9 May 2008 | LC

Less than a week into May - my busiest month of the year - and things are
really hotting up in Scoop's world.

I was at Oulton Park last weekend for the dramatic weekend of British
Superbikes and I'm typing this just before I leave to trek down the 260
miles, 5 hour trip to Brands Hatch for the rescheduled event which was
snowed off in early April.

It's hard to believe that six inches of snow fell then and here we are, five
weeks later, with weathermen predicting scorching temperatures in the
eighties!

From Brands, I literally throw one bag through the door and pick up another
as I jet straight out to the North West 200, where once again I'm working
for the BBC doing commentary for both the radio and the interactive services
as well as the internet. Then it's home for a couple of days before shipping
off to Donington for the BSB meeting and the month is rounded out with us
covering the Severn Valley National Rally as well as the British Touring
Cars at Croft that same weekend. Oh and there's the important matter of
editing a certain magazine that one or two of you are familiar with!

The rescheduling of Brands has caused me a few little problems as I have had
to have a total revamp in the dairy, and at rather a lot of expense. This
weekend coincides with one of the most popular rounds of the ANCRO Rally
Championship, which our office organises the press and media requirements,
so provisionally I'd planned to fly out to the Isle of Man today to
undertake that job at the Manx National Rally this weekend so being
committed to BSB, that was the first thing to go. Also, I'd planned on
flying straight out to Monza on the Saturday night also as two of our
customers, Paul Bird's team and Tom Bridewell were scheduled to be in
action, and I wanted to catch up with a few people in the WSB paddock also
given the two rounds in the UK are late this year.

So two cancelled, non-refundable return flight for starters! Then I had to
ask my nominated deputy, the lovely Amanda, to reschedule her diary so she
could go to the Manx which she kindly agreed to do, but obviously, she's to
pay and also, I've had to organise someone to be at Monza for me so if ever
there was a weekend of false economies, this was it but it can't be helped!

My Thruxton drenching still seems to be the main topic of conversation and
amusement in certain quarters. The amount of times that someone said to me
at Oulton 'you won't be that dry for long' or 'have you dried out yet', it
really did get to sound like a stuck record. It's as if they think they are
the first person to come out with that witticism!

My rally car is about ready to go again now that it's been totally rebuilt
after my shunt in it back in February. I'm converting it into a race car
also and it's looking the business in gleaming white! I can't say a big
enough thank you to the guys who have rebuilt it - Mark and Ian at MSR
Motorsport - and also to Richard of RWS Bodyworks for preparing and spraying
it.

The only problem is that with all this work, I have no time to play in it
but I'm hoping to be out in action soon. I plan on making my car racing
debut at Silverstone on the evening of Thursday 19th June and depending on
whether I'm working at the British MotoGP, there's the prestigious Rally of
the Midlands that I'd really like to do which includes stages around Mallory
Park that same weekend.

28 April 2008 | LC

Anyone who was watching the British Eurosport coverage of the Thruxton BSB round will have seen something hilarious after the first race on the podium.

It involved Shakey Byrne, Michael Rutter and Cal Crutchlow drowning me in champagne which has become something of a very old and stale joke nowadays, especially now that it’s being going on for six or seven years. Three magnums of freezing cold, eye-stinging, sticky, insect-attracting cheap plonk not only sprayed at me - that I don’t have any problems with - but rammed down my neck, forced down the back of my trousers and tipped over my expensive (and self funded) electrical equipment that is needed for me to do my job.

As a result, I needed a complete change of clothing - yes everything which was good fun in the car park - and all the equipment needed drying out and fixing in time to conduct the next race podium, also live on television meaning military precision choreography and timing, so chance of a shower even if there was one near by.

No, wet, damp, sticky and smelling of stale alcohol I cracked on for the remainder of the afternoon (bearing in mind this was only the second race of the day), wrapped up on the PA around 6pm, started work in the press office, much to the delusion of my colleagues in there who found the aroma disconcerting, but who were most amused at my misfortune at the time.

