'Whizzo' The Sporting Life of Barrie Williams by Paul Lawrence

TFM Publishing ISBN 978-1-903378-62-5 £20 list price

After spectating at a race meeting last year, I saw Barrie Williams and approached him. He had driven an old shed with a roof in one of the support races and (as usual) made it go much faster than it deserved to. Some friends of mine run a website for the make of car he was driving, so I asked him for comments. He gave them to me with massive enthusiasm and openness, treating me like an old friend. As it happened, the website didn't use Barrie's words as they weren't entirely complimentary to their marque. But then, Barrie Williams drives anything and everything, no matter how unlikely it may be as a racing car. He has massive enthusiasm for any sort of competition vehicle, and great commitment. He is often described with affection as an overgrown 1950's schoolboy. The enthusiasm seems to be contagious to those around him. And it is also transmitted to those watching him race, since I'm sure most people who attend historic race meetings are like me; we look at the programme and say “Oh good, Barrie Williams is in the next race, we'll see a bit of entertainment.”

Barrie's a very approachable, very friendly, very likeable chap. This comes over in Paul Lawrence's book. Paul's style of narrative is ideal for the story. He talks to Barrie, his friends and competitors, and quotes extensively from the interviews. As a result the story rattles along, and the spirit is competitive fun, a concept familiar to Monoposto participants. It starts with his early days in hillclimbs with a Singer/Austin special, and then moves through racing a Morris Minor, rallying an early Mini Cooper, runs through racing one make Escorts and Renaults, saloon car championship Mazdas and Colts, Porsches, and finishes with historic racing, in particular the Connaught single seater for which he is perhaps now best known. A 50 year competition career, mostly as a professional, is pretty spectacular, and about 40 years longer than most professionals.

Needless to say there are a lot of anecdotes, many involving crashes, but some not. A favourite of mine is dressing as a ghost and shining a torch on himself on the long straight at Snetterton during a 24 hour endurance record attempt. The punchline to the story is that the drivers at the time said nothing, but in a much later interview spoke of the strange hallucinations which happen at night. He is, of course, closely associated in the mind of enthusiasts with Tony Lanfranchi and Gerry Marshall. The truth is that they weren't really a close trio, Barrie having a somewhat less excessive lifestyle than his contemporaries, which may explain how he outlived them.

An appendix lists Barrie's favourite cars, one of which sounds particularly outrageous. Called the Jaguar Egal, it was an E-type with a 7 litre Ford Galaxie engine. “Sideways” comes immediately to mind, rapidly followed by “life threatening”, “over-the-top” and “fun”.

The book is published by Paul Lawrence's own TFM company, and unlike his earlier highly readable but fairly conservatively presented volumes on Arthur Mallock and Royale Racing Cars it has the pictures distributed liberally into the text – around one a page, and generally well reproduced. No surprise that most show a car going sideways. There's a slight issue that some of the pictures seem to be orphans – captioned but unrelated to the text. An example is an Imp at Loton Park in the 1980's. As a ex-hillclimber, I'm intrigued but remain uninformed. There are also a few too many images for my taste of a Goodwood Morris Minor, but along with the odd minor typo and the lack of an index, these are no reason to not buy the book. In fact, there's an overwhelming reason for buying it. It makes you smile as you read it!

The book cover

Early days in the 1950's in an Austin A40 Devon at Prescott hillclimb. Not, perhaps, the first thought for a competition car, but his dad sold them.

Hillclimber, circuit racer, rally driver, in proper single seaters, sports cars and tin tops. Barrie Williams has done it all in over 50 years of competition.