By the time I was 14 and Garry was 13, I got a SL125 Honda trail bike and he got a cracking little trials bike because we couldn’t find another trail bike locally. It was a British-built Wassel with a 125cc Sachs engine, a seven-speed gearbox and it was all covered in chrome. We weren’t into trials riding (negotiating obstacles like rocks, tree trunks and old barrels) because it was too slow, so we just raced those two bikes everywhere over the moors and through the forestry roads.
I never told my dad about those forestry roads because they were farther away than we would have been allowed and we shouldn’t have had bikes on them anyway. Flat-out speed was always our thing rather than motocrossing over jumps so we nailed our little bikes over those bumpy forest roads at about 70mph which felt as fast then as the Isle of Man TT did in later years, even though that was more like 190mph.
My dad must have realized Garry and I would want to go road racing eventually because in the winter of that year, he asked us if we wanted to try schoolboy motocross. It was a shrewd move because he knew it would give us crucial racing experience away from the dangers of road racing. Falling off on grass is a bit safer than on tarmac, although you can still do some serious damage. But the idea was that by the time we were old enough to go road racing we would know all about wheel-to-wheel contact and sliding bikes around so we’d be better prepared for it. We sold both our bikes and dad bought me a new Honda CR125 while Garry got a Yamaha YZ100. He was to race in the intermediate group while I was old enough to be in the seniors.
We got all the riding gear sorted out and by March 1977 we were off in the van to Tow Law in County Durham for our first ever race. The course was on the slope of a boggy hill and there was sleet falling pretty hard. I was absolutely shitting myself with nerves and kept asking my dad, ‘What do I do, dad? What do I do?’ He sorted everything out, got us signed on, briefed us for practice and I ended up really enjoying the practice session and was looking forward to the race.
As soon as the starting tape went up, I dropped the clutch, pinned the throttle and arrived at the first corner at the head of the pack! I thought, ‘Shit, what do I do now? Go faster? Slow down?’ I didn’t have a clue but I did what I could and I think I finished my first race in about fourth place, which wasn’t too bad.
I can’t remember how Garry got on that day but I know we both enjoyed it. When we got home we had to wash the bikes and get them ready for the next meeting. After that, we weren’t allowed to ride them at home as often since they were meant for racing and we had to help fund our efforts as much as possible by working for my dad.
Towards the end of my first year of motocross racing, when I was 15, I got my first road bike – a Suzuki AP50. It was only meant to be a project bike to work on because I was too young to ride on the roads but I had other ideas. I got it for £90 instead of the £360 original price because it was salvage and I remember sending away for all the parts I needed from breakers so I could fix it up. It felt really fast at the time and I used to sneak it out of the garage when mum and dad were out and raced all over the roads with Cookie on his Yamaha FS1E.
My dad was out quite a lot because he played the accordion in a band so I always sneaked out on my bike when he was gigging. Incidentally, I was forced (and I mean forced) to play the accordion for seven years myself and even now I can still knock out a tune or two if I have to. But I realized by the time I went to secondary school that it was an old-fashioned instrument so I taught myself to play guitar, which I still strum now and again, mostly playing folk music.
Anyway, Cookie and I were very evenly matched on our new bikes and we were both complete nutters on them. To be classed as a moped in those days bikes had to have pedals like a normal pushbike. They acted as foot-rests when you weren’t using them as pedals but they could be changed over by way of a little lever. I used to lean my bike over so far that I always scraped the pedals off in a shower of sparks and I’d constantly have to replace them. When they were intact though, we used to have pedalling races down the main street in the village for a laugh.
It’s ironic that my first big crash didn’t come about because I was riding like a nutter but because of someone else’s carelessness. It happened in 1978 when a car driver pulled out in front of me and did me some serious damage. My mum and dad were at a wedding and Garry and I had been told to stay at home and watch television. No way! Garry wanted to go to Jedburgh to meet some mates and I wanted to ride my bike so we set off two-up on the bike and Garry didn’t even have a helmet on which was the norm when he rode pillion.
Just outside Jedburgh, I dropped him off to walk into town so the police wouldn’t see him on the bike without a helmet. I then was cruising through the centre of town at about 25mph when I saw a car sitting at a junction indicating right. I obviously had the right of way but just as I was riding past the car, it pulled out in front of me. Same old story. I broke my arm as I hit the car, then flew through the air and landed on a workman’s metal post and sliced my leg on it, shattering my kneecap in the process. To top it all, I was knocked unconscious for the first of many times in my life.
Garry freaked out because he saw the whole thing as he was hanging out in the square with his mates. The ambulance took me away and the police called Jim Oliver’s garage to come and take the bike away. Who should turn up to collect the bike but my dad’s mate, Wullie Simson. He had been helping out at the garage that day and got the call from the police. Wullie recognized the bike so he took Garry back to Denholm and my mum and dad were informed. They gave me such a bollocking when they arrived at the hospital!
That was the first time I ever broke a bone and I was kept in hospital for a couple of weeks. The doctor told me I would never ride a bike again (I’ve since heard that one a few times) and even said I’d be lucky to walk properly again which shows he was talking out of a hole in his arse. I decided to quit motocross racing because it was a little more strenuous on the legs but as soon as I got home from hospital I started fixing up my road bike again. I wasn’t going to let one poxy crash put me off.
I left school around that time too with four O levels, which are similar to English GCSEs, and decided I wanted to be an engineer. My dad said the best apprenticeships were with the armed forces so I applied to join the navy as a trainee marine engineer and actually passed all the tests and the medical. But as I was waiting to hear if I’d been accepted, I realized the chances of being able to ride a bike when I was stuck on a bloody boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean were pretty slim so I went off the idea immediately.
I attended a couple of job interviews locally but failed them both then I finally got a Youth Opportunity Scheme job with a local engineering firm for £19.50 a week. It was a company that made archery equipment such as sights and weights and that sort of stuff and I thought, ‘Fuckin’ great – that’ll do me,’ but I was soon to be disillusioned. I was given a drill with a box of metal pieces on one side and an empty box on the other. My job was to drill a hole in each piece and throw it into the ‘out’ box. It was all day, every day, for the best part of a year. It drove me absolutely crazy. Sometimes my bosses would vary the job so I was put on a lathe and had to cut lengths off steel bars for a change. Needless to say, that wasn’t much better so I stuck at it for about seven months then just had to leave.
I knew Jim Oliver had a mechanic’s job coming up so my dad had a word with him and I got the job without even an interview because Jim had seen how good I was at working on bikes. So that was it – I became an apprentice motorcycle mechanic at TB Oliver’s in Denholm and that was the last real job I ever had. I did everything from fixing and servicing bikes to repairing cars, lawnmowers and tractors. I was an apprentice for four years before becoming a fully qualified mechanic and I worked there for another four years before quitting to become a professional racer.
It was when I was working at Jim’s garage that I really started to hear a lot about Jimmie Guthrie. Naturally, every kid in the Hawick area had heard of the town’s most famous son but at the garage he was revered. Old men were always dropping in for a chat and talking about him. I loved listening to all those stories from the old fellows. I was more of a listener than a talker (how things have changed!) back then because