Thanks to my good friends John and Cepta Sheppard, my Imp has been kept in pristine condition ever since. John started the Imp Club of Ireland and I am very proud to say he made me honorary president. That Imp has appeared in Classic Car magazines and I have driven it in many events in Ireland and the UK ever since.
The Circuit of Ireland rallies were great, but Delphine became more ambitious and decided we would enter the RAC Rally in Britain. This was madness as we were totally unprepared and inexperienced, but she was determined and of course I was happy to go along with it and do as I was told.
That first RAC Rally in November 1961 with Delphine was a great learning experience and stood to me when I drove in the rally again in 1965 with Susan Reeves and then in 1966 with Valerie Domleo. The RAC Rally at that time meant driving for 2,400 miles over five days and three nights, with only one proper overnight stop. Today’s rallies cannot compare to this, but we thought nothing of it then.
Unlike the Circuit of Ireland, the closure of public roads in Britain was impossible due to traffic restrictions. In 1960 the organisers of the RAC Rally persuaded the Forestry Commission to open up some of its closed roads for competitors, so they could drive flat out, away from the traffic regulations of the public roads. They opened up 200 miles of forest roads. The roads through the forest were mud and grit and the only other vehicles that ever went through were trucks. This meant the track had a grass mound in the middle with two big dips either side. We bumped along the uneven road and if anybody came up behind, wanting to pass, we had to pull over as quickly as possible, otherwise we would get pushed out of the way. That was the way it was because each of the stages was timed so speed was all-important.
Driving in the dark was especially difficult on those forest roads. Our little Mini had a spotlight on the roof and Delphine put her hand up to swivel the handle of the lamp whenever she saw we were coming to a bend.
Typically, the start and finish points of the RAC Rally were at the Excelsior Hotel, near Heathrow Airport, outside London. The rally started on Saturday morning and the route went west to Dorset and Somerset, then north through Wales for the night drive, where we encountered mountain tracks and treacherous surfaces, which were a nightmare. Once through Wales, we drove on through the Lake District and into Scotland, with a breakfast stop Monday morning at Bathgate. The only overnight stop was at Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. Tuesday morning, we set off to go south via Dumfries and into the Yorkshire forests. We managed to finish that RAC Rally, and, considering it was our first time, we didn’t do too badly.
Delphine, by this time, had moved into a flat on Sussex Road in Dublin 4. They were called ‘flats’ then but no one seems to use that word in Ireland these days, not even for the tiniest of properties. I think we must have adopted the word from America over the years, like so many other things. Mespil Flats were one of the first purpose-built apartment blocks in Dublin, and they were magnificent. Delphine’s flat was pure luxury, with high ceilings, timber floors, central heating and two spacious bedrooms. In the basement there was a laundry with tumble-dryers and on the roof was a beautiful garden and, of course, a lift. The height of sophistication was the intercom system so she could let people in without having to leave the flat, just like in the movies. I had never seen anything like it before and loved going there to visit and often stayed overnight.
When the drivers came over from Britain to race at the Phoenix Park and Dunboyne races, Delphine would hold great parties in the flat, to which everyone was invited and the shenanigans were mighty. I had started racing in the Phoenix Park and I received quite a lot of attention from the male drivers but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. It was good for my ego, but I was reluctant to get involved. At 23 years of age, and still a virgin, I was on the lookout for someone special, I suppose, and as it turned out it wasn’t one of those racing men I fell for.
I drove out to Bray one evening to meet some friends. As I sat waiting in the hotel lounge, a man at the bar looked over and raised his glass. ‘Can I join you?’ he called. Could he what! He was tall, handsome, with wonderful deep brown, ‘come to bed’ eyes and a voice that sounded like British aristocracy. We chatted and he told me he was filming in Ardmore Studios and had spent the day swashbuckling his way around the Wicklow countryside. He was playing Lord Melton in Sword of Sherwood Forest alongside Richard Greene and Peter Cushing, and his name was Oliver Reed.
We spent nearly every evening of his three-month stay in Ireland together. It was a brief but unforgettable experience and a welcome interlude before the next big rally. I drove out to Bray every evening in a flurry of excitement, to hear how filming had gone that day. Oliver was fascinating and interested in me, which I found unbelievable and very flattering. He was different from any man I had ever met, and I thought I was in love. I didn’t know at the time that he was married to an Irish girl, Kate Byrne, or that she was pregnant. But my conscience is clear because although we had a great time together he was not unfaithful to his wife with me in any physical way – I wasn’t ready for that!
When Oliver left to return to England, he was not entirely truthful with me. He didn’t tell me about his wife but said that he was being forced to marry a daughter of one of the film producers in order to further his career. I commiserated with him about the unfairness of it all. He was some storyteller, but what a charmer!
It was about eight or nine years later when I met him again. I was with a crowd of male drivers at the airport, waiting to fly out to rally somewhere, when they all started whispering and nudging one another: ‘Look who it is!’ Oliver Reed, in the years since I had last seen him, had become famous, especially after playing Bill Sykes in the film Oliver! He had also gained a reputation as a hard drinker and was continuously in the newspapers for some escapade or other. When he saw me, he came straight over and put his arms around me and we chatted until his flight was called. He didn’t look quite as handsome as I remembered him but that didn’t matter. As I stood beside him all the memories came flooding back. Everyone looked at us as we reminisced about our time together in Bray. My colleagues saw me with new eyes and my reputation soared after that. They thought I was just the dumb blonde there to make the cars look good, but being a friend of Oliver Reed, that made them think again.
After our success in the rallies together, Delphine was all set with plans for more outings for the two of us but they didn’t happen because in early December 1961 I received a telegram that was to change everything.
CHAPTER 4
Out of the blue, in December 1961, Sally Anne Cooper sent me a telegram asking me to drive with her in a Sunbeam Rapier for the Monte Carlo Rally the following January. I had never heard her name before and had no idea who she was, or why she had picked me, but I was delighted with the idea. I could only guess that someone must have seen me driving in the RAC Rally and told her about me, but I was never sure if that was true or who it might have been. My father said that the Coopers were a famous family, who had made their fortune from insect repellent aerosols in England.
After that telegram, I spoke with Sally Anne by telephone and she told me she was getting married in May. She wanted to do something glamorous and exciting before she began her married life and had decided that the Monte Carlo Rally was it.
Even though I had never driven under extreme snowy or icy conditions, I was thrilled with the idea of driving in the Monte and didn’t have to think twice. A friend of my father, who had some experience of driving in France, sat down with me with very detailed maps of the journey I was about to undertake, which quite honestly meant