And so let us pay tribute to two men who rode to glory in the decade where style went for a burton!
James Simon Wallis Hunt was born into a well-to-do family with a thing for danger. While his father Wallis survived a grenade attack at the height of the Second World War, his brother David competed in Formula 3000 in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, another sibling Tim - who’d enjoy some success as a model - was a fully-paid up member of the Dangerous Sports Club, an eccentric enterprise that also counted Monty Python's Graham Chapman amongst its members.
Hunt grew up one of those annoying people who's able to do anything. A competent trumpeter - he'd play his cornet at the Royal Albert Hall after winning the Formula 1 Championship - he also played squash for his county and competed at Junior Wimbledon. Educated at Wellington College, he'd set his heart on becoming a doctor. That was until he got behind the wheel of his first car...
A mini racer to begin with, things really took off for Hunt (nicknamed 'The Shunt' due to the number of accidents he had) in 1973 when he hooked up with Hesketh Racing. Run - if you could call it that - by the eccentric Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, the team carried on more like a bunch of hooray henrys out to have the best time imaginable. Scoffed at by the 'real' F1 outfits, Hesketh might have been written off as a joke had Hunt not driven his jalopy to second place in the 1973 US Grand Prix.
This success, together with the team's colourful manner - Hunt took to the track in overalls baring the slogan 'Sex - Breakfast Of Champions' - endeared Hesketh's merry pranksters to the British public who went crackers when the team's blond bombshell won the 1975 Dutch Grand Prix. Alas, by this point, the good Lord was almost out of money. James Hunt, however, had caught the eye of one of the biggest teams around, Marlboro McLaren.
During his first year with his new employers, Hunt found himself neck-and-neck with Ferrari's Nikki Lauda after the Austrian driver made an incredible recovery from a near-fatal accident at the British Grand Prix. Everything came to a head at the last race of the season in Japan. Hunt - who prepared for the biggest race of his life by hooking up with a local girl in the McLaren workshop - contemplated giving the whole thing a miss, so torrential was the rain. As it turned out, it was Lauda who called an early end to proceedings, pulling off the track after two laps claiming that to continue would be "suicide". By gutsing things out to finish third, James Hunt became the 1976 World Formula 1 Champion by the margin of a solitary point.
Among the people in the crowd roaring Hunt on to victory was Barry Sheene, who'd flown to Japan on the back of securing his first of two MotoGP World titles. Over the years, the public schoolboy and the kid from Putney had become close friends. One of the keys to their relationship was their shared interest in the opposite sex. While Sir James was widely rumoured to have slept with over 5,000 women, Barry Sheene had lost his virginity at the tender age of 14. And the location for this momentous occasion? A snooker table in the crypt of St Martins-In-The-Field Church.
As happy chasing women and he was sat on his bike, Sheene wouldn't settle down until his mid-thirties when he was introduced to Page 3 model Stephanie McLean. Asked why he asked McLean for her hand in marriage, he told the press, “If there was a computer where you could punch in a woman’s boobs, backside, legs and personality, I’d come out with her,” the romantic fool!
Sheene was also every bit as accident prone as Hunt. But while the F1 star tended to emerge for crashes with everything except his pride intact, the biker bit the dust in explosive style. When he came off his bike at Daytona in 1975, Sheene skidded fully 200 yards down the track. The emergency medical team estimated that our man had left enough skin on the circuit to cover a sofa. Barry also suffered an appalling spill at Silverstone in 1982 which left his leg bones encased in metal.
Such collateral damage was somewhat surprising given that Sheene was outspoken in his criticism of speed in general and dangerous race tracks such as the Isle Of Man TT circuit in particular. If he was more cautious than he let on, it was his bravado that made him one of the most beloved British sportsman of his era. Take then time he overtook arch-rival Kenny Roberts with an audacious maneuver at the 1979 British Grand Prix, then did what any self-respecting Englishman would do and flicked the ‘Vs’ at the American. A place in the nation's affections was forever guaranteed.
Their track careers all but over by the early 1980s, Hunt and Sheene found a new lease courtesy of TV, James sharing the BBC F1 commentary duties with Murray Walker, Barry hosting ITV magazine programmes such as Just Amazing before emigrating to Australia to present motor sport coverage (he also made a guest appearance on Neighbours for his sins). Hunt also memorably cameoed in Eric Sykes' celebrated silent short The Plank and showed up as a speed-loving chauffeur on the 1977 festive edition of The Morecambe & Wise Show.
Given their gung-ho approach to life, it's perhaps not surprising that neither Sheene or Hunt lived terribly long. What is odd is the mundane manner in which each man died. James Hunt passed away in his sleep from a heart attack aged just 45, apparently the victim of a heavy drinking, cocaine and smoking regime.
Barry Sheene, meanwhile, succumbed to tumours of the throat and stomach aged 52. When asked by his nurses whether was allergic to anything, Sheene - the glint in his eye yet to completely dim - replied “Cancer”.