I
t’s possible you have been greeted by Tony Mason and not been fully aware of it at the time. He has been out marshalling recently - I telephoned his mobile and was told he couldn’t possibly talk (now there’s a rare thing), as he was getting terribly anxious; he was standing on a Derbyshire moor in the middle of nowhere waiting for the arrival of a few cones to run a test on the excellent Rally of the Tests, but no cones had arrived… “oh, don’t go away,” says Mason getting all agitato… “do you have any suggestions of what should be done if the first car comes into view?” I couldn’t wait to drop the phone, being in total sympathy with the first driver on the road.
Tony Mason reckons he knows everyone who is anyone in the whole world of rallying, and I’ve no reason to doubt him. His breathless and constant enthusiasm for all things rallying enables him to claim he knows all the up and coming youngsters, as well as the old-timer heroes who nowadays only rally a zimmer-frame.
Tony still dines out on being an ex-Top Gear presenter, but Jeremy Clarkson reckons he has just one real claim to fame, having only ever won one important rally - the 1972 Lombard RAC alongside Roger Clark, the first British car and crew to scoop the top-spot since 1959. Mason says this is typical Clarkson rubbish, “cos I’ve won hundreds”, but who cares? Winning with Roger still earns him some corn as an after-dinner speaker.
Tony recently drove down to Blewbury from his new pile of Cotswold stone to sample lunch with the Rally Office. At first he was disappointed. A few years ago he dropped by for lunch and we ambled up Westbrook Street to a little pub with a real fire run by a French couple who took delight in serving genuine French food. Tony occupied a chair that only the previous evening had seated Graham Robson - so many of the great and the famous have sat in that chair we should have got a brass plaque screwed onto it, but it’s all too late now as the Blewbury Inn has closed, and Tony was pretty miffed. Sign of the times, the village school and the post office will be next. Now, we are down to a choice of The Load of Mischief (ideal watering-hole for rally-types, you would think) and the Red Lion, if you want lunch. We opted for the Red Lion, which normally involves a short walk of a few hundred yards, past the cottage where Wind in the Willows was written, over Rattie’s stream, through a meadow, past a delightful thatched-topped wattle-and-daub wall, to the garden of old apple trees and the back door of the pub.
But Tony Mason is of the Stirling Moss school of thinking that suggests that if God wanted us to walk, he would have provided us all with Pogo sticks, so, we drove round the corner instead in Tony’s Ford Mondeo.
Nowadays, The Red Lion, in the thatched cottage side of Blewbury, traditional dark oak beams, horse brasses, cosy low nicotined ceilings, but no smoky log fire (that recently gave way to a modern fake gas job) does pretty good food, if you are ever passing this way. Simon behind the bar does a passable impression of being on the ball, along with a delectable looking blonde who always wears a shirt three sizes too small, with no hope of ever meeting the top of her jeans, who pulls on the Brakspear real-ale pumps. Dreamers should note that’s the only type of pulling in which she indulges.
The Chicken Madras is pretty good and doesn’t come swamped in gunpowder but Tony could not be persuaded. We settled instead for two bowls of excellent leek and potato soup accompanied by cotton-wool bread rolls.
If you’ve a long memory you will recall that Tony was in at the start of Historic Rallying as he accompanied Roger Clark in a Ford Cortina to Cortina, on an early Pirelli Classic Marathon (with the driver being too hungover from the night before, they were OTL before the first time-control on Tower Bridge). Tony also sat on a camel when he joined us with a film unit on a Marathon to Morocco. Me trying to impress the camel-owner by shouting “Hut! Hut! Hut!” impressed nobody but the camel, who took off at a sudden and furious pace as if he too had suddenly remembered the command which is Arab-Camelspeak for “giddyup” from David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. Mason was not seen again - the camel and driver presumably having romped off for a re-enactment of the solo crossing of the Sinai Desert for another assault on a Turkish steam-train.
Tony had been loaned a perfectly good one owner low mileage Renault 21 as camera car, it was found in the Kent and Sussex Courier for £250, and if you want a future classic its still in the sand on the road to Marrakesh. He and snapper Mike Johnson got totally bogged in a short strip of sand that had blown across the road, I never actually saw this stopper, but a Triumph TR4 and even a Mini romped it without complaining, but it meant the film crew failed to reach the one vital watering hole everyone must visit when rallying round Morocco. A few miles down the road from here is the Gorge de Todra, and it’s one of the best eating places south of Gibraltar.
Indiana Jones galloped his horse between the two walls of rock that are so close together only a single car can squeeze through this remote and rocky pass, but at the end, after you splash through a tiny icy stream where it’s rather fun to play Pooh Sticks and damn it all up with stones so the water level is six inches higher, so improving the photos, you stop to walk across a rickety wooden plank for delicious ice-cold freshly-squeezed real lemon squash, and down an omelette served on a terracotta stone platter. (I spent the night in this tiny auberge one New Year’s Eve, in January the howl of real wolves echoing up the canyon as you try to sleep in the chilly desert air adds to a rare experience).
We recently needed help from Tony with a voice-over for a new film that follows the efforts of some novice newcomers on the Lombard Rally. Tony had given up a day for this while the cars were being scrutineered, and we worked him hard but forgot all manner of what are called “continuity shots”, and “link sections” (after a few days of chasing a rally with a camera, you too would end up talking the talk like Steven Spielberg). This film project has grown like Topsy, and with no budget, yours truly has been camera man, script editor, Grip, and bag-carrier to the Presenter (Tony Mason) apart from helping with the editing. All a new experience.
Things have moved on from the films of Raymond Baxter all voiced from somewhere like Portland Square while pretending to be on the top of the Turini… oh yes. As we couldn’t afford Tony’s enormous day-rate to take him to the finish, we cribbed it all at the back of a car wash in a village garage near Banbury just off the M40. We weren’t bothering anyone. The soft white light just as it had turned dark was perfect. Action! We’re Rolling! Just as Mason was getting into his stride, with “well, here I am at the sea-front of Llandudno, and of 130 cars that left Oxford, no less than 96 are going to cross the Lombard ramp behind me,” a pick-up truck full of cones pulls up at the diesel pump on the garage forecourt, and four yellow-jacketed motorway workers get out. The driver spots Tony Mason, standing in a pool of water by the car wash, and comes rushing over.
“Ere, mate… you the geezer who used to be on the telly? Can you sign this?” And pulls out a fag packet from his pocket and a biro.
Cut! Filming comes to a full stop.
“I know you,” says the Man of Cones. “Didn’t you used to rally with that Roger Clark fella?” If only Jeremy Clarkson could have pulled up for petrol at the same time…
The road mender’s mates amble over. “OK Fred, leave him alone, look, you asking for a bleedin’ autograph has caused his head to swell up so much his hat has fallen off.” And it had. The famous cloth cap had rolled into the puddle.
Never mind, says Tony Mason, returning to the camera work for one more take, with a hat that now looked as if we were in an Irish Sea gale on Llandudno sea-front… “This sort of thing happens to me every day.” Oh shit. Where were we? Says I. Um… Llandudno I think, says the Presenter.
You don’t get this hassle when dining in Blewbury’s Red Lion. Here you can slum it in a corner slurping your soup like a slob while pretending you are somewhere else - like Llandudno on a wet weekend with the girl with the bare midriff - and nobody will trouble you for an autograph. That is until Simon from behind the bar approaches with an “Ere, matey, sign this!” and gives you the credit-card chit.
PY
