Stuart Barker - Niall Mackenzie - The Autobiography

Apart from gaining a bit of disciplinary leeway, the most significant effect of losing my dad was that I was free to pursue my interest in motorcycles, which had been sparked off by a friend’s dad who raced bikes. He was called Jimmy Rae and he used to race at the Isle of Man TT and in the Scottish championships. Bob Maclntyre’s old mechanic, Pirn Fleming, used to spanner for him and Jimmy had known Bob too so that always impressed us as kids, as Bob Mac was Scotland’s most famous bike racer and the first man to do a 100mph lap at the TT.

Hanging around that garage was my first real exposure to bikes but I wasn’t mad on them at that point; I was just interested like most young lads would be.

It was only when I actually got to ride a bike that I became hooked, even though my introduction to powered two-wheel transport was less than glamorous, as I’ve already explained. While my future Grand Prix rivals were learning their trades on expensive children’s racing motorcycles as soon as they could sit on them, I had to wait until I was thirteen before I sat on a bike and even then it was more of a push-bike than a motorbike. And rather than riding on a purpose built schoolboy motocross track my debut was on an old railway line.

The first bike I ever rode was a Raleigh scooter and it relied on good old pedal power more than the power of its minuscule combustion engine. It was basically a push-bike with a little engine and some of my mates had dragged it off a dump and managed to get it going so we ended up on the old railway line that used to serve Carron Grove Papermill with it. I was the youngest one there and was given a go and I just couldn’t believe that this push-bike thing was moving without me having to peddle – well, sometimes at least. It must have made about 3bhp but I was just blown away with the whole concept and that was the start of it for me: I had to have a motorbike.

It’s debatable whether my first two-wheeled purchase could actually be described as a motorbike however as Honda’s C90 is probably the most basic form of two-wheeled transport there is. But its reputation for reliability and its ease of use have made it the biggest selling bike of all time with some thirty million of them having been sold to date, mostly to grannies and pizza delivery boys.

I paid about £40 for my second hand C90, which was quite a lot of cash back then but I had saved up enough money from my milk round and I just had to have it. I mostly rode it round the fields with my old orange helmet on but sometimes I would have to ride it on the road to get to the fields even though it had no tax or insurance and I hadn’t passed my test. My mates were mostly older and had Yamaha FSlEs and Suzuki AP50s so I was always playing catch up.

After the C90, I bought a Honda TL125 trials bike from Lloyds Brothers in Hamilton. I don’t really know why I wanted one because I certainly didn’t do any trials on it. It cost £330 brand new, which was a fortune to me, and I had to save everything I earned for six months to get it since my mum still didn’t want me to have a bike and wouldn’t let me use any of the money she’d put away for me.

As soon as I turned seventeen, I naturally wanted a proper bike for the road and the coolest thing a seventeen year old could have in the late 1970s was a Yamaha FS1E or ‘Fizzy’ as they became affectionately known. So I sold the Honda TL125 to raise cash to buy a ‘Fizzy’ and I was ready to rock. But first there was the minor inconvenience of passing a bike test. I could have ridden the little pedal-assisted Fizzy on a provisional licence indefinitely but I had aspirations of moving onto bigger bikes so I took my test at the first opportunity.

Fortunately, for me at least, riding standards were not quite as strict in the 1970s as they are now and I passed my test at the first attempt even though my examiner disappeared before the test was over! Nowadays, you take your test on a bike with a radio link to the examiner, who’s on another bike. But in those days, the examiner just used to watch you riding round the streets as he stood on the pavement. At one point, I was asked to ride round the block and the examiner said he would hide behind a car and jump out holding his hand up for me to do an emergency stop. I went round the block but got lost and by the time I found the right street again he was gone – nowhere to be seen. I somehow managed to find my way back to the test centre and he was already there, waiting to give me my licence. I think he just wanted to go home as it was half past four on a dark and drizzly winter afternoon in Falkirk and he was just going through the motions, but that was fine by me as I still got my licence.

If there is one downside to motorcycles it’s that they can be dangerous. Whichever way you dress up the facts and figures, the truth remains that a lot of people both on the road and on racetracks, get hurt or killed riding bikes. But anyone who rides a bike has weighed up the risks and decided they’re worth taking. After all, you can’t live your life wrapped in cotton wool trying to avoid every possible danger. Taking risks and getting the adrenaline pumping is what makes people feel alive and, when all’s said and done, bikes are great fun and that’s why we ride them.

Even so, I had a grim early lesson in the dangers of motorcycling. I had bought the Fizzy from a friend called Craig Feeney who had just bought a bigger 250cc Ham Yam (a customised Yamaha with bolt-on racing parts) which was considered the bees’ knees at the time. A few months later, Craig was paralysed from the chest down after a road accident. I was gutted for my friend but never thought about selling up and quitting bikes. It was a big shock because he was in a wheelchair but it didn’t put me off and I actually bought a Ham Yam similar to Craig’s not long after his accident. Craig eventually received a big compensation pay out and he helped me out financially when I started racing.

In those early days, I still didn’t harbour any ambitions to be a racer. In fact, I had no ambitions at all except to enjoy myself. It’s not that I was totally stupid. I was actually quite good at school. I managed to get seven ‘O’ Levels (the equivalent of GCSEs), and I even stayed on at school to study for four Highers (the Scottish version of English ‘A’ Levels). However a crash on my Fizzy resulted in a damaged knee which in turn resulted in several weeks off school. I missed a lot of the groundwork for the new term and I was fed up with trying to catch up so I just left school and went to work full time on the farm. I still had my milk run in the morning and I helped at a haulage firm at night so I was making enough cash to get by.

My mum would have supported me financially through college if I had wanted to go but the idea of studying for four years at that age just didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to be having a good time and anyway I liked driving tractors at the farm, doing all the harrowing and rolling and the like, so why would I want to be stuck in a classroom?

However, the glamorous world of motor sports seemed something that only other, more privileged children could aspire to. In fact, the closest I ever got to considering racing as a career was dreaming of being a rally car driver as a kid but I never considered that as a realistic option – it was just day-dreaming stuff. As for bike racing, it never even entered my head. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start for one thing. Where I came from, you were considered lucky just to get a trade apprenticeship and the highest you could aim for was getting in with the big companies like BP or ICI in Grangemouth. I certainly wasn’t encouraged to dream about alternative glamorous lifestyles so, like everyone else, I stuck with the jobs I had and just got on with things.