What a Guy - James Hunt - LEGEND

What a Guy - James Hunt - LEGEND

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jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
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I knew most of this stuff, but it does make Great Reading:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1320323/Tu...

They broke the mold when he left use - WHAT A GUY.

Turbo charged by lust: How Formula One womaniser James Hunt's most outrageous act was to 'sell' his wife to Richard Burton for $1m

By Tom Rubython

Last updated at 11:31 PM on 13th October 2010
Comments (10) Add to My Stories James Hunt was not known for ­behaving ­appropriately. But never was he more outrageous than in the last two weeks of October 1976, when he was in Tokyo ­battling Niki Lauda for the title of ­Formula One world motor racing ­champion.

His preparations were unconventional, to say the least. He had spent the two weeks leading up to the race on a round-the-clock alcohol, ­cannabis and cocaine binge with his friend Barry Sheene, who was world motorcycle champion that year.

While Jackie Stewart famously abstained from sex a week before a motor race, Hunt would often have sex minutes before climbing into the ­cockpit.
Life in the fast lane: Hunt with glamour model Susan Shaw
He had a gigantic appetite for sex. Physically, he was unequalled even if, emotionally, he was, ­perhaps, an amateur.

In Japan, his playground of choice was the Tokyo Hilton, where every morning British ­Airways ­stewardesses were dropped off at ­reception for a 24-hour stopover.

Hunt unfailingly met them as they checked in and invited them to his suite for a party — they always said yes.


It wasn’t unusual for him and Sheene to have sex with all of the women, often together.

But, as Stirling Moss, who used to carouse with Hunt in Monte Carlo before he was married, said: ‘If you looked like James Hunt, what would you have done?’


British Formula One driver James Hunt shortly after marrying model Suzy Miller
No one watching Hunt that week in 1976 would have believed he was ­preparing for the race of his life.

At the circuit, he had been behaving bizarrely — at one point dropping his overalls and urinating in full view of the crowds in the grandstand. The ­spectators, many of whom had ­powerful binoculars trained on him, applauded once he had finished.
He waved back. Even on race day, his mind was on other things — and he didn’t care who knew it.

Nothing could have prepared Patrick Head, now co-owner of the Williams F1 team but then a young car designer, for the morning when he inadvertently walked into the wrong pit garage.

He found Hunt inside, with his racing overalls around his ankles, cavorting with a Japanese girl. Hunt laughed when he saw the interloper, who left, not quite believing what he had seen.

A few minutes later, Hunt left the garage and went around the side to carry out his pre-race ritual of vomiting — the result of extreme nerves ­combined with overindulgence.

Finally ready for action, Hunt went out to drive the race of his life . . . and won the 1976 world championship, beating his nearest rival by one point.

The televised action was seen by more than 30 million people around the world and his victory signalled a huge celebration.
It was 24 hours before he was due to return to Britain and, in the interim, Hunt drank himself silly.

At a British Embassy reception in his honour, Hunt was so drunk that the ambassador hesitated to let him in.

The return flight on Japan Airlines had been block-booked by F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s travel company and was the scene for a riotous 12-hour party that drained the plane of alcohol.

When Hunt arrived back at Heathrow airport, 2,000 fans were waiting to greet him. He staggered down the steps of the aircraft, drunk, into the arms of his mother Sue and his beautiful, long-­suffering girlfriend Jane Birbeck.

Famous friends: Hunt with his wife Suzy. The couple would later divorce and she would go on to marry actor Richard Burton (right)
[oic]http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/10/13/article-1320323-0B6AF335000005DC-450_472x439.jpg[/pic]
Drifting apart: Hunt expressed his regret at proposing to Miller soon after

She had been seeing Hunt for nearly a year, but had no idea he’d bedded 33 British Airways ­hostesses and countless young ­Japanese fans during his two-week stay in Tokyo.

But ‘bedded’ is probably the wrong word — there was rarely time to get them into bed, such were Hunt’s demands. He took his women ­whenever and wherever he could and slept with more than 5,000 in his lifetime. The world championship win capped an ­extraordinary year for Hunt, during which his personal life had gathered as many newspaper column inches as his race successes.

At the beginning of 1976, he had been married to the ex-model Suzy Miller. (But after Hunt’s antics they split up and — as I’ll explain — she went on to swap one hard-drinking, ­womanising husband for another in the form of actor Richard Burton.)

Hunt and Suzy had met in Spain in 1974. She was a striking woman — a ­willowy, small-breasted blonde — not classically beautiful, but her looks, presence and effect on people were similar to the late Princess Diana’s. She captivated everyone she met.
Barely 24, a year younger than Hunt, she had spent much of her childhood in southern Rhodesia with her ­expat parents, her twin sister, Vivienne, and brother, John.
Hunt and Miller fell into easy ­conversation and, a few extraordinary weeks later, he proposed.
Immediately after the proposal, he expressed regret to his friends, saying he was not sure what he was doing. He wanted Miller as his ­girlfriend, but was sexually attracted to other women.

Miller, however, was ­perfect for ­parading as his partner. She added a great deal of value to him — and he knew it. So he resolved to try to make the relationship work.

The engagement party was held at his brother Peter’s apartment in London and many of the guests were surprised James Hunt was getting married.

His ex-girlfriend, Taormina Rieck, had married in the intervening years since their break up and was also there. Hunt was still close to Rieck and had attended her ­wedding the year before.

Now, Hunt stood before her ­confessing that he didn’t want to marry Suzy.

He said: ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this.’ To which she retorted: ‘Well, why the hell are you, you silly clot?’

Playboy: Hunt had a reputation as a party animal off the track

He allegedly told her it had gone too far and he couldn’t get out of it. She remembers him appearing weak and confused, at odds with the confident Hunt everyone knew.

There was also the problem of being faithful.

Hunt loved having sex with his new fiancee, but it was over too quickly for his tastes. He was a sex addict before the term came into common usage and unfaithful to her almost from the start.

Yet, for a time, he enjoyed home life and was in love with her, or so he thought, and ­undeniably proud of ­having landed her. As his friend, the journalist Gerald ­Donaldson, astutely observed: ‘The emotional component of a ­relationship for James was still ­virgin territory.’

The prospect of marriage had been haunting Hunt but, seeing no way out, he turned to drinking.

For the full four days leading up to the ­wedding, held at the Brompton ­Oratory in Kensington and ­undoubtedly the society wedding of the year, he was never once sober.

The day of the wedding was a farce. At six o’clock that ­morning, Hunt poured himself the first of many beers. Before leaving for the church, he knocked back a couple of Bloody Marys. By the time he walked up the aisle, he was hopelessly ­intoxicated.

As Hunt ­said later: ‘I just couldn’t handle the whole scene, so I went out and got blind, roaring drunk.’

Suzy smiled her way through it all, convinced it would be ­different now he was a married man — even though the portents were not auspicious.

Hunt is said to have slept with over 5,000 women during his lifetime

Relaxing: The Formula One driver was more than happy to embrace the glamorous temptations of the sport

The following day, they left for their honeymoon in Antigua and, once more, the occasion proved to be ­anything but straightforward. He had invited his newly-­married best friend, the Hesketh ­Formula One team ­manager Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley, to come along with his new bride.

While Suzy Miller and Bubbles’ wife had undoubtedly ­envisaged honeymooning alone with their ­husbands, the two men clearly ­preferred each other’s company.

It was an entirely selfish gesture.

When the Hunts returned to Spain, things did not improve: Hunt was absent most of the time.

Suzy simply wanted a settled family life, but by 1975 admitted to friends: ‘I literally felt like a spare part. I was just there for the show.’ Within a few months, Suzy realised the marriage was not going to work. Still, she was prepared to give it time in the unlikely event that she was wrong.

Hunt’s mother was on her daughter-in-law’s side, saying: ‘Suzy is ­gorgeous, but I can see that for James to be married is impossible. I love him, but I’d hate to have him for a husband.’

Hunt soon began planning how to ditch her. He tried to explain what had gone wrong: ‘I thought that ­marriage was what I wanted and needed to give me a nice, stable and quiet home life, but, in fact, it wasn’t. And the mistake was mine.’

