Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in 1981 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. Our castaway this week is the... Driver who won last year's World Grand Prix Championship, Alan Jones. Alan, does music mean a lot in your life? Yes it does. I would say there's not a day goes by that I don't at least play some music of one form or another. Do you play an instrument yourself? No.

No, I don't. Do you sing? It's a matter of opinion. Yes, I have been known to sort of let loose with the odd nose in the shower, but as to how good I am, it's a matter of opinion. Do you play discs or tapes a lot? I mean, do you take them with you when you travel? Yes, I do. I usually take half a dozen or so cassettes with me, and when I'm tucked away in some foreign hotel, I usually get it all out and play some music. Could you endure prolonged loneliness? So yes, yeah. What's the first desk you've chosen to make things a bit better? Well, I've chosen the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, which I find has a little bit of everything. It has very relaxing moments and it has very lively moments and I think it suits my moods because I change a lot myself.

By Johann Strauss, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carayen. Now you're the second generation of racing drivers in your family. Yes that's correct. My father raced cars, well I can remember him racing cars ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and he was the first Australian ever to win a Grand Prix outside of his own country. He won the Australian Grand Prix in 1956. Now you started racing yourself in a soapbox. Yes, in the soapbox derby. It's a thing whereby you get two kids side by side and let them roll down a hill and the first one at the bottom is the winner. Did you do well? Yes, we had quite a good chassis and it was all streamlined and purposely built just for that reason.

Yeah we went pretty good. Your father Stan designed it for you, did he? No, there was a soft drink manufacturer that had it built for them for advertising purposes. So you were sponsored already? Sort of. And then go-karts to follow? Yes. Now you went to a Jesuit public school, was it strict? Yes it was, it was very strict. You know they carried the straps and soaked them in vinegar to make the leather nice and bitey. Wow. What were you good at at school? Nothing. Is that honest? Really? You're not good at nothing? I was good at getting out of work. I wasn't a very scholastic sort of a person at all and ever since then I've been a student. I can remember I just wanted to get out of school to get into the commercial world. Now of course like all people that went that route, I'm regretting it. Was it firmly in your head as a child that you were going to follow your father as a driver? Yes, ever since I can remember.

It was just a simple matter of waiting to get my license and then that would in turn allow me to get my competition license and I'd get stuck straight into some racing. Let's have your second record, what's that? Ah, well it's another classic record. Choice by Tchaikovsky. I must say that I like all forms of music and it really depends on what mood I'm in as to what music I play and I don't profess to be an expert on classical music I just know that when I hear it I like it and that's what I go on by. And this is the Romeo and Juliet.

Yes. Tchaikovsky's--

Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, the Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Ricardo Mutti. Right, we left you go-karting. What was the next step? Well, after I matured from go-kart at the right of old age of about 16, I went interstate to South Australia to get my licence, because to get a competition licence, it simply states that you must have a current road traffic licence. And where I come from in Victoria, you have to be 18, but in South Australia you only have to be 16. So I went across to Adelaide and got my road traffic licence and then promptly put in for Competition license and I raced a mini. Did you do well at that? I raced it in sprints and hill climbs and then I went on to some circuit racing around Victoria and it was a very good car. I can always remember my father having raced Maseratis and things like that. He obviously thought that a Mini wasn't going to be too expensive. And we took it to a motor tuning company in...

Called Motor Improvements and the old man just said look do whatever is necessary to make it one of the best under a thousand cc minis you know thinking it'd probably cost him a couple of hundred quid or something And when he got the bill he nearly died but because of that it was one of the best under 1000cc minis and I enjoyed a bit of success with it. Obviously you weren't going to be able to earn a living as a driver right away. What were you doing? I was working him my father's business. He had a General Motors dealership in Melbourne selling Holden's which is sort of Australia's voxel and I was going through the various departments of that in the hope that when he would retire I'd take over. What decided you to come to England? Well it's the mecca of motor racing. It's the place you have to be if you want to be a performer. Racing driver and particularly if you come from an English-speaking country and you have English origins you have to come to England.

