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an extremely capable speedway rider for Coventry and a loyal member of ‘Team Sheene’ once Barry took up racing.

      Unlike his son, Frank was a keen supporter of the Isle of Man TT races which at that time was still the most important bike event in the world. It was when he took five-year-old Barry to the Island for what was already his second TT trip that the youngster found himself having health traumas yet again, and this time it really did look bad. Set as it is in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man’s wet and misty climate is not particularly suited to asthma sufferers. Barry suffered such a severe attack that he quite literally turned blue. He was rushed to Nobles Hospital where he was detained for three days until his breathing returned to normal. It was the start of an unhappy relationship with the Isle of Man which would have far-reaching consequences in later years.

      But Sheene was always quick to spot an opportunity and was extremely adept at turning ill fortune to his advantage. Rather than seeing his asthma as a disability, he found ways to make it work for him. For starters, it was a good excuse for getting out of school sports, of which he was never fond; it was an even better excuse for playing truant, and he regularly told teachers he had asthma clinics to attend. To be fair, sometimes he did have legitimate appointments, but there were many more occasions when he didn’t. His truancy habit was made considerably easier to sustain when Sheene found a pile of pre-stamped appointment cards on one particular visit to a clinic. Spotting a golden opportunity, he promptly pocketed the lot, got a friend to sign them, and from then on enjoyed what amounted to a healthy supply of get-out-of-school-free cards. They were not wasted.

      Sheene’s hatred of school has been well documented. It’s not that he didn’t have an aptitude for learning – as he would later prove by teaching himself five languages and learning to pilot a helicopter – it was just that he didn’t like it. And when Barry Sheene didn’t like doing something, he didn’t do it. He didn’t like the work, he didn’t like the discipline, and most of all he didn’t like the teachers. ‘For me, school was like a bad dream,’ he said. ‘Every minute of every day was murder. I hated being told what to do and when to do it by a bunch of teachers who always wanted to try to insult me or belittle me.’ Sheene didn’t respond well to being told what to do. If he was given a free rein, as he was in Frank’s workshop, he displayed a fantastic ability to learn, but he resented the apparently pointless rigidity of the school environment. That stubborn streak would remain with him throughout his life, and it helped him amass a fortune as a property developer in Australia when he stopped racing motorcycles. Barry’s headmaster at St Martin’s in the Fields once told Iris that her son could have been top boy if he had only put his mind to it, but Barry simply wasn’t interested. He had decided at a very early age that he would do things his own way or not at all. That same headmaster sent his former pupil a letter of congratulations when he won the 500cc World Championship in 1976, a fact of which Barry was understandably proud. It was, after all, a written acknowledgement of achievements attained without the aid of formal education.

      Sheene brought up the subject of his schooldays again in 1978 when he appeared on the Parkinson show. Speaking of one teacher whom he had particularly disliked (he diplomatically stopped short of naming him) he said, ‘I was caught for This Is Your Life the other night. I thought, I hope they don’t bring that teacher on because it would be the first punch-in. I feel bitter about it. I think it is one of the things that’s driven me on, because in the back of my mind there’s always this guy saying you will never make anything of your life.’

      At one point, it looked more likely that Barry Sheene would become famous as a musical star rather than as a bike racer as he landed a job as an extra in the musical Tosca in Covent Garden, not far from his house. Sheene had been spotted fighting by a teacher who was looking for extras and she’d asked him if he could sing as well as fight. He replied that he could ‘at a push’, auditioned for the part of a scrapping, singing youth, and ended up sharing the stage with world-renowned opera singer Maria Callas. Sheene explained, ‘She [the teacher] was recruiting lads as extras … and another young boy and I were auditioned and given small parts in the first act to scrap in a churchyard scene. Being cast as a singing, fighting hooligan wasn’t altogether at odds with the way I behaved in real life! Sharing the stage with Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas at such a famous place became one of my most vivid childhood memories. I even had to sing. Best part of it was it meant getting off school.’

      To escape the misery of school when he wasn’t treading the boards, Barry would often sneak off behind the bike sheds to chain-smoke cigarettes. It seems incredible that someone with chronic asthma would want to smoke, but Barry had taken up the habit when he was just nine years old. Most parents would have been horrified to catch their child smoking, although to be fair on Mr and Mrs Sheene attitudes towards smoking have changed markedly since the fifties and sixties; when Frank caught Barry at it when he was 11, he simply handed him two Woodbines (extremely strong, non-filter cigarettes) and said that if Barry could finish them off he was free to smoke. Fifteen minutes later, Barry was free to smoke. He was soon openly sharing his cigarettes with his family. Years later, his greatest joy having returned to the paddock was his first post-race cigarette. ‘For no other reason than for the sheer pleasure it brings, my first priority upon dumping the bike in the pits is to have a cigarette,’ he said. ‘I might have had my last drag on the start line [through the hole drilled in his helmet’s chin bar] but I crave one immediately I’ve finished the race, not as a means of calming the nerves but simply because it has been over an hour since my last one. For a heavy smoker like myself, that’s a long time!’

      Drinking, however, was never one of his vices, although he was as prone to getting carried away on nights out as the next man, and he did once take sadistic pleasure in getting a schoolfriend drunk during a lunch break in what has become one of the most often-repeated stories from Sheene’s childhood. Barry plied his hapless chum with a concoction of spirits from his father’s drinks cabinet before dragging him back to the classroom to observe the effects. His friend was so intoxicated that he needed to be rushed to hospital to have his stomach pumped. Sheene, not surprisingly, thought he was in for big trouble when his parents were called in to school to see the headmaster, but Frank was his usual laid-back self, dropping cigarette ash all over the headmaster’s pristine carpet as he explained his son’s actions by resignedly announcing that ‘Boys will be boys.’

      Barry first got drunk at the Isle of Man TT in 1960 when he was only 10 years old after guzzling two glasses of champagne given to him by Gary Hocking, who had just finished second in the Junior TT. The experience was enough to put him off touching another drop of alcohol until he was 16. Even after that he claimed he never became a heavy drinker, although he did later develop a passion for fine wines and took great pride in his well-stocked cellar.

      Girls were another matter altogether. Perhaps because he’d come so close to losing his manhood as a child, Barry seemed determined to put it to good use as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It finally did over a snooker table in the crypt of a local church when Barry was 14, with a girl whose name he could never remember. From that point on he never looked back. He’d eventually become so famous for his womanizing that he would make front-page news after being photographed leaving a nightclub with a new date, and he would also be selected as a judge for the Miss World contest.

      But whatever mischief Barry got up to in his youth, he never rebelled against his parents. The Sheene family was a very tight-knit unit and it stayed that way throughout Barry’s racing career, with Frank helping on the bikes and Iris keeping hot food and drinks flowing for the family and their guests. Barry never treated his parents with anything other than full respect, though he often fought with his elder sister Maggie. ‘Team Sheene’ would become legendary round the paddocks of the world, Frank and Iris providing all the back-up their boy needed when he was racing bikes. The trio were practically inseparable.

      Unlike some parents who attempt to live out their own unfulfilled dreams through their children, Frank never pushed Barry into riding motorcycles, but then he didn’t have to. When he offered the five-year-old Barry a motorcycle, the youngster jumped at the chance, like most boys would. The bike was a damaged 50cc Ducati that Frank had rebuilt, and Barry spent hours riding around the spacious back yard of the Royal College of Surgeons on the little four-stroke single, driving the neighbours to distraction.

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