Facing up to the possibility that she, too, had made a mistake, Suzy also wanted out.
Yet she remained supportive and sympathetic to Hunt, which only heightened his sense of responsibility towards her.

He said: ‘I was very anxious not to hurt her. There are nice and nasty ways to do things and I hope I can never be a hurtful person.’

The marriage dragged on for another eight months as Suzy looked for a new partner.
Hunt knew he had to get out and prayed for a miracle. That miracle arrived in the shape of Richard Burton, who was then ­Britain’s most famous actor.

At the end of December 1975, with their 14-month marriage in pieces, Hunt and Suzy Miller went to Gstaad in Switzerland for ­Christmas with friends. Gstaad was the place to be that year, a festive playground for the rich and famous.

Coincidentally, Richard ­Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were also staying there, at a villa called Chalet Arial.

Hunt (pictured here with Stirling Moss) won the 1976 World Championship by a single point

Burton and Taylor had married in 1964. They divorced in 1974, but almost immediately got back together and, a year later in October 1975, they remarried.

Just as Hunt and Suzy ­Miller’s marriage had been a fiasco, so, too, was Burton and ­Taylor’s — both couples found ­themselves ­looking for an exit almost ­immediately. In Gstaad, Burton first set eyes on Suzy Miller as they were travelling in opposite directions on a ski lift.

Burton turned to his assistant, Brook Williams, and asked who was the ‘vision that had just passed by’.

He was struck down by Suzy’s sheer presence, as he would say later: ‘I turned around and there was this gorgeous ­creature, about nine feet tall. She could stop a stampede.’
By then, Hunt had flown to São Paulo to compete in the Brazilian Grand Prix in the opening race of the 1976 season.

Williams sought out Suzy and invited her to a party in Gstaad a few days later and there Burton was captivated.

Williams invited her to come to the house the following day and, after that, Suzy started visiting Chalet Arial regularly. The affair, which began almost immediately, was Suzy’s first dalliance since her ­marriage to Hunt.

He was 50 and she was 26 but, as Burton said: ‘She was mature far beyond her years.’
At the end of January, Burton told Elizabeth ­Taylor that their ­marriage was over.

Suzy had kept Hunt fully informed by telephone of the developing affair and to say that he was delighted would have been an understatement.

In fact, when she told him Burton had invited her to join him in New York, he replied: ‘Fine, off you go.’

After he told Taylor it was over, ­Burton summoned Suzy to New York and their relationship developed so quickly into a proposal of marriage that a request for a quickie divorce was made to Hunt, while he was in South Africa.

Hunt was delighted his wife had found Richard Burton. The two men immediately spoke on the ­telephone to arrange what they called the ‘transfer’ of Suzy.

Burton offered to pay Hunt’s divorce settlement to Suzy: $1 ­million. ­Burton couldn’t believe that Hunt was so casual about ­letting go of his ­beautiful wife.

Hunt simply said: ‘Relax, ­Richard. You’ve done me a wonderful turn by taking on the most alarming expense account in the country.’

Miller, effectively, had been sold to Burton by Hunt for $1 million and both were satisfied with the ­transaction.

For Hunt, it couldn’t have worked out better; he had got rid of the wife he never wanted and saved himself the divorce costs.

In June 1976, the divorces of Taylor and Burton and Hunt and Miller were formalised in Port Au Prince, the ­capital of Haiti, in the Caribbean. There, foreigners could get divorced in a day.

On August 21, Suzy and Burton were married in Virginia.

Meanwhile, Hunt’s mother, Sue, told journalists: ‘I’m quite ­convinced that whomever my son had married, the same situation would have arisen.

‘Suzy was a delight, but James is just not the marrying kind.’

- Shunt by Tom Rubython is published by The Myrtle Press, at £25. Available to buy at Bertram.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1320323/Tu...

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
And that A35 van he used to drive around in (think a regular at the Barley Mow too - near me).

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
Team 17 said:
Uriel said:
I can't help but think that if you removed his profession as racing driver from his resume and posted the details of his personal life, most people lauding him as a top bloke would think of him as just being another alocholic, drug abusing, womanising, outspoken scum bag.

It's funny how a job can make what otherwise would be a despicable fellow into a hero for some.
Exactly, not exactly a role model you would want your son to aspire to for example.
Better than your son saying he is "how can I put it without the PH Police getting Upperty", liking the Sword.

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
samwilliams said:
jellison said:
Team 17 said:
Exactly, not exactly a role model you would want your son to aspire to for example.
Better than your son saying he is "how can I put it without the PH Police getting Upperty", liking the Sword.
You'd rather your son ended up dying of a heart attack at 45 due to self-inflicted excesses than being gay?
Of course!


jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
Liv'in the Dream.......

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
superkartracer said:
But Triathlons give you an idea of cardio fitness! seeing as Button and Nico have done a few and posted top times its a good yardstick.

Bottom line, Hunt would be no good in todays cars and F1 drivers are super-fit.
You don't need to be able to do triathlons - that is just a passing phase of a few drives, like Golf back in the 80's.

Yes you have to be fit, but alot of it is just because - what else are they supposed to do with there time. As long as you have a pretty good level of fitness and big neck muscles an F1 driver would be fine.

Hunt woul just train to the required level - and come on he looks fit as a butchers dog and he lives on fags booze and fanjeta!

Er back on track!.................!

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
shoestring7 said:
superkartracer said:
Bottom line, Hunt would be no good in todays cars
That's guff. Its the same bks trotted out by people who reckon Rosemeyer, Nuvolari, Fangio, Moss, Clark or Villeneuve would be no good in modern cars. They were as fit as they needed to be to haul a heavy, often front engined/radiatored car with dodgy brakes around a circuit for 3 hours. If they needed to be as fit as the current grid are, they would be.

BTW Hunt was a county standard squash and tennis player.

SS7
Exactly - Look at the Guy!

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
spad78 said:
If you were an Ex-F1 great would you like to be known as a work obsessed nerd that insisted on measuring 50 points of a friction circle to see if you can eek an extra 100th of a second from the 3rd corner at monaco OR would you prefer to be known as quick, won a lot of stuff in the days when racing was truly dangerous but was quite often missing for large periods of a race weekend while he stuffed some brolly dolly's back doors in?

The life of an F1 driver is very different now and I suspect the pressure would not be to Hunt's liking. That said, I believe quick is quick and good drivers would adapt to whatever they find themselves piloting.
Wellsaid. (notsure on if he was back or front door though) smile

Is you name spelt right on Profile? Adam Dawspm

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
Leithen said:
spad78 said:
If you were an Ex-F1 great would you like to be known ........
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give a st - other than to whether I was known to be better than my peers. All any of these guys care about is winning.
And being a Great Swordsman.

Yep Kimi comparison is a good one.

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Monday 18th October 2010
quotequote all
superkartracer said:
He'll be straight into lewis's gf like a rat up a drain pipe ha ha
I'm sure he would not be the first (or car).

Make me laugh Nicole is pressuring LH saying it is here tim for sprogs - I don't give it till the start of the 11 season (unless she "forgets" the birth control pills).

Wonder if any illigitimate Hunts about?

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Monday 18th October 2010
quotequote all
DJC said:
jellison said:
superkartracer said:
He'll be straight into lewis's gf like a rat up a drain pipe ha ha
I'm sure he would not be the first (or car).

Make me laugh Nicole is pressuring LH saying it is here tim for sprogs - I don't give it till the start of the 11 season (unless she "forgets" the birth control pills).

Wonder if any illigitimate Hunts about?
Can I have that translated into English?
Oops

I'm sure he would not be the first (or care).

Makes me laugh, Nicole (according to the press) is pressuring LH saying "it is her time for sprogs" - So, I don't give them till the start of the 2011 season (unless she "forgets" the birth control pills)!

jellison

Original Poster:

12,803 posts

277 months

Tuesday 19th October 2010
quotequote all
Do-able if Hunt / Sheene or Tommy Lee. But has to be just a number pulled out of a hat for effect.

Russell Brand is going to have to drop any thoight of catching these now deep in Perry smile