BBC Top Gear's 'original Stig', Perry McCarthy joined us at NMP Live for an exclusive chat on all things motor racing, becoming The Stig and his drive for success.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Perry McCarthy
Did you always plan a career in motor racing?
I wish I had started off racing cars when I was a kid, but I didn’t even follow motor racing until I actually got to college, and I studied Law, Economics and Art at college.
A pal of mine was passionate about Formula 1 and then I just started looking at these mega magazines. Beautiful shaped cars, I started drawing them, and then I started reading about the drivers and I thought that these guys are really cool.
At the same time, I was maybe a little bit too quick on the road, honing my future skills as it were, but it all collided together. Stories about my road driving got around to Brands Hatch and the chief instructor of Brands Hatch actually came out to get me and took me around the circuit. I took him around and that was it; the on switch was down and I said I was going to be a Formula 1 driver. So, very late starting.
How did you become involved with Top Gear?
My entire career has been massively up and down, predominantly because of finance. Trying to find it, trying to keep steam-rollering ahead in a game where really, I shouldn’t have stood a chance.
So, it was against the odds. But I probably created my own problems by not accepting no for an answer. Everybody used to crack up about the situation and the stunts and the lengths I would go to, to try and find sponsorship, to try and stay in motor racing, and the incredible trouble I got myself in to.
Everybody kept saying look, you have got to write a book about this, which I did; my autobiography, and I called it Flat Out, Flat Broke. It was actually at my book launch, I have a lot of friends from Formula One and people from TV there all supporting me, Jeremy was there, Jeremy Clarkson.
It was there that Jeremy said “hey, Top Gear has been off the air for quite a while now, and we are going to bring it back, and we’ve got a little idea for you which you might like”. Hence, Stig. Well, to begin with they actually wanted to call me the Gimp, but I said no, you’re not doing that. So, we settled on The Stig and I thought that’s okay.
Did you have any creative input with The Stig?
Well, they said to me The Stig was going to be secretive, but I kind of thought that I can have loads of fun with this, because the thing is that as a racing driver sometimes you get very, very focussed. You don’t really want to be speaking to people so you can be a bit huffy. But you really shouldn’t be with your team members, or spectators, so sometimes you are putting up with things, but of course The Stig doesn’t have to put up with anything.
So, I thought this is great, I can just go [folds arms] like that, black visor, can’t see me, can’t see my mood, and if anybody keeps talking The Stig just [turns away]. The Stig only understands driving. He only understands cars. People, life, events, stories, feelings, personalities - nothing, he understands nothing.
The Stig is focused on driving.
So, yeah, I brought in the kind of like focused, dismissive, and nothing is good enough, I only understand driving. So, I did have some fun with that.
How hard was it to keep your Stig identity secret?
One of the big things about The Stig was to try and keep it secret. So, rumours are bounded and word would have spread like wildfire if I’d started letting on.
The only thing was that the first screening, the first Sunday night it was shown, I’m standing there with my arms folded, I’ve got bandy legs, I’m driving with the back of a car out. I wake up the following morning and there is a text message from Mike Brewer from Wheeler Dealers, and it just said “morning Stiggie”, ha-ha. I thought, “this is going to stay secret, isn’t it?”
But people started working out it was me, and then my little rat pack, you know the drivers that I am really close to, we came through to Formula 1 with, they kind of knew it was me. Especially one of them because I had to ask him to stand in for me on one particular episode where I couldn’t make it.
But, generally everybody, even if they did rumble it was me, kept a lid on it. So, the only thing was when it did all come out, a national newspaper, I think somebody got fired in the production office and they went and sold the story to a national newspaper, because I didn’t let it out the bag. So, it all came out in this newspaper and then the children, I’ve got three daughters, they were really pleased about that because from that moment on they started getting called the Stiglets.
Prior to Top Gear, how did you become a racing driver?
When I set my sights on becoming a racing driver it wasn’t about being a racing driver. It was about being a Formula 1 racing driver. That’s what I had seen on TV, that is what I wanted to be. So, the switch was down and it was going to be whatever it took; whatever it takes, relentlessly pushing to try and get there.
So, the Junior Formula was Formula Ford, the one you should compete in and make a name for yourself. So that first year, the three pole positions, great! But then I was knocking on doors everywhere to try and get sponsorship to stay in Formula Ford, and I did that and the following year I won the British Championship.
So, that was great, so now you’re kind of thinking you are on the way, but every time you think you are on the way and you need to jump up a next formula on the rung, on the international ladder of success to Formula 1, it’s heaps and heaps and heaps more money.
So I had to stay in Formula Ford for the following year, which I didn’t want to do, and I found a way out of there. I had a massive accident in the second race, which threw me skywards cartwheeling, came down and the car blew up. I told you I was a show off! That put me out for a year.
I came back in to Formula 3 having finally, thankfully, found a massive sponsor to bring me in to Formula 3. I was instantly at the front in Formula 3 waving the flag, this is what you are doing, you have got to wave the flag all of the time, look at me, look at me, look at me.
