A famous pair of Doctor Martens?
Currently sitting on my kitchen floor is a well loved pair of Doctor Marten boots.
Nothing remarkable then? A fairly dull subject for a first blog? Well, any of you glued to Channel 4 on Sunday night a few weeks ago may have seen them play a pivotal role in a motorbike race.
Wind back the clock to November of last year, we were in Goa in south west India on a very hot Saturday afternoon. Our hero, Prof. Guy Martin, he of the unruly hair and fearless nature was due to enter a bizarre grass track race on a Royal Enfield motorcyle. Health and safety were far from western standards but the marshalls were adamant on one point, no way was Guy going to race in those trainers.
So, in one of those spontaneous moments that make working on these programmes a joy, I saw Nat swing his camera down to my feet. "What size are those?" enquires Guy, "nine" I reply. "Can I borrow your boots boy?" I look down at his fashionable but probably very uncomfortable trainers and think, well there's my street cred out of the window. Dutifully and on camera, we swap footwear and Guy enters the race.
It's a remarkable spectacle and by the end of the race you can't see most of the action for dust but emerging from the chaos in first place is our hero, North Lincolnshire's very own etc, etc. A victory lap ensues with a marshall's yellow flag. The chequered flag having broken!
Now, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet but had it not been for my DMs Guy wouldn't have been allowed to enter the race and therefore would not have won. So by a process of logical deduction, it was my boots wot won it, as I'm sure the cheaper newspapers would say.
I've had many people wanting these boots but they're mine! