BOOKS
You couldn’t make it up
The memoirs of motoring writer and racing commentator Andrew Marriott reveal that, just possibly, journalism used to be more fun
Andrew Marriott, right, away from the desk with Cyd Williams, left, and Nick Brittan at Brands Hatch, 1972
First, a declaration. It was Andrew Marriott who got me started in the writing racket almost 60 years ago by recruiting me as a freelancer at Motoring News. We shared flats in London, he got me out of numerous self-inflicted scrapes and we’ve been friends ever since. There were longish periods when we didn’t see much of each other, and this book records plenty of the extraordinary events that filled those gaps.
It’s also a sort-of autobiography, consisting largely of columns published over several years in the BRDC Bulletin. In his affable postcardto-home prose, Marriott recounts the privileges and pain of a life spent – much of it on TV – sharing, reporting and even enhancing (not exclusively when silver was dangled) the performances of the giants of our sport, from an immense variety of disciplines.