I suppose if you're Argentinian or something like that you could go to Italy. But this is where the cars are made, this is where the best teams are, and this is where you have to be if you want to be a part of it. How old were you then Aaron? It was about 10 years ago so I must have been 24. Had you any capital? Yes, I had 50 quid. Done. Had you any contacts? Yes I had contacts. When Bruce McLaren and people like that came out to Australia for the Tasman Series, they used to race against my father and they all became fairly good friends. And I remember going up to Bruce McLaren's house for dinner on several occasions and Pat McLaren, his wife, used to give me good filet steaks and what have you, In Earl's Court in those days. They were a good help to me. How did you make out in Earl's Court? I mean how did you scrounge a living one? You were getting organised. Well, a very good friend of mine, Brian McGuire, was over here at the time, and I just formed up a partnership with him, and we started buying and selling motor caravans to unsuspecting Aussies that come over to tour the continent.

You also went into the boarding house business briefly. Yes, well I had to work out some way of surviving but also have time. To myself to go testing if somebody phoned me up and said we'd like to come down to Silverstone or Sneddon or wherever and test the car. It was obviously pointless getting too involved in an occupation where I had to keep going to the boss and saying hey can I have the day off to go That job for very long. So my wife and I started up a boarding house once again for visiting a... And New Zealanders, which meant that after the old breakfasts were done and everything, the day was my own and I could concentrate on trying to get a better life. You weren't giving them very great comfort, you were giving them just the basic accommodation. Right, but I wasn't charging a fortune either, so it was alright. Your third record? My third record is by Gordon Lightfoot. He's somebody that I've liked for a long time. He's got a very nice smooth style and I find him very relaxing to listen to and the lyrics are always fairly good in his songs and I've chosen 'Summer Side of Life'. ♪ He can bear ♪

Gordon Lightfoot, Summer Side of Life. So you were getting on quite well in London in the Australian colony, but what you needed was a racing car. Well that's right, I mean that was after all the purpose of my visit and we worked to this end. And when we got a little bit of capital together we then went out and committed it.

The first racing car. Which was? It was a Formula Ford Merlin which we we punted around to get to know all the circuits and so forth and then from there we as all people tried to graduate up through the ranks Formula 3, Formula Atlantic and so on. Are you a good mechanic yourself can you strip a car down and sort it all out and put it together again? Well I can strip it down no problems but whether I could get it back together again for you or not I don't know. I'm not mechanically minded I don't really want to get too heavy on that side of it because I think that modern racing has got to a stage now where it's really horses for courses you know you have an expert mechanic for doing the mechanics you have an expert For putting the logistics together. You have an expert designer for designing the right geometrics of what the car needs and so forth and then you need a good driver to pedal the thing around so I just stick to the driving. Now you talked about Formula 3 this seems a good moment for you to explain to us the difference between

two and one. Well there's all sorts of formulas, in my opinion too many, but basically the three The three proper formulas that I consider. Formula 3, Formula 2 and Formula 1. Formula 3 is, I would say, the start of the point of true international racing for any aspiring Grand Prix driver. It gives him an opportunity to travel throughout the continent racing on strange circuits and racing against foreign drivers. Formula 2 is very similar except that you own a more powerful car and obviously it's more expensive. Formula One is the the top echelon of motorsport. That's the that counts towards the world championship and that's for 3-litre normally aspirated cars or 1500 cc turbocharged cars So what was the first car that you took abroad Brazil was your first ever?

- Yes, that was a Formula 3 car. I went and did the Temporada series in Brazil. - How did you make it? - Not very well. There's a funny story attached to it. I bought a super-duper engine off this friend of mine, which was going to bring me into the car. Success and I took along this other old engine that I originally owned, literally just as a backup in case I blew the super duper engine up just as a start line special and as it turned out this super engine was hopeless and it finally... Lunched itself on the second last race meeting that we did there and out of desperation we put the old engine in which was pulling about 300 There's more than the so-called super one and I got second fastest lap of the race and finished third overall in the last race. So I wish I could have done that. Would have had the old engine in to start with. Your father had come over to join you in London. Yeah, he unfortunately had had some heart attacks and strokes and what have you and had to rest, had to relinquish all of his business interests. He was a very sick man.

