My relationship with the press over the years has mostly been amicable and positive. I am an open person, I speak my mind and I take people as I find them. Consequently, with real professional journalists I have no problems. As I have already mentioned, I am a racer and I create excitement and this translates into good copy for the newspapers and magazines. Certainly over the years I have generated my fair share of dramatic headlines. But what never ceases to amaze me is the number of so-called experts in any sport who have never actually competed in that sport and who havenât got a clue as to what they are talking about. I have suffered at the hands of journalists who are unable to comprehend, much less swallow the scale of what I have achieved in motor racing. This is because years ago when I was working my way up to the top, the same people said that I would never make it and now their arrogance will not allow them to accept that they were wrong. There is a small group of journalists in the specialist press who pursue negative angles whenever they write about me and who have tried for many years to make me look bad.
When I got to the top, several of them actually came up to me to apologise for what they had written, because their editors were putting pressure on them to get an interview with me. I accepted their apologies and we sat down to talk. They fulfilled the wishes of their editors by publishing the required interviews and then the following week went back to rubbishing me. I have no respect for anyone who can behave like this.
Years ago, as I climbed the greasy pole, the things these people wrote in their magazines had an influence on my life. Now when they go to work on me, they make themselves look pathetic. You cannot argue with the history books, which reflect achievements whatever the sport. These people are annoyed because they are jealous of success.
I believe that sportsmen who have achieved a great deal and who have created history should be given the benefit of the doubt. They shouldnât have to put up with silly criticism. If itâs objective or if theyâve done something wrong then thereâs no problem with that because they can learn from it. But to criticise for the sake of it is ridiculous.
Most famous people suffer to some degree at the hands of the press. I am relieved to say that I have not encountered the mauling or the total invasion of privacy suffered by some sportsmen, like Paul Gascoigne or Ian Botham. I have had my share of problems, but I have also had pleasure in working with some real pros.
As a professional sportsman I have a major responsibility towards the public and I think that the press have got to stand up and be as responsible because by reporting some of the things they do, theyâre not helping anyone. Thereâs a lot of cheap journalism out there. The hacks forget how they earn their money and forget their obligations.
There are a few incredibly unethical people in journalism who are only interested in helping their bank balance and if motor racing gets undermined as a result, theyâll move on to another sport or personality and start making things up about them. Theyâll concoct some sensational headline because they think itâs clever and it will sell papers, regardless of how much trouble it causes everybody and how little evidence there is on which to base a story. They then go out and try to get a story to substantiate the headline. Theyâre not interested in telling the news as it actually is. There is a great phrase among some newspaper editors: âDonât let the truth get in the way of a great story.â I think that says it all.
A lot of people rubbish stars and then want to make money out of them. Over the years several scribblers have taken it upon themselves to write books about my life story. They claim to be my friends, to be close confidants of mine and to have unique insight into my character. They write poorly researched, hastily assembled potboilers with the simple aim of making money out of my name. How can people like this write a definitive book about my life without coming to me for the truth? What do they know of my past, my family life, my innermost thoughts? How can they have the barefaced cheek to rubbish me one minute and then become my âbiographerâ the next? Itâs beyond belief, but is nevertheless true that some of my biggest critics have also made a lot of money out of me.
The sad truth is that they get paid good money to rubbish people. If youâre in the spotlight then youâve got to expect that this will happen. It comes with the territory. It doesnât matter whether youâre in racing or soccer or an actor or a pop singer. For sure there are plenty of knockers out there, but you have to see the wider picture. Outside of the publicity you have to put up with, there are many levels of life and experience and although itâs irritating, I donât ever let it put a large cloud over my life. In any case I have also had the pleasure of working with a great many professional journalists, who I am sure despair of the dross written by their low-life counterparts as much as we sportsmen and women do.
I saw the bigger picture long before I entered Formula 1. I paid close attention to what was written and said about the successful and the famous, especially in racing, so I would be prepared when I came in. But then even when I was in FF1600 I had journalists approach me saying that they could do a lot to further my career, raise my profile, or even proclaim me a âfuture World Championâ if I would slip them some backhanders. So right there, in my formative days I got a good glimpse of the wider picture.
I later learned how to deal with the pressure of fame a lot better at Ferrari because the pressure is much greater there than at any other race team and the Italian press are very persistent.
I have always had my feet on the ground and have listened carefully to the advice of people I respect. I was lucky enough to meet the actor Sean Connery in the early eighties, just after I became a millionaire for the first time. He said to me that whenever you get money and success you will suddenly find lots of friends you never knew you had, all wanting you to finance some plan they have or lend them a few quid. The secret, he told me, was to keep your money, because you might never get another pay cheque like it.
Those words rang true to Rosanne and I and thatâs why we left England in the early eighties. We were paying 70% tax at the time. I said to Rosanne that my Formula 1 career could end at anytime. As hard as it had been to get in, we knew that it was the easiest thing in the world to be booted out. You only have to fall out of favour with someone or injure yourself and youâll be forgotten and your whole career is over.
Motor racing is a fickle business. I have worked hard for the success which Iâve achieved, but it could so easily not have happened.
I was born in a small room above my familyâs tea shop, in a quiet corner of a sleepy town called Upton-on-Severn, in the heart of England. The third of four children, I was christened Nigel Ernest James Mansell. It was August 1953.
It had been a momentous summer. Everest had been conquered for the first time by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing; Queen Elizabeth II had been crowned at Westminster Abbey; and over in France, Mike Hawthorn, an Englishman driving for Ferrari, had beaten the great South American champion Juan Manuel Fangio in what was being hailed as the Formula 1 âRace of the Centuryâ.
I remember my childhood at home being very happy. My brother Michael was a fair bit older than me and we were quite distant as we grew up. I was closer to my two sisters, Gail and Sandra and to my parents Eric and Joyce, whom I loved very much. Throughout my childhood and adolescent years before I left home, they were the model parents and I couldnât have wished for a better mother or father.
We werenât rich, but neither were we poor. My father was an engineer and had quite a senior job with Lucas Aerospace based in the Midlands. My mother, who had her hands full with a young family to look after, managed the day-to-day running of the family tea shop with help from my father.
When I was three, my fatherâs job forced us to move closer to Birmingham and we ended up in an area called Hall Green, which is a southern suburb of the city and where we stayed a few years before moving on again. We seemed to move