{"id":44921,"date":"2014-07-07T19:56:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T18:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/lunch-with-bill-boddy\/"},"modified":"2021-06-09T17:22:49","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:22:49","slug":"lunch-bill-boddy","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/july-2007\/95\/lunch-bill-boddy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lunch with… Bill Boddy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not usual for a magazine to interview its own staff \u2013 but Motor Sport<\/i> has always been different. Simon Taylor talks to the man who made it so<\/strong><\/p>\n

In August 1924 a car-mad 11-year-old schoolboy went to Marylebone railway station with his mother. He was already a dedicated reader of The Autocar<\/i>, on which he spent his 4d a week pocket money, and whenever one of his mother\u2019s friends gave him a tip to buy sweets he\u2019d spend it on The Light Car & Cyclecar<\/i>. But as he passed the station bookstall he noticed a magazine he\u2019d never seen before. It was called The Brooklands Gazette<\/i>, and it was full of tales about the wonderful goings-on at the iconic track near Weybridge. The price was an exorbitant shilling, but the boy insisted that his mother buy it for him. In that moment, his life\u2019s direction was set.<\/p>\n

The boy was called Bill Boddy, and his initials \u2013 WB \u2013 were destined to become one of the most famous bylines in all automotive writing. The Brooklands Gazette<\/i> soon changed its name to Motor Sport <\/i>to reflect its broadening subject matter, and when Bill was in his early teens he submitted his first article. By 1936 he was on the staff, and effectively its only editorial member. He went on to be the editor for more than half a century. With his idiosyncratic hand at the helm its circulation soared, along with its reputation as an uncompromisingly quirky, opinionated and fearless publication \u2013 at a time when its established competitors trod a bland, safe editorial line, and rarely dared criticise any car manufacturer for fear of losing precious advertising revenue. Today this same WB is an extremely alert, mentally energetic and prodigiously knowledgeable 94-year-old. And, 80 years after he sent in that first piece, he is still filing copy every month. <\/p>\n