And then a nice, leisurely five hour drive home before I could get rid of the horrible stuff with a shower in the early hours of the morning, 1.35am to be precise, some twelve hours after being drenched…

My car keys in my pocket were soaked, so too my wallet containing cash, business cards, receipts and credit cards, my mobile phone hasn’t worked properly since, not to mention my ‘cans’ and pocket radio. The sound engineer at Thruxton worked wonders in repairing the radio mic as that is one of the most important tools we possess and if that goes down, we are totally snookered. Team clothing was rendered useless, especially as you can’t wash half the bloody stuff, so all in all, petty inconvenient.

Now I’ve been accused of being a whinging moaner about this, as let’s face it, the job I do in BSB is pretty desirable for the most part, and I get well paid for it so surely a bit of malarkey is part of the job? Well anyone who knows me, knows I’m always up for a laugh, especially with my mates, many of whom just happen to be some of the top riders in the world and of course, if it happened occasionally, then fine, but week in, week out, to be constantly running away to try to preserve my comfort and equipment (as many riders see me as ‘fair game’), there comes a point that it gets a little bit tiring.

When I bought Michael Rutter a donkey and named it after him, I expected a battering, so too when I ‘signed up’ Shakey to the fictional ‘British Bus GP’. I told the crowd that Cal was short for Malcolm (as in Crutchlow) and find great pleasure in playing jokes on people so true, I can expect some come-uppance every now and then. But having to run for cover in every race is out of order boys…

9 April 2008 | LC

Hi and welcome to this brand new and exclusive column especially for www.motorcycleracer.com in which I’ll be keeping everyone up to date with the happenings in the wild and occasionally exciting world of boring old ‘Scoop’

So far, this year hasn’t been to kind to us. First of all, my second love after motorcycle racing is rallying so I decided to buy a little Peugeot 206 rally car to have a bit of fun in over the winter months. It wasn’t expensive and I’d used it many times in the past when I’ve hired it so when it came along at the right price, I took the plunge. I spent a bit of money on it and had a couple of good results over the Christmas period in it.

Then on my first forest event, I crashed it, as you may have seen with the picture in issue 106 of the magazine. I didn’t do a lot wrong; I just got crossed up on a corner and ended up trying to accelerate out of trouble, but ended up parking it against a tree. Me and my co-driver Rich were OK, which is more than could be said for the car. It’s a total write-off and we are currently on with rebuilding it which so far has included having to buy a new shell and a donor car to rob bits off. Nightmare!

I was so disgusted with myself, I booked myself on an ARDS driving course at my local Croft Circuit and after a day of instruction and tuition, I passed the test and I’m now the proud holder of a car racing licence also so I may stick to that in future where there are no trees to jump out!

We then went to Daytona for our usual sortie to watch a bit of racing, meet up with old friends and have a couple of days in the Florida sunshine before another busy season kicked off. Except this year, it was bloody freezing. The wind was horrendous all week long and we were sat huddled in the grandstand shivering. We had to go and sit in the car with the heater on! It also rained for five days out of the seven we were out there and we got soaked just going out for a meal. Now we’ve been to America a dozen times but the highlight out of all those trips had to be seeing the Space Shuttle launch. We watched it from our hotel window some sixty miles away and all it was, was a big orange firework that was all over within ten seconds! But I’m still glad we stayed up into the middle of the night to witness it.

Then we’ve had the horrendous winter weather to contend with at both the Snetterton test and Brands BSB. We travelled to Snetterton just for the one day, to meet a have a chat with a few of the people we are doing work for this year, only to get there and find some had gone home! Oh well, at least it gave us something to do on Easter Sunday and the nine hour, 500 mile round trip was uneventful, despite the snow.

Brands Hatch was everyone’s worst nightmare, and we were so unlucky with the weather. Not only was it the first meeting of the season, whereby both Sue and I are as busy as we have ever been on race weekends, but we had four other major jobs on that weekend also which meant we had staff scattered about the globe, from Spain to Scotland! Brands is a long way for us in any case, and we weren’t really relishing the prospect of cramming all that work into two days and despite the fact we were home by 6pm on the Sunday evening, it was gone midnight when we got the last of the press releases.

Saturday evening saw us do the first of our ‘Fred & Scoop’ chat shows at Brands and we had a great night with all the riders turning up, including our own ‘Dangerous Bruce’ out but it was another late finish and I turned into bed after updating my grids etc at 11.45pm. And after being up at 6am both days, you’ll see that being in this game really does involve 18 hour days!