Stuart Barker - Barry Sheene 1950–2003 - The Biography

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. The machine actually had two gears, but Barry, not knowing how to change gears, only ever used one. It was still good enough to reach speeds of around 50mph.

Ironically, it wasn’t hurtling around on a motorcycle which caused Barry’s first serious injury; it was a pushbike accident at the age of eight which resulted in a broken arm. After the arm was plastered, Sheene told his mother that he’d always wanted to break his arm (again, like most schoolboys) and was well chuffed with his plaster trophy.

The little Ducati was eventually replaced by a 100cc Triumph Tiger Cub which Barry took to race meetings so he could potter around in the nearby fields, of which there wasn’t an abundance in central London. He had tried riding the Tiger round the roads near his home but a couple of run-ins with the law had put an end to that, even though the coppers had taken it easy on Barry as they regularly utilized Frank’s services for repair work. When he wasn’t riding his own bike, Barry would take his dad’s race bikes out for short test runs at disused airfields or racing paddocks, all the time developing his skill for analysing how the bikes were running. Sheene’s developmental and analytical skills became finely honed during these years, and they played a big part in his success. But that was no real surprise when one considers that he could strip and rebuild an engine by the age of 12 and was riding real racing motorcycles when his class-mates were still mastering the art of pedalling. Barry recalled getting plenty of snotty looks as a kid when he suggested to puzzled and frustrated riders in the paddock what might be wrong with their bikes just by listening to them being revved. But those who were modest enough to take his advice usually found (probably to their amazement) that the advice was good. Indeed, Sheene became quite the little paddock consultant for any rider whose ego was willing to accommodate the fact that a child knew more about engine mechanics than he did.

Frank Sheene’s bikes were among the best in the country in the sixties and were in demand by many of the top racers of that era, and Barry was fast catching his father up on technical know-how. So much so that by the time he was 14 he was a good enough mechanic to be offered a job looking after race bikes, even though it didn’t pay. But for someone who hated school as much as Barry did the opportunity must have felt like a dream come true: he was asked if he would like to spend a month working as a mechanic in Europe for American Grand Prix racer Tony Woodman. Needless to say, he didn’t have to be asked twice. Frank, fully approving of what he saw as a unique chance for his son to see something of the world and to gain work experience while other kids were stuck in school only reading about foreign lands, gave his son £15 for the month to cover all expenses from food, drink and cigarettes to ferry fares. It was a very modest sum, even in 1964, but Barry, showing a thriftiness that would later become a hallmark, managed to return from the trip with change in his pocket. His parents signed him off school for a month, blaming another bout of illness.

There were few luxuries available and food was scarce, but it was an incredible experience for a boy of 14 and an invaluable insight into the Grand Prix world he would soon come to dominate. And the fact that Woodman was not there just to make up the GP numbers but was a genuine contender made Sheene’s position even more remarkable, a real testament to the skills he had acquired. The trip, which embraced visits to the Salzburgring and the Nurburgring for the Austrian and German GPs, went well. Barry could not have had much interest in returning to school after such an eye-opener, but he still had one year to complete before being officially allowed to leave so he got on with it as best he could. Woodman, incidentally, was later paralysed after breaking his back in the North West 200 road races in Northern Ireland. It was a harsh reminder, if Sheene needed one, that racing motorcycles is a risky business, but at that point Barry showed no signs of wanting to race anyway. Like his father, he was more than happy working on bikes instead of riding them.

His final year at school completed, Sheene was at last free to try his luck in the world at large. He left formal education without a single qualification to his name and in the knowledge that the only thing he’d topped at school was the absenteeism list. But one good thing, aside from Barry’s utter relief, came from leaving school: his asthma attacks all but disappeared. They had always been made considerably worse when Barry was stressed or emotionally upset, and he felt there was no mystery attached to their clearing up almost as soon as he left school: it was a sure measure of how much he had dreaded that establishment. He couldn’t have been happier when it was time to turn his back on it for good.

It seemed obvious from his early-learned hatred of authority that Barry wasn’t going to settle comfortably into just any old job under any old boss. As he said, ‘I had never experienced working for someone other than Frank and I wasn’t quite sure how I would take to someone giving me orders.’ But with no formal qualifications, he wasn’t going to be offered many decent jobs either. Deep down, however, both Sheene and his parents knew that his profound mechanical knowledge would somehow see him through. Frank had taught him all he needed to know about stripping and rebuilding engines, about how to squeeze every last ounce of power out of a motorcycle. Surely that knowledge alone would stand him in good stead?

But being a mechanic didn’t seem to be top of Barry’s job-hunting list. In fact, initially he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do, and he soon found himself drifting in and out of jobs like most young people trying to find their feet in the world. Eventually he landed a job in a car spares warehouse unloading parts into different bins. The work was neither glamorous nor stimulating, and it paid a measly £5 a week, of which Barry pocketed just 75 shillings after paying tax and national insurance. Needless to say, he didn’t stick at the job for long. Within a few months he had moved on to a new position which was infinitely more exciting and one small step closer to his destiny: he became a motorcycle despatch rider.