LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 1 COCKNEY REBEL?

       ‘For me, school was like a bad dream. Every minute of every day was murder.’

      If you’re going to be a motorcycle racer, you’re going to have to get used to pain, discomfort and hospital food. Barry Sheene had a very early introduction to all three. Almost from the moment he was born he suffered from infantile eczema which caused him, and his mother Iris, years of sleepless nights as Barry tossed around in his cot scratching and clawing at every part of his tiny body seeking a moment’s respite from the maddening, all-enveloping itch. As anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to suffer from severe eczema will testify, it’s not a very pleasant condition. Barry’s torment increased at the age of two when he also developed chronic asthma. The infant Sheene therefore had to endure the double misery of an infernal itch while struggling for breath at the same time. Almost from the moment he was born, he learned about tolerance to pain, about how to overcome illness, about how never to give up in the struggle back to health. These experiences would stand him in good stead.

      Sadly, 11 September is a date that will now always be remembered for the wrong reasons following the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001, but in 1950 the date was significant in the Sheene family’s London household because it was when Frank and Iris welcomed into the world their second child, having already given birth to a daughter, Margaret. Barry Stephen Frank Sheene was born at 8.55 p.m. on a Monday evening and was later taken home to a four-bedroom flat in Queens Square, Holborn, just off Gray’s Inn Road in London WC1.

      Much has been made of whether or not Sheene, having been born and raised in WC1, can actually lay claim to being a genuine cockney. Traditionally (and according to the Collins Dictionary definition), the only qualification required for the title is to be ‘born within the sound of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church’, or the ‘Bow Bells’ as they are more commonly referred to. Since weather conditions, white noise and the relative abilities of one’s hearing will naturally affect the range of the bells, it appears to be a moot point in Sheene’s case. There is no strict dividing line painted around London to define which streets are ‘cockney’ and which are not, but it’s probably fair to say that those living further east in the city disputed Sheene’s claim while the rest of the world happily accepted it. Still, Sheene was proud of his cockney roots and no one is in a position to deny him those roots with any authority.

      Sheene’s father Frank, or Franco as he has always been affectionately called by his son, was the resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons. The family’s flat went with the job, as did a fully equipped workshop out back which was to prove of significant importance to the young Barry in the years that followed. The family was neither wealthy nor poor; Barry would later describe his family’s socio-economic status as ‘slightly above average’. Iris worked at the college as a housekeeper to top up the family income and Frank brought in some handy extra cash working as a mechanic and bike tuner in the evenings. By the mid-sixties he had earned such a good reputation as a two-stroke tuner that world champions including Bill Ivy and Phil Read came knocking on his door. The former was a hero to Barry, but he was sadly killed in a racing accident when Barry was still young. The latter would start out as a friend before falling out with Barry in 1975 over an alleged bribe attempt, more of which later.

      Work became plentiful for Frank, and his skills were highly valued by any racer who had the money and wanted his motorcycle to go faster. It was Frank’s skill with all things mechanical that saved his son’s manhood after a nightmare incident when Barry was just four years old; eczema and asthma notwithstanding, his well-being suffered a further setback, as Michael Scott related in his 1983 book Barry Sheene: A Will to Win. According to Iris Sheene, Barry had been playing with a clockwork toy train while being bathed in the kitchen sink when he suddenly let out a terrible scream. When a panicked Iris turned to see the cause of the commotion, she noticed that the bodywork of the train was missing (probably due to Barry’s early curiosity for all things mechanical) but the cogs and mechanisms had caught his foreskin and were still churning away, tearing into the sensitive flesh of her child’s genitalia. A traumatized Barry was rushed to a nearby hospital where his father exercised all his skill in dismantling the train’s workings while desperately holding back the tightly loaded spring that was the cause of his son’s agony. Eventually Frank worked the train loose at the expense of much blood and some tissue, but Barry would have much to thank his father for in later years when he came of age. Had it not been for his father’s skill and quick thinking, Barry Sheene the playboy might never have been. It was a fortunate escape, and by no means Barry’s last.

      Frank began to pass on his considerable mechanical knowledge to his son from a very early age. Before her death from a brain tumour in 1991, Iris recalled, ‘When he [Barry] was only eighteen months old, I can remember him wandering around in his dungarees with a spanner in his hand.’ There was to be an early introduction to race meetings, too: from the age of four Barry was being dragged around bike events, soaking up the addictive sights and smells of paddocks all over England and, on occasion, overseas as well. Frank had raced a variety of motorcycles as an amateur for many years, both before and after the war (he won a trophy on the famous Brooklands circuit just before war broke out). He was a competent and enthusiastic club racer but never really World Championship material. Nor did he have the longing to be a world champion; his interest lay more in the preparation and tuning of machinery, and he was most certainly world class

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