Holiday reading

Holidays mean books, and eventually you read books you'd normally find an excuse to avoid. Sharon at Davida insisted I had to read The Mike Duff Story - Make Haste, Slowly and even leant me her own signed copy to make sure I did.


And am I glad she did - an unbelievable insight into what being a Grand Prix race star meant in the 1960s. The camping, the driving your Thames van across Europe on three cylinders, and the crowds - up to 450,000 on race day in Eastern Europe. Ah, and what The Cold War really meant to ordinary people.

I guess Mike Duff's always thrown me, because he later became Michelle and the book's written with a feminine voice and a little self doubt that's a refreshing change from the usually chest thumping in top tier sportsmen's biographies. But this means an even greater insight into a racers psyche, and there's just the final "what happened next" chapter to explain Michelle's life after racing. I thought I wouldn't want to read it, but by the end of the book I just had to. After all, Duff still stands as Canada's most successful GP racer, and the first North American to win a GP. Buy it and read it.