!
"He was bloody hopeless. I didn't think much of him as a man. I think he did lose a kidney. I don't think he did have long to live but I think he'd come to terms with it. Let's face it, he was in a profession where short-lived fast lives were normal. But he was a very extrovert bloke, it didn't seem to bother him. I think his mum knew he wasn't going to live long anyway - or at least, the chances were that he wasn't going to live long.
"I did hear that his tyres in the fatal crash were extra-heavily or extra-firmly braced experimental radials which would have held on longer, later and faster until they let go, and that when they let go, they would just let go completely...".
Interesting testimony - long lost.
DCN