Bill doesn\u2019t go out much now, and dislikes crowds. He has decided not to attend the Centenary celebrations at his beloved Brooklands, but says he will be there in spirit. He has lived for many years in a large rambling house in mid-Wales, alone since the death of his wife Winifred, but one of his three daughters has a weekend cottage in the grounds. It is she who arranges lunch for us so Bill can reminisce about his long life on Motor Sport<\/i>. He talks fast and fluently, with perfect recall and self-deprecating wit. For a change, we don\u2019t talk about the races he has seen and the drivers he has known: \u201cI\u2019ve covered that so much elsewhere. I want to tell you how things were on the magazine, behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was an only child, and my father died fighting in World War I. I was 14 when I made my first visit to Brooklands \u2013 by train to West Weybridge station, and then a short walk. My mother came too, because she thought that people who raced cars weren\u2019t suitable, and there\u2019d be bookies and fast women. But when we got there she realised it was a wonderful place. After that I went down to every meeting. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was 20 I went to see an officer from the Indian Army, Oswald Victor Holmes, who\u2019d bought a magazine called Brooklands Track & Air.<\/i> He did the air side, and I persuaded him to let me do the car side. He couldn\u2019t pay me anything, but he gave me a third-class season ticket which allowed me to go from my digs in London to Brooklands whenever I wanted. My mother had died, and the little money she\u2019d left me was rapidly running out. I knew nothing about money. I always went to the best places for my shoes and suits and so on, because that\u2019s what my mother had done. One day my landlady said to me, \u2018Bill, you haven\u2019t paid me for three weeks.\u2019 I looked in my bank account and it was empty. So I had to start freelancing. I freelanced for everybody, car magazines, aeroplane magazines, even for Commercial Motor<\/i>, which took a piece about a car that raced at Brooklands with a diesel engine. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I\u2019d got onto Brooklands Track & Air<\/i> I said to Holmes, \u2018What about road tests?\u2019 \u2018What are road tests?\u2019 he said. \u2018Well, you write to the manufacturers and they lend you a car.\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t believe it. Who shall we try first?\u2019 I wrote to MG and they sent a driver down with an MG Magna coup\u00e9. Then we got a Railton, and one of the first 3\u00bd-litre Bentleys. The Bentley came with a chauffeur who said, \u2018Sir, I have to remain with the car all the time you have it.\u2019 We hammered it around the track flat out, while he sat in the back wearing his chauffeur\u2019s cap. Bentley reprinted my article and sent it out to prospects, so I thought, if it\u2019s good enough for Bentley I must be an established writer now. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a time Holmes sold Brooklands Track & Air<\/i> and it was turned into an MG publication. The only job they could offer me was as advertising manager, but I was no use at that. I shared my office with a typist, and I was very shy. I couldn\u2019t make a sales call in front of her, so I had to wait until she went to the loo. I lasted about three weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was now contributing regular event reports to Motor Sport<\/i>, which belonged to a wealthy enthusiast called Tom Moore. Why he wanted it I don\u2019t know: just as a hobby, I suppose. Then he met a girl and they set off by ship for America, and in mid-ocean he had a cable from his accountant saying the printers\u2019 bills needed to be settled. Moore cabled back, \u2018Offer them the magazine in lieu of payment\u2019. So the printer, one Wesley J Tee, who knew nothing about cars, was landed with a car magazine. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was going to go to the creditors\u2019 meeting, because I was owed quite a lot for my writings during the Moore period. But first I went to see Mr Tee, and told him what I\u2019d been doing. He said, \u2018How would you like to be the editor?\u2019 \u2018Thank you very much, Mr Tee.\u2019 \u2018There\u2019s just one thing: if you go to the creditors\u2019 meeting you\u2019re out.\u2019 So I didn\u2019t go to the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a lovely job, you see. I was just 23, and one had a constant supply of road test cars. But Tee would see a road test car in the car park, and say, \u2018I\u2019ll take that for the weekend, you can have it back on Monday.\u2019 Unfortunately he was a terrible driver. He crashed a lot of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my most memorable tests was in 1938, in the latest 4\u00bc-litre Bentley which I drove from London to John O\u2019Groats against the clock. My friend Tom Lush, later Sydney Allard\u2019s right-hand man, did the navigation, and Jim Brymer came too, to take photographs. We set off from Parliament Square at midnight. A policeman tried to move us on, but we told him we were waiting for Big Ben to strike. I was young and keen, and wore gymshoes just like a racing driver. We were in John O\u2019Groats by 3pm, so we did it in just 15 hours for 700-plus miles on the roads of the day, even though Lush and Brymer insisted we stop for a long breakfast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I thought of road-testing used cars. Nobody had done that before. I arranged to borrow a 3-litre from a firm which specialised in old Bentleys. I worked out how much petrol I could afford, and rang a girl up and said, \u2018I\u2019ll collect you at 5am on Saturday. We\u2019re going to Donington.\u2019 But when I went to pick it up the 3-litre had been sold, so they offered me a Speed Six instead. I asked, rather weakly, what its fuel consumption was. They said, \u2018You\u2019ll be able to see the needle going down.\u2019 So I rang the girl and said, \u2018You don\u2019t need to get up so early. We\u2019re going to Brooklands instead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then war broke out and, with all pleasure motoring and motorsport suspended, Wesley Tee decided to close the magazine. \u201cHe said the war might go on for 10 years, and there would be nothing to put in it. I told him we had to keep it going, and that I could do it myself, by filling it with history. So that\u2019s what I did, and we never missed an issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had to have a war job, of course. I answered an advertisement in The Aeroplane<\/i> for technical writers at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment at Farnborough. I worked on Air Publications, loose-leaf digests of essential information from aircraft manufacturers. We wrote the copy out longhand, and to save paper we wrote on the back of sheets that had already been used for other APs. Then a girl from the typing pool would take it away and type it out. When one of my elderly colleagues went to lunch several pages of his work blew onto the floor. They were retrieved upside down, so his description of rigging a Tiger Moth continued with how to service an ancient Handley Page.\u201d <\/p>\n

