Niall Mackenzie: The Autobiography. Stuart Barker

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.

      When I wasn’t working, I started to discover the pleasures of girls and alcohol and I liked what I found. I knew from playing Postman’s Knock at Sunday school at a very early age that I was definitely heterosexual! We used to organise snogging sessions in primary seven when I was ten. I’d cover myself in Old Spice aftershave and get stuck in and it was really exciting even though we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.

      I suppose my first proper girlfriend was Lorraine Binnie who came from a very good family of Baptists. I wasn’t exactly religious, reliable or mature so I’m sure the Binnies were pleased to see the back of me when Lorraine and I drifted apart.

      But by the time I was seventeen I’d popped my cherry and never looked back! I dated some nice girls over the years but never wanted a steady girlfriend because I was too busy with bikes and fooling around with my mates.

      At seventeen, I also started going to pubs with my pals. I looked so young that I couldn’t get served before that, so up until then we’d had to content ourselves by buying bottles of Pomagne or Buckfast from the off-licence and drinking them in the park. Pure class.

      When I did go out drinking, it would be at The Pines in Denny or at various Young Farmers discos which were a big thing in rural Scotland at the time (and probably still are). I was already familiar with The Pines pub because of the chip shop of the same name next door. We all used to hang about at The Pines chip shop every night as kids then we graduated to the pub next door when we were old enough. We were there every night with push-bikes, motorbikes, cars or whatever we had. Everyone on bikes would try to show off doing wheelies and stunts and I was no exception. I had one go wrong once and ended up riding right in through the chip shop doors, landing on my backside in a heap, back wheel still spinning, saying ‘Two steak pies and a fish supper please.’

      It was a great atmosphere at The Pines. Everyone got on well together and the cops pretty much left us alone because we weren’t doing any damage, chip shop doors notwithstanding. I was always good at socialising with different groups from the rough kids right through to the really academic types. I just seemed to blend in well with anyone.

      By this time, my friends Alistair and Stewart Rae (Jimmy’s boys) had started racing and I went with them to several meetings in Scotland and in the north of England. I still had no intention of going racing myself, I was chuffed just to be helping the lads. They had a Fiat van, which was always breaking down, and we went all over the place in it having a great time wherever we’d go.

      There would be the Rae brothers, me and my best mate Wullie McKay, with whom I worked, and we always got drunk on Saturday nights and ended up fighting each other in the back of the van. We were all in sleeping bags battling for space to stretch out and once someone started kicking, all hell broke loose. It actually got pretty rough and there were some nasty cuts and bruises dished out but it was such a laugh that we didn’t care.

      I figured those boys were going to be world champions when they started finishing in the top six in club races. I believed they would go all the way.

      But even attending race meetings and helping out where I could wasn’t enough to inspire me to go racing myself. It was something entirely different which provided that inspiration. It was called an RD350LC and it was Yamaha’s hot new street bike.

      When the RD350LC was first launched in 1980, it was the bike for teenage boy racers and it still has a cult following to this day. With a top speed of 110mph, it was derived straight from the racetrack and I just knew I had to have one. Although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the bike which launched my road-racing career and helped keep the wolves from the door for the next twenty years.

      But before that happened, I still had to learn my trade on the streets of Denny with the newly acquired RD that, incidentally, cost me the princely sum of £1130. My mates and I had a circuit that ran round Denny and the official start line was at The Pines pub. On a flying lap, we’d ride past there at over 100mph and I did my first through-the-box wheelie on that circuit too, which was one of my best moments in biking. I’ll never forget the feeling of changing right up into third gear on the back wheel. I was ‘the daddy’ that night and I remember stepping off the bike and passing all the girls going into the chippie trying to act all cool about it. But inside I was bursting with pride and I knew (or thought) that I was the man in Denny that night.

      I suppose my propensity for speed was beginning to blossom on the little Yam although I didn’t realise it at the time. I used to pass people on the brakes before the junction at the bottom of the road and didn’t really know why I was faster than they were – I thought they were just braking early for some reason. But I was always nervous of traffic on the roads and never really felt that comfortable. I fell off the LC a few times on filthy, greasy roads but it was always at low speeds and I only ever skinned my knees. Falling off back then never did my confidence as a road rider any good – it just reminded me that too many things could go wrong on public roads. And if you don’t want to ride your motorcycle on public roads, there’s only one place left to go – the racetrack.

      After all, Knockhill was only a few miles away and it would soon be hosting rounds of the allnew 500cc Scottish Production Championship. By lucky coincidence, most of the entrants would be on Yamaha’s new RD350LC, the bike that I had been racing round the streets. Surely a track would be safer?

       CHAPTER TWO Tractor Racing

      When I bought my Yamaha RD350LC at the end of 1980 I didn’t actually have a driving licence. I’d lost it due to a series of stupid incidents which meant I accumulated enough points to have it taken off me, although I got it back soon afterwards.

      On one occasion, when I just had my provisional licence, I got caught driving a car with someone beside me who didn’t have a full licence either and we got nicked. I thought the chances of getting done again the same night for the same offence were zero so we drove on to Falkirk unperturbed but against all the odds, I got caught again!

      But the clincher came when I was still working at my friend’s farm; I was driving a tractor down a country road when I came across an old farmer in another tractor and thought I could overtake him, even though we were both maxed out at around 24mph. With everything in my Massey Ferguson 35 cab rattling and shaking, I squeezed every last mph out of the thing but, although I got alongside him, I had no power left to get past and there was a corner approaching fast. A car appeared and was heading straight for me but somehow the driver managed to stop and the old farmer grudgingly backed off and let me pull in in front of him. That was when another car came round the corner, skidded, and slammed into the first car.

      I should have stopped but instead I kept my head down and pretended I didn’t see anything even though the whole thing was visible in my mirrors. Anyway, I got my just rewards because the old farmer recognised me and reported me to the police so they caught up with me and added my driving licence to their collection.

      As soon as I got my licence back, I started riding the RD everywhere. Then late in the winter of 1980 the SACU (Scottish Auto Cycle Union) announced that they would be running a 500cc production championship the next year – and my bike fitted that category perfectly. My mates who raced said I should have a go so I did a few practice sessions at Knockhill pre-season.