EOIN YOUNG (1939-2014)

EOIN YOUNG

Besides bringing Maurice Hamilton into Grand Prix racing, Eoin Young is also the unofficial maitre de at Hamilton's favourite paddock luncheon spot, the ELF motorhome. There, where the hospitality and gossip flows freely, Young finds much material for the journalistic side of his life.

Eoin Young's 'Diary', featured in Autocar & Motor and also syndicated internationally, is an idiosyncrantic look at the sporting aspects of the world of motoring. Young also runs a thriving enterprise called Motormedia Limited which caters to collectors of rare motoring books and motoring and racing memorabilia. His treasures are housed in the 'Vintage Gallery', premises which are so well hidden in the wilds of Surrey that Young's catalogues contain directions for finding it ('Turn right at the Lord Howard pub'). In the catalogues Young also mentions that he is away at the Grand Prix races during the season. When he is not thus engaged he can often be found holding court in another nearby pub, The Barley Mow, which premises he has made famous in his columns.

He began his working life as a teller in a bank ("because my mother told me it was a very reliable field of work") in his village near the town of Timaru on the South Island of New Zealand. His father was a rabbit trapper and drove a horse and cart and Eoin's own transport was a bicycle. But he was entranced by cars, especially sporting ones that were raced. He bluffed his way into race reporting for the local paper, using the nom de plum 'Dipstick.' After five years of banking Young managed to syphon off enough wherewithall to fund a pilgrimmage to England in 1961.

Young knew Bruce McLaren, whose sister lived in Timaru, and in England he met another racing Kiwi, Denny Hulme. "One day Denny asked me if I wanted to come around Europe with him to help him run his Formula Junior Cooper. So we headed off, towing the Cooper behind his Mark 1 Zodiac. In one of the first races he blew up a piston. He said I'll change the piston, you change the gear ratios. I said no problem. It was easy: drop the box off, change all the bits, box on again - we'll go and have a beer. Then he said, are you finished already? I said, well there are a few bits left over, but you can use them as spares.

"He said, what the hell are you doing! I said, I've never done this in my life before. He said, for Christ's sake I thought you were going to help me. You helped me by getting in the way! I did myself a real good turn there. I was never asked to do anything again. But I stayed with him the whole 1961 season and had a real good time.

"I was doing the Formula Junior races for Motoring News and at one of them I first met Jenks (Denis Jenkinson)  and began chatting away with him. I was never aware that people thought he was God. I knew he was a well known journalist but I just thought he was just another bloke. Out in the Colonies you don't tend to have Gods. Anyway, like all Colonials, I soon went broke and headed back home where I had arranged to be the night editor of the Hobart Mercury in Tasmania.

"First, I had to do the Tasman Series for Motoring News and Bruce was there. He asked if I would like to be his secretary back in Europe. I asked him what a secretary did. He said, I'm not quite sure but everyone else seems to have one so I should too. He said he would pay my ticket back to England and take it out of my wages. So that year, 1962, I worked for 12 quid a week and really had a ball. I used to look after his correspondence and wrote a column for him. We did it with a tape recorder and I slavishly wrote down every word he said. Then later on, I used to write down what he meant!

"In those days I knew practically eveything that was going on because Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill and all that crew were just mates of McLaren's. And because I was at all the races as a mate of McLaren's I knew them all just as mates and we all used to go out to dinner together. It was a never a question of, well, we're not going to ask him because he's a journalist. Then in 1963 McLaren Racing started and the directors were Bruce and his wife and me. I still have the share certificates somewhere."

Young stayed with McLaren for three more years, then married Sandra, John Surtees' secretary, and became a fulltime journalist beginning in 1967 when his first column appeared in the January issue of Autocar. "My stuff was always the comment on the news, rather than the news itself. I always think that when you see a news release, methinks that I know what it says, what does it mean? I say, read between the lines and then write between the lines. But I always think I am fortunate because I can write about whatever I want to write about.

"And I like to think I write the way I talk. I always use the parallel that when I turn into The Barley Mow after a Grand Prix, all those guys at the bar are asking what happened?  They've all read in the Telegraph what happened and who won, but they want to know all the funny stories, you see, and so that's what I write about. I think that the reader would like to be with me at the races, but he can't do that. And he would really like to be the next one down the bar listening to all the funny stories, but he can't do that. So I write it for him.

"The magazine's the next best thing to being there, or at The Barley Mow, and he can read it in New Zealand or Japan or wherever, all the funny, interesting and amusing things. I mean the whole fucking world sees the race on TV, which has tended to almost dilute the necessity for being there.

"Getting back to Denny and his gearbox. I never have been and never will be technically-minded. And I've always thought that the majority of readers are like me, so why bore them? Why should I endeavour to describe a gearbox in the magazine? And if I tried there would probably be some words left over!

"At the first motoring paper I ever worked for the editor there said the credo of his publication was to entertain first and inform second. It's been mine ever since. If I don't get amused at a story, I won't write it down, or if there's something in the story that doesn't interest me, I won't put it in the magazine. 

"People are interested in people. But it's getting harder to find the characters in Formula 1, the whole atmosphere has changed. Now, we almost never have dinner with drivers. We don't know any of them that well. They're busy with their sponsors.  The night before the race they have got to be in bed and the night after the race they're in their Lears going back. Now, I really enjoy going to the races just for the company and the chat of the journalists."

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