So he decided to come over here to England and, you know, be with me and watch how I was getting on. You'll set up a... Australian racing team AIRO. Yeah well that was another big mistake because it was so flash and we done it so well that everyone thought we had fantastic sponsorship from the Australian government. Where in actual fact we were looking for sponsorship and we thought by making a fabulous looking setup people would want to sponsor us. That had the reverse effect. So the alternative? is to be a works driver. Well, absolutely. That's what everybody aims for, because apart from obviously not having to spend your own money, you get the best equipment. And you are racing the works car. And the reason that the works employ you is so you'll beat all the other cars.

Aspiring young man who's looking for a chassis will say, Well, gee, I'm going to go and buy that because that's winning all the races. So they make sure that that car is really good. And if you're lucky enough to be driving it, you're obviously in with good chances. And they make sure that you're looked after too. Oh, yes. Yeah. Record number four we've got to. I like trad jazz and... I picture sort of old black people sitting under verandas in the deep south, you know, with their... Instruments and for the next one I've chosen Highway 61 by a gentleman called Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Mississippi Fred McDowell and Highway 61. Now Alan you worked your way through the Formula 3 stage. You lost the Formula 3 championship by a very small margin. Yes by one point. They had this ridiculous scheme whereby for reasons best known to themselves they put double points on the last race and I led the championship right through the finish line. Throughout the year right up to the very last race and right towards the end of the practice I blew my engine up and we just, well we had to change engines. Engine that they fitted in my chassis for the race itself wasn't firing properly, it wasn't running properly. And so we went to the line in a very sort of down state and I had to finish seventh or better.

To win the championship. And anyway, to cut a long story short, I finished eighth. I started on the front row of the grid and slowly went backwards with this engine, finished eighth and got beaten by one point for the European Championship. That was really bad luck. Anyway, next season on to Formula 2 and you broke ten lap records Which year did you graduate the Formula One? I had my first Formula One race in 1975. You drove for Lord Hesketh. Yes, well, I drove a car which was sponsored by Harry Stiller, a Bournemouth business person, and... He struck up a deal with Lord Alexander Hesketh and they prepared the car for me and transported it to the races. And I raced it alongside James. - Where was your first Grand Prix? - Barcelona in Spain. 1975. Now you were on the Hesketh team and then two more teams, which you weren't terribly happy on any of them.

No, that's correct. Uh, Rolf Stomlin unfortunately had a very nasty accident at Barcelona and uh, at around about that time Harry Stiller had decided he would go and live in California for reasons and he virtually packed up the team and as I say went to America. So Graham he'll phone me and asked me if I'd like to deputize for Rolf Stonman whilst he was in hospital Until such times as he got better and of course I said yes Graham was a fantastic character and somebody I admire tremendously for his achievements but he was a very difficult man to drive for. Anyway Rolf got better and came back and took the car over and I finished off that year doing Formula 5000 and a V6 Ford engine march which I had some pretty good success. And then it was towards the end of '75 that I obviously started looking around for a more permanent Formula One seat in '76. physics.

And I finally did a contract with John Surtees. I've been reading your book, Driving Ambition, and the... Serious injury every two accidents. Now travelling at 200 miles an hour a crash must be a matter of microseconds. Have you time to register anything? No, I mean at the point that you think that you've lost control or you're about to you obviously try and fight it the whole way, but I would say on the majority of Accidents you're in the lap of the gods and it happens very quickly. It's all I've been done with in split seconds Well, you look very well Take care. You had a year with Shadow picking up the story again.

And then you joined Frank Williams. Tell me about him. Well, Frank was somebody that I knew and said good morning to and so forth. And towards the end of 1977, he asked me whether I'd be interested in coming up and having a look at his factory to the view of talking to him, driving for him in 1978. And like all good racing drivers, I said, yeah. Because you say yes to everybody and then you just pick the team you want to go with. And I told Frank that I was talking to Ferrari and he said well if you can... And I thought that was it. I thought, you know, I've got a Ferrari driving, it's all signed, sealed and delivered. But Ferrari being what they are, of course, that meant nothing. And they decided for commercial reasons to go with a North American driver. To bump up their sales of Fiat and Ferrari and Lancia vehicles in North America.

So I went back to Frank, who had this point in time, still not decided on a driver, and I went up to the factory and had a look at his new factory, and I spoke with Patrick Head, the designer, for a couple of hours, and it was Tolkien with Patrick that convinced me that this would for sure be the way to go. He had a super little package. It was very neat and tidy, well organised, the factory was immaculate and I could see the potential in the sponsors, so I decided this was way to go. Record number five. Right, well record number five is a country and western... Record and I went and saw this man at the Los Angeles arena and watched him live and I was very taken by him and I was fortunate enough to go backstage and meet him and I was very impressed. I've got most of his records.

