James Martin - Driven

So there I was in the kitchen, in all the gear – knee pads, arm pads, helmet – looking like a pillock, holding on to the towel rail of the Aga. It was a Sunday lunchtime and everyone was in the kitchen, sitting round the table, which I was launching myself around again and again, making everyone dizzy and increasingly irritated. My grandfather was getting particularly annoyed as I tried, and more often than not failed, to circle the ten seated obstacles.

Of everyone around that table, my grandfather, my mum’s dad, was the least likely to put up with such antics. A former cricketer, a fast bowler, he used to play for Yorkshire with Freddie Trueman, he worked as a ticket man on the railway and was a proper no-nonsense Yorkshireman who didn’t really make allowances. He used to say things like ‘Get a proper job, play cricket.’ When we used to ‘play’ in his back garden, which always featured an absolutely perfect cricket pitch lawn, stripes and all, he’d bowl cricket balls at me at 150 miles an hour, overarm, like he was warming up against Botham in the nets. You learned quickly to give the ball a good hit to show you were trying, but not too hard because you knew that if you really whacked it and it went over the hedge the next ball would be coming straight at your head. Needless to say, I hate cricket.

So, everyone was chatting away, trying to ignore me but getting more and more annoyed as I went round and round, almost but not quite making it all the way round the table because, maybe, someone had pushed their chair out and I’ve crashed into it. On my fourth or fifth attempt, my grandfather had finally had enough.

‘So, son,’ he said with a force that put me off what could have been my first full flying lap of the day, ‘what do you want to do when you get older?’

I stopped my skateboard right next to him and without even thinking about it I replied that I wanted to be a chef.

My dad, being a catering manager, knew a thing or two about chefs and he was nodding and saying, ‘That’s all right that. Good career. Hard work, but a good career.’ Granddad wasn’t looking quite so impressed, but spurred on by my dad’s approval I added, ‘I want to be a head chef at 30, have my own restaurant at 35 and have a Ferrari when I’m 40.’

My granddad turned to me, a look of disgust on his face, and in his firm Yorkshire accent he said, ‘You want to get a bloody proper job, play cricket. You’ll never get all that, not being a chef.’

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. They’ll also tell you that I’m the hardest-working person they know. All my friends will say that I put in more hours, more effort and more passion than anyone else they’ve ever met and that if I say I’m going to do something, I usually do it. Even so, through all the years of working 18-hour days, living on the breadline, begging, borrowing and stealing (literally) to survive, standing up to jumped-up little French chefs, being battered and abused in restaurant kitchens over the years, being ripped off in business and being mistaken for a fool more than once, I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined the truth: that I’d achieve all the boastful ambitions I voiced as a seven-year-old on a skateboard by the time I was 24.

Scarborough, 1979. I’m in a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ cowboy hat, eating pink candyfloss, walking along the seafront with my mum, my dad and my sister, and I’m having a lovely time. It’s grey and windy and the only thing moving on the beach is the rubbish and the poor old 10p-a-ride donkeys, but it doesn’t matter.

We went to Scarborough a lot when I was a kid, at weekends and during school holidays, so much so it’s a wonder that eating all those whelks and pickled herrings and pots of winkles in vinegar – the ones you ate with a plastic fork – and the tons of sticky rock (which for some reason wasn’t the traditional pink stick kind but made up to look like a plate of sausage, bacon and eggs) didn’t leave me scarred for life. Thankfully I only have happy memories of our trips to the seaside, not least because it was on that grey and windswept east coast seafront that I discovered two of the greatest passions of my life.

At the time, I thought Scarborough was one of the best places on the planet. I know now that although it can be fun, it can also be one of the most boring places. I mean, the Labour Party hold their conference there. I just remember it being bloody cold and grim at times, with one solitary speedboat that went up and down and a funfair that hardly ever used to be open because it was either too windy or pissing down with rain. And it hasn’t changed to this day: it’s still your typical sleepy seaside town full of old dears and the faint smell of wee and Dettol. But back then, to a young lad with a pocket full of hard-earned and carefully saved 50ps, it was magic, full of excitement. Typically, my sister used to blow all of her money in the pound shop as soon as we got there; she’d come out with rolls of clingfilm and 15 teddy bears, thinking she’d got a bargain. Me, I headed straight for the bright lights and endless pleasures of Scarborough’s only real saving grace, the amusement arcades.

Then as now, Scarborough’s seafront was crammed with huge arcade houses, and I used to spend hour after hour in them. That’s where I started my lifelong obsession with those fairground grabbing games, the ones where you have to pick up the cuddly toy or some other bit of tat with a pincer on a hoist. Whenever I see one I have to have a go on it, and once I’ve started there’s no getting me off. I’ve been known to put £65 in one of those things at a time and walk away with nothing but a smile to show for it. Then again I don’t smoke and I don’t drink – well, not much – so I figure I’ll play on the grabby games if I want to.

Of all Scarborough’s arcades, there was one in particular that was always guaranteed to excite a young man looking to put his hand-eye coordination to the test. The biggest, most glitzy arcade on the front (well, it looked glitzy to me at the time) had this huge sign of red mirrored discs which used to glitter in the wind with the words ‘Henry Marshall’ in massive gold letters that lit up at night. It was a Mecca for excitable small boys like me with change in their pockets, and it was outside there one day when I was off to try my hand at grabbing something cheap and tacky that I discovered the other great obsession of my life.

There, right outside Henry Marshall’s amusement arcade, on a double yellow line, was a brand-new, shiny, British racing green Aston Martin V8 Vantage.

Now, I’d spent enough time in the back of my dad’s less than sporty MkI Escort playing ‘Spot the Car’ with my sister – ‘that’s my car, that’s your car, that’s my car…’ – to know a good car when I saw one, and I knew this was something else. It wasn’t just a brand-new Aston Martin, it was the Prince of Wales edition, with the V8 engine. Even then I could spot the V8 because it had different wheels and wider wheel arches than the standard one. To buy that car today would be expensive, £200,000 at least; back then it would have been astronomical. We’re talking a lottery money motor. Pure hand-built luxury. British racing green, chrome everywhere, soft top, cream leather interior with green piping, a private number plate – it looked the business. Absolutely amazing. And there was something about the fact that it was parked on the double yellow that made it even better. What did the owner care about parking tickets? He had an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Prince of Wales edition. He could afford to pay the fines.

I stood there gazing at it in awe, my 99 Flake dripping down my fingers. I was standing on tiptoes trying to get a proper look inside while my dad tried to drag me away, terrified that I was going to get Mr Whippy all over the paintwork. Like all the other dads of all the other kids who had suddenly surrounded it and were clawing for a better look and getting fingerprints and candyfloss all over it, my dad was desperate to prise me away from the window before the owner came back. There were kids everywhere shouting, ‘Dad, Dad, have you seen this?’ ‘Dad, Dad, what is it?’ ‘Dad, Dad, how much is it?’ ‘Dad, Dad, can we get one?’ while their embarrassed fathers tried to distract them and get them as far away from the vehicle as possible…until, that is, the owner’s 20-something girlfriend with never-ending legs and the shortest miniskirt you’ve ever seen came tottering along on her high heels and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Suddenly the dads weren’t in such a hurry to leave and it was the mothers who were insisting it was time to go.