Despite all sorts of difficulties and shortages, Motor Sport<\/i> continued to come out every month, and somehow the bombs always just missed the Tee premises in London\u2019s City Road. \u201cBecause people couldn\u2019t drive their cars they were happy to write about them, and I started a series called Cars I Have Owned<\/i> which ran for years. Lots of well-known vintage people contributed \u2013 Cecil Clutton, Anthony Heal, Laurence Pomeroy. Kent Karslake wrote under his own name, and also under the pseudonym Baladeur. That meant he could criticise himself from month to month and start debates with himself, which helped fill the magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cLater I was posted to Harrogate. I was married to Winifred by now, and still putting the magazine together in my spare time. Tee paid me \u00a32 a week. I would put the package of copy and layouts for him on the mantelpiece and say to Winifred, if the cheque doesn\u2019t come from Tee, don\u2019t post the package. Then he rang her up and persuaded her to put it in the post for him. When I got home and found the package gone, but no cheque, I wasn\u2019t best pleased. The next month, despite his entreaties, she didn\u2019t post it until we had the cheque. Tee also said we couldn\u2019t have any pictures in the magazine, because printers\u2019 blocks were too expensive. But he had the old blocks from Speed<\/i> magazine, which he\u2019d bought in 1939 and folded into Motor Sport<\/i>. So I had to make the old pictures fit my words with some inventive caption writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

War over, WB returned to the Tee offices, and the magazine went from strength to strength. Somehow he also found time to write his definitive history of Brooklands, which Wesley Tee published in three volumes. Meanwhile Denis Jenkinson, whom WB had known at RAE, had also started to write for Motor Sport<\/i>. \u201cJenks was racing motorcycles around Europe, and was also sidecar passenger with Eric Oliver. They were World Champions in 1949. Jenks did a column about motorbike racing called Chain Chatter<\/i>, under the name Carrozzino. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt that stage I did all the race reports too. Tee had worked out that it was cheaper to charter an aircraft to cover continental races, because going by car would have involved the crossing, petrol, and hotels on the way out and back. We\u2019d fly out at dawn on race morning, and I\u2019d write the copy in the aeroplane on the way back, get to City Road about 2am, read the proofs and home at 4am. If there were any spare seats in the plane Tee would sell them to help defray the costs. The aircraft were always pretty old. Tee came himself once, and a canvas panel in the roof that had been stuck over some wartime damage blew off, so he had to put his umbrella up. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe flew to Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix, and the pilot met us at Croydon wearing a smart uniform. I said: \u2018This must be awfully dull for you, just a hop to Spain.\u2019 \u2018Not at all,\u2019 he said, \u2018I\u2019ve never been further than Paris before.\u2019 We approached Barcelona at about midnight, and he opened the door from the cockpit and said, \u2018Does anyone know anything about Barcelona Airport? I can\u2019t seem to find it. It must be down there somewhere, but everything\u2019s in darkness.\u2019 Luckily someone must have heard the approaching aeroplane because they switched on the lights and lit up the runway, and we got down all right. Next morning the pilot told me we only had 10 minutes\u2019 fuel left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe flew to Le Mans on the Saturday morning, landed behind the main grandstand, and flew back after the race on Sunday evening. The pilot that day was a nice chap called Bennett. He used to race an Alta, but he said, \u2018I\u2019ve joined this pilot racket now.\u2019 We got him a press pass and he watched the race with us all night. Flying home I was writing my report when suddenly the plane dived, and then righted itself. After we landed Bennett said, \u2018Did you feel that sudden dive over the Channel? That was when I fell asleep.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Jenks finished with Eric Oliver he stayed in Europe as our Continental Correspondent, covering the races there. I covered the English meetings, did the road tests and pasted up the pages. I never wanted to cut any copy, so I\u2019d put it into smaller and smaller print size, and if there was still some left I\u2019d put it at the bottom of another page where I had a hole, even if it was on an earlier page. I suppose it was very unprofessional, but I thought the readers would rather read it there than not read it at all. The circulation grew and grew, until Tee said we had three times the circulation of The Autocar<\/i>, although I didn\u2019t really believe him. Tee would never allow us to sign our articles, of course: he thought we\u2019d get approaches from other publishers if we got known, so it was always just WB and DSJ at the bottom. Tee ended up with a very good Mercedes and a twin-engined yacht. He bought the right sort of naval hat, proudly took it on the Dutch canals, and crashed into a bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually I started my own magazine, in secret. Tee never knew. I called it Vintage & Thoroughbred Car.<\/i> My wife did a lot of the work, and Jenks wrote for it as well. No initials in there, of course: the leader was just signed \u2018The Editors\u2019. It ran from 1953 to 1956.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur road tests always told the truth, even before the war. AC lent me a car which had a claimed 90mph maximum. I tried it again and again over a measured half-mile, and I could only do 86mph. Their PR said, \u2018Well, Mr Boddy, will you be saying 90mph in your Motor Sport<\/i> article?\u2019 \u2018No I won\u2019t,\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m not The Autocar<\/i>.\u2019 They took it away, fiddled with jets and chokes, tuned it up, and said, \u2018Try it now, Mr Boddy. We think you\u2019ll find it does 90.\u2019 It still did exactly 86mph.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Jenks wrote something rude about the Austin A90, which was a very pedestrian car, there was a terrible fuss. As the editor, I was summoned to the factory. Tee came with me, and they said, \u2018If you just say something nice about our cars we\u2019ll double our advertising.\u2019 Tee said, \u2018I\u2019m not having that, that\u2019s bribery.\u2019 You had to hand it to him: although he liked money, he\u2019d fight over anything like that to the last ditch. So the BMC PR, a man called Bishop, refused to let us have any more cars. I wrote about it in the magazine, so the readers knew. I called it the Bishop Ban. Then another PR replaced him and it was all forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took the family dog on road tests \u2013 usually a Labrador, but at one stage we has a St Bernard. I would refer to him in print as the Motoring Dog. When I tested the first belt-drive DAF I photographed him in the driving seat, to imply it was so simple that even a dog could drive it. When I praised the VW people got very cross, and accused me of being in the pay of the Germans. But I just thought it was very good for its day: all-independent suspension, air-cooled so it couldn\u2019t freeze or boil, at a time when British cars were rather dull. <\/p>\n

