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After the death of legendary motorsport broadcaster Murray Walker at the age of 97, The Race’s writers have been reflecting on the part Walker’s commentaries played in our own love of racing.
Learning to talk via Walker and Hunt
Glenn Freeman
Murray Walker pretty much taught me to talk back when I was a toddler. I’m told I was barely able to string a sentence together in normal conversation by the time I told my parents: “That’s Mauricio Gugelmin. He drives a March.”
Sunday afternoons in front of the TV certainly widened my vocabulary, and those skills were honed by doing impressions of Murray and James Hunt while pushing toy cars around the carpet. For added authenticity there had to be the occasional ‘Murrayism’ thrown in, which would be corrected by ‘James’ every time.
Murray’s commentary style is often characterised as ‘trousers on fire’, but that does him a disservice. He had gears. And while there’s no doubting that moments like shouting ‘Go go go!’ at the start of the race and so many of his iconic lines that were the soundtrack to the most famous events in F1 history were Murray in top gear, he’d always find various points in the race to take a pause, slow things down and reset.
It was that ability to ebb and flow with the race that made the times he was on his personal rev limiter feel special and sincere, rather than contrived.
Super Touring’s golden days
Scott Mitchell
Image courtesy of Jakob Ebrey Archive
I was too young to really experience the Super Touring years of the British Touring Car Championship live, but I remember my dad buying the 1994-1998 season review VHS tapes and me binge-watching them as a kid. That’s actually what I associate Murray with most.
Those Super Touring season highlights with his commentary were part of my absolute favourite memories discovering motorsport as a kid, just revelling in the pageantry.
I say “as a kid”, in fact, last year I bought digital copies of every 1990s season and started watching them when the pandemic put the season on hiatus. And I could finally appreciate just how much Murray contributed to those reviews being SO entertaining.
Given what those videos mean to me, I am immensely grateful to him for that.
F1’s TV breakthrough
Mark Hughes
Murray’s voice is the dominant soundtrack to the memories of that magical time for me when F1 first got a regular TV slot.
The excitement he conveyed was just wonderful. The self deprecation was hilarious but in realty he was a master of his craft.
When I later got to know him it was a great thing to discover that he was a lovely person too.
Heartfelt enthusiasm, not bias
Matt Beer
At the time, I didn’t get it. I missed the point. As a moody teenager with only disdain for Nigel Mansell and who favoured Michael Schumacher and then Jacques Villeneuve over Damon Hill, I’d get too fixated on what I saw as the excessive patriotism of Murray’s commentaries and just rage to myself over them.
In hindsight, I realised the magic. As Murray ascended to national treasure status, many focused (fondly) on the eccentricities and errors. But everything he did was underpinned by comprehensive knowledge and the most genuine passion. This wasn’t ‘ego-first’ commentary, his priority was the sport and the viewers. That F1 earned so many thousands of new fans through Walker’s personality was a lovely irony considering that.
His commentaries are very much of their time in that he was working with far more basic facilities and in-race information than his modern successors, and on broadcasts for wide audiences fitted into general sports programming such as Grandstand rather than for a specialist F1-focused channel. He made F1 far more accessible and enthralling than it necessarily was.
And he was nothing but honest and fair. I may have been underwhelmed by the Brits he advocated, but I could never accuse Walker of bias against anyone – only enthusiasm for the likes of Hill that didn’t prevent fair appreciation of everyone else.
Inspired the next generation too
Jack Benyon
In my house growing up, the certainties of life were death, taxes and that Murray Walker was a legend.
Thanks to a mother who loves Formula 1 and a father who loves the British Touring Car Championship too, I grew up on a diet of Oulton Park and 1990s VHS reviews often containing the only microphone crowd pleaser I needed.
Walker’s often credited with the rise of Formula 1 in the UK with his unique commentary style, and motorsport is so often passed from generation to generation. So the parents that he inspired gave way to brats like me.
For me, his greatest time was covering the BTCC. I can even narrow down my favourite ‘Murrayisms’ to one race: Knockhill 1994. While Gabriele Tarquini rolled his Alfa Romeo, Murray stated: “Out go the yellows. No passing, no wonder!”
On a replay he shrieked: “Roll, roll, thank heavens for safety belts!”
Classic.
Anyone who has listened to Murray’s commentary can hear it now replaying as if live. I didn’t even have to go back and listen to those quotes as I can recall them now even after so long.
What a timeless legend, who is credited for inspiring a generation, but he would influence the ones that followed his era just as much.
The extra grandparent
Sam Smith
In the early 1980s Murray Walker was such an amplified presence in my life that he felt like an extra special grandparent that I heard from once a fortnight during March to October.
The Murray and James show is surely the greatest ever sports commentary partnership. One consummate, even-handed professional, whose notes on drivers and cars were forensically detailed, somehow blended with the informed knowledge and devil may care opinion of Hunt. It was wonderfully orchestral and despite an amusingly volatile start it didn’t need a conductor at all.
So many highlights and golden memories spring to mind. The comedic farce of trying to describe the surreal final laps in Monaco in 1982, the gasping for air “it’s happened immediately” incredulousness of Japan 1990 or the beautifully poetic final corner narration of Damon Hill’s title again at Suzuka in 1996 are all superb epitaphs.
But it was the early hours of October 26, 1986 that really stood out.
At 3am my Dad and I were held in spellbound rapture during a once in a lifetime title fight.
Even at 10 years of age my enthusiasm for Mansell was reasonably well checked. But it would have been an abnormally steely heart that didn’t flinch when his right rear Goodyear blew in the most dramatic fashion on lap 63.
"And look at that… That's Mansell!"
Adelaide 1986 – Murray at his effervescent, captivating best pic.twitter.com/mEHDrRjBR1
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 13, 2021
“AND LOOK AT THAT!”
Murray, we did indeed look. But most importantly of all we listened, and we listened to the best in the business by a country mile.
A bigger draw than the drivers!
Edd Straw
Murray Walker was, in a very real sense, just as much a star of Formula 1 as the drivers.
His words – more importantly his voice – accompanied the great moments on track that thrilled me in my formative years. Many are are still etched in my memory, on instant recall for playback time and again, as I’m sure they are to so many others.
At the first grand prix I attended, as a 16-year-old fan at Magny-Cours, I was thrilled to get his autograph and a photo with him – more so than the drivers. Not only was he a central part of the Sunday afternoon ritual of watching – no, living – the grand prix as a fan, but from the perspective of an aspiring motorsport journalist, he was a true hero.
The impact he had is impossible to quantify. His passion and unabashed enthusiasm was irresistible, infectious even, and he did incredible service to the sport he loved by capturing the imagination of countless millions. I consider myself among them.
