Lunch with Paddy Hopkirk (MotorSport magazine 2009)

[mab01uk]

The PM, Brucie, The Beatles… They all wanted to know this Belfast boy after his Mini win in Monte Carlo. But that was just one of his many successes.
In 1964 the Monte Carlo Rally, then the best-known event of its type in the world, was won by that symbol of irreverent 1960s British fashion, the Mini. At a time when ordinary people, as well as most of London’s bright young things, were driving Minis, this cheeky little car had vanquished the German Mercedes 300SEs, the American Ford Falcon V8s, the Italian Lancias, the Swedish Saabs and Volvos. The cheerful Irishman at the helm was already well-known in the rallying world: but now, for a while, he became a household name, up there with Julie Christie, Adam Faith and Jean Shrimpton.
Paddy Hopkirk looks back on it today with an amused incredulity. “I got a telegram from the Prime Minister [Sir Alec Douglas-Home] and another from The Beatles, and I was given the keys to the city of Belfast. The car was flown straight from Monte Carlo back to England, because Bruce Forsyth said he had to have me and the Mini on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. That was the biggest TV programme in the land then: it used to get 28 million viewers. They wrote a comedy routine about me and I drove the car onto the stage. The same week, hurrying to a BBC News interview, I made an illegal right turn. A policeman stopped me and said, ‘Who d’you think you are, Paddy Hopkirk?’”
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... dy-hopkirk

[LMM76C]

It's sad in a way that the over hyped Monte Carlo Rally features so prominently in Mini and Hopkirk history. Paddy had so many better winning drives on scratch to his credit and the 64 Monte was "Bosse" Ljungfeldt's until the all too familiar Monte handicap was applied.
I recently was reading something the late Colin McRae wrote about the Monte in later years, when the handicaps were long gone. It wasn't very complimentary....

[mk1]

That is an excellent article. Thanks for the heads up.