\u201cSomething I wrote upset Mintex, the brake linings people. Their chap came down to see Tee to cancel their advertising. Tee kept him waiting for an hour, and when he finally let him into his office he said, \u2018I can\u2019t quite understand why you\u2019re here. I gather you represent a firm that makes peppermints.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTee worked on until he died, well into his 80s. Went to the office every day. He loved a fuss. When the print unions were trying to create havoc he\u2019d say to me, \u2018I\u2019m going to have a lovely morning, Bill, the brothers are coming in to complain again. We\u2019re going to have a really good fuss.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cRob Walker sued us for libel, because Jenks wrote that his racing cars were starting money specials. Stirling Moss was going to be a witness for Rob. The barrister told us it wasn\u2019t going to be an easy case to win: \u2018The jury will all be listening to Mr Moss, the famous racing driver, and on the other side there\u2019ll be a little man with a beard who can hardly see over the witness box. So, Mr Jenkinson, I\u2019ll tell you what you must say. First you come into the box and you take the oath…\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m not going to take the oath\u2019, says Jenks, \u2018I\u2019m an atheist.\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s not so serious,\u2019 says the poor barrister, \u2018you just hold the bible and\u2026\u2019 \u2018I won\u2019t do it,\u2019 says Jenks. So Tee had to settle out of court. Cost him a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a life dedicated to motorcars, Bill still owns several: a 1925 Calthorpe, a 1927 Morgan three-wheeler, a 1934 Austin 7 Box saloon, a 1922 Darracq and \u2013 a recent acquisition \u2013 a 1929 Sunbeam two-seater. Bill was a founder of the 750 Motor Club, and set up the Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq Register. He has done 39 London-Brighton Runs, and is an honorary life member of many clubs, including the VSCC, the VCC, the Brooklands Society, the Bugatti OC and the Riley Register. To keep abreast of current cars, he still reads Autocar<\/i> every week, as he has for 85 years. <\/p>\n

In 1997 he was awarded the MBE for services to sports journalism. \u201cBut I\u2019m not a journalist. I am just a motoring enthusiast who writes, being too poor to race and too impatient to work on my cars. Instead of putting penetrating oil on a recalcitrant nut and returning after lunch, I give up. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve had a pretty satisfactory life. Being able to do what I\u2019ve done has been fun.\u201d And that remarkable memory, covering eight decades of motoring enthusiasm, continues to feed his columns in Motor Sport<\/i>. \u201cI still enjoy doing it. I hope to keep on writing, God willing.\u201d WB\u2019s serried ranks of readers down the years will say Amen to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":733,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[128229],"tags":[34212,35917,22110,4138,34006,36054,42070,22585,61674,34302,39251,34815,21992,34427,34554,2223,34396,37321,39889,36779,42000],"issue_decade":[121591],"issue_year":[121609],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/44921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/44921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232867,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/44921\/revisions\/232867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44921"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=44921"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=44921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}