I do maintain, and I know I am going slightly off track here, but I maintain that most people have got two careers. There is the career that hopefully you are good at, where you try and get better, and finite everything about your approach, your delivery, and your success. But, the other career is to make sure that enough people are actually seeing what you are doing, to connect with those people and just say Look! I’m over here doing this, please take notice.
So, I was running the two in parallel all the time, working hard to reach the next stage, and the next stage, because it was all about keeping finding the sponsors to get to International Formula 3000, which I did. That was the next stage. Then in America, and America went terribly well for me, and again all the journalists in England were using everything I was doing in Formula 3000, and everything I was doing in America, to really shout about it in the influential motor racing magazines. And that, finally, got me to the attention of the Andrea Moda Formula 1 team.
So ten years after actually starting racing, not including the two years on the rigs, I made it in to Formula 1. Very, very proud to have done that. Could have done with being with a better team, but I got there.
How did you make the leap to Formula 1?
It was reputation really, getting there. It was a really small and a really bad team and my reputation was plug Perry in it, he will bite through the steering wheel, hold on for dear life and won’t complain and will give it everything, just because it is a chance.
It was really about recognising, as my entire career had been, about recognising any sniff of an opportunity and trying to desperately prize that open in to being something that’s meaningful. That’s really how I approached the Formula 1 thing.
There would be a lot of people who would never have taken that drive, because even though we were slow we were actually dangerous as well. I like to package this up. It was heart-breaking because it had taken ten years to get there, but I had shown I could get in.
I think that has been a nice thing for me, and also a lot of other people, because it has been nice to have written about it. I am proud of my book. It certainly takes longer to read than my Formula 1 career showed, but people have taken away the desperate need, and also the passion to succeed in your chosen career.
I think that I got so much from motor racing because I entered into something that was always going to challenge me, on every single level, at all times. That was a gift in itself because it meant I stayed out of trouble.
Where did your drive to succeed come from?
I can’t stand the ‘no’ word, and if you can’t get back up after a defeat then you are out, aren’t you? It’s quite literally that. I didn’t set out to be a hero, and I’m certainly not now, but it was a question of you either get back up and find another way around solving this problem, or survive this disappointment, or survive this crash and get better, or don’t do it.
I couldn’t bear it. That just wasn’t in my vocabulary. I will guarantee you that I understand failure, I really do. I also understand success. What I do not understand is mediocrity. I’ll guarantee that none of my friends, or anybody in my life are mediocre. Many of them have failed, including me, and we all understand success.
But, it was that opportunity to just shoot for the stars, and knowing that the easiest thing in the world is to give up. The easiest thing in the world is to stand at a bar and say “yeah, I could have been a racing driver but it took money.” The easiest thing in the world is to be seventh on the grid, and not turn around and get back in to the car, and say no, I’m going even over the edge to try and find pole position.
I don’t know where it comes from, maybe it is a sign of madness.
What are the typical themes you address in a business speech?
I seemed to have been around the block in my pursuit of Formula 1 stardom. From raising money, overcoming hardship, living with hardship, and getting my own way when I have needed to on corralling people together to help me, support me or even inside a team on what you actually need to keep going faster.
It would appear to me that there are so many things in the marketplace, so many things that companies are doing, which are synonymous with what we are trying to achieve as individuals in motor racing or as racing teams.
The biggest thing for me is that I am very confident that I can always touch on something, and expand on the brief that I would need from a client. Because, what I really want to understand, and I have gone to great lengths sometimes when questioning the clients on a brief, which may have surprised them. Because they have got this “we have got this kind of team work thing” and I go “okay, but who is going to be there? And why have you chosen these people? And why do they need to be there? And what problems are you having? Is there a resistance problem?”
So I really like to get under it, the research that I said earlier on, that the more I can completely understand, the more I can really organise my own experiences and my own attitudes and opinions to turn around and say “hmm, okay, I really understand what is going through your mind now, or the company’s mind, or the raison d’etre for this conference seminar and what these people need, or what you would like them to leave with.”
So, for me, the briefing: specific, open up, good chat, have a laugh over the phone but to really get under this. Because, when I am standing on the stage, it’s that thing about being a racing driver again, I want to do a good job.
Is your after dinner speech only for petrol heads?
I like to think that when I am on stage, I am talking to everybody at such a level that they can enjoy the experiences, because most people drive, most people like cars. But very few people want to know exactly about the energy recovery system and the technicalities behind the braking system of a Formula 1 car. So, we don’t touch on that.
It is all the kind of stunts, the laughs. I’m afraid I do a few impersonations, can’t resist them, and I’ve got a bit of a sideways look at life. Again, it is handy to have had that look at life coming through this career.
So, I just rather hope that even though the subject is cars, driving, Top Gear, Formula 1, that everybody has a bit of a laugh about it.
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