It's Waylon Jennings and the name of the record is 'Nash for Women'. powder the paint and find it's cold Don Jennings, Nashville Women. Running a Formula One team must be a fantastically expensive pastime.

Any Grand Prix races are there in the year '16, isn't it? Yes. And how many people have to be sent off? Well, I mean, the logistics of running a fully competitive Grand Prix team are fantastic, and it's something that I wouldn't like to undertake, to be perfectly honest. I mean, we, when I say we, Frank Williams employs approximately 80 people, of which 20 go to each and every Grand Prix. Yes. And the logistics of getting each and every one of them on an aeroplane and into hotel rooms. With expenses and so forth is a major exercise. And you have to fly the cars usually? Well yes, for the South American races, or all of the intercontinental races, we have to fly the cars and all the spares to all of the meetings. Set up a workshop wherever you go. That's right, we have to virtually move in like a circus and get everything all set up. And of course for the European races we have a great big pantry.

Truck pulled by the new 245 Road Ranger Leyland and that's huge that's a 38-40 foot vehicle with lathes and all sorts of things in it and that attends all European Grand Prix races. How much time do you get on a course before a race? Is there any limit on that? Well, there's no limit if you wish to hire the circ and go there privately in advance. There is surely a testing time when everything's laid on for the general use of competitors. Oh, well, official practice, yes. And that's the time where you make any last-minute alterations to the car and qualify for your grid position for the Grand Prix. And of course, experience does count tremendously, I should think, how you're driving on a course. Get better as through the years you'll get to know it. Oh for sure, I mean, most of the circuits that I'm going to...

I'm going back for the sixth and seventh time and you know them intimately because you've done literally thousands of miles on them. So right from the word go you can just get down to it. Whereas if you're going to that circuit for the very first time you might waste a lot of time getting to know those idiosyncrasies. Is the one course you hate? Yes Dijon, I don't particularly like that because I don't... Particularly like the people that organise it that much. And there is one course that is laid out counter-clockwise that worries you. You think you operate clockwise. Well, most of the... all the circuits we go to run clockwise and there's a circuit in Brazil called Interlagas which is anti-clockwise and I'm sure all...

Muscles in my neck have built up on one side and once I start racing the car anti-clockwise the muscles on the right-hand side of my neck wonder what struck them. Another disc before we talk about your triumphs last year. Okay well this is a very popular band and they themselves vary their music a lot which suits me but there's one particular track which I've always liked. I particularly like Stevie Nicks. I like the way she sings, I like her voice and I've... Picked out Rhiannon from the Fleetwood Mac album.

By Fleetwood Mac and the singer Stevie Nicks. Right 1980, that splendid vintage year. What's the method of scoring? The championship? You received nine points for first, six for second, four for third, three for fourth, two for fifth, and one for sixth place. And where did you start? January 1980? Argentine. And then? From Argentine we did the Brazilian Grand Prix, and then South Africa, and then Long Beach, California, and then after that it was the start of the European season. Right. And how did you do in those first meetings? I won Argentine, I got third in Brazil, which Frank calls the 'Mobile Gas

me run because he said that I finished with more fuel in my tank than he's ever seen. Well done. He finished with Grand Prix. No, because I wasn't trying hard enough. He said that I didn't have my foot on the accelerator long enough, therefore I finished with more fuel. He never lets me forget that. South Africa I didn't finish. I had gearbox problems. And then Long Beach I had a shunt with Bruno Giacomelli whilst lapping him while running. Second, a shunt means a crash. Yes, an accident. And then you won, what, three in a row? Yes, I won the Spanish, the French and the British. And then Italy, you were second but had another... Points. No, Italy I was second but unfortunately Nelson Piquet won and that put him one point in front of me going into the second last race of the season. So we went to Montreal virtually neck and neck and it was a... ...vacuous situation because I did Zandvoort and Italy in a very nervous, upstate frame of mind, and yet when there was...

More pending on one race, I went to Montreal in a far more relaxed state of mind, for reasons I don't know, but I'm sure it helped me. That was the major contributing factor to my success, because I was far more relaxed. And that was it. Yes, we were fortunate to win Montreal. I was fortunate in as far as that Nelson blew his engine up Montreal and I won the race and then clinched the championship and that just left one more Grand Prix to go down at Watkins Glen Which is upstate New York Are you a super session? Yes I am. I try not to be but I am. I always try and wear the same pair of underpants for instance which I call my lucky day. Underpants. They must be getting threadbare by now. What colour are they? Well they're red, but what I do is when they get a bit used I usually rip a little piece off. And then stitch that to the next new one. So I'm the only driver around with quilted underpants. So that's what your fan said.

You're a pair of red underpants. - I haven't received any in the mail as yet, but you never know.

1981 you've had some rather bad luck. Yes, well I suppose you could call it bad luck. I don't like the word luck because I think you make your own luck, but having said that I've had bad luck. I've by rights I should have won Zold, I should have won Monaco and I should have won the Spanish Grand Prix. I was leading them all and through maybe no fault of my own didn't win two and through a major fault of my own which I have to take full blame for, I lost the Spanish Grand Prix Dijo was an extraordinary meeting when the weather made you run it in two parts. Yes, well if you complete I think it's less than 60% of the distance they can make you restart, but if you complete more than that they can say that the race has been run and finished and we were literally only one or two laps away from having done that. Yes. So we had to get it back in our cars and get ready again to do 23 laps. So you've still got time to pull it off this year as well. Well I hope that I

Can, well you know, all I can do is try. You're not superstitious but I hope you keep your fingers crossed and we're behind you. Record number seven. Record number seven is a English band, relatively new. It's a band that I liked immediately. As soon as I heard them I liked them. They've got a very unusual style and I've picked out one song from them called 'Sultans of Swing' and it's Dire Straits. ♪ Come to show me your love ♪ diastrates and salt.

Of swing. Now Australians all seem to have many advantages as castaways over the rest of us. I mean you're used to beach life and ever been in the outback? Yes, we used to go out into the outback camping and shooting in my younger days, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And you could rig up a shelter on a desert island? Well, I think so. If the right trees and stuff were there, I'm sure I could rig up something. Of course, you're a farmer apart from everything else. Yes, that's my true love at the moment. How big's your farm? It's just under 2,000 acres. Which to us, of course, seems a vast farm, but Australia today under is quite small, I suppose. It's big for the area that it's in because it's only about 61 miles northeast of Melbourne. But of course, million-acre properties are fairly common in Australia. In fact, there's quite a lot of properties that you buy by the...

Square mile, you don't buy and buy the acre. You either own a 15,000 or 25,000 square kilometre farm. Stock or arable or both? A little bit of both but the the arable part is strictly for our own consumption we don't grow anything to sell out we only just grow it to feed our own stock. So that's fine you could cultivate you could grow food on the island. What about small craft? Done any sailing? Yes I've had a bit of with boats, all of which have cost me money. What about navigation? Would you know which way you were going? Yes, I think I could work that one out. Good, well your ideal castaway Let's have your last record. Well, I've been keeping the best for the last. It's an Australian... Called the Little River Band and the particular track that I've chosen from it is called Reminiscing and it was written by a guy called Graeme Gav Who happens to own the farm next door to mine, so I've got to play this. To remind you of home. Right.

The little river bend reminiscing. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played. Well, I think I'll stick with the Little River Band. Right. And one luxury to take to the island with you, nothing of any practical use. I would probably say a chill 20,000 gallon tank of Australian lager. Right, you'll probably have to bury it to keep the temperature right. But that'll be something to do to dig a hole that size.

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare? Well, I'd have to ask you to do me a favor here and perhaps and I know you do this Maybe bind a couple of works maybe two or three together. Yes with novels we do that. Okay well, if you do that, I'd like to take say three works by Wilbur Smith and I'd have to include probably Eagle in the Sky as one of those because I think it's the best one he wrote I think it was his first one All right, Eagle in the Sky by Wilbur Smith and a couple of others of his which will Stick in is a luxury. And thank you Alan Jones for letting us hear your desert island disc. Thanks for having me. Goodbye everyone. We've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please... Visit BBC.co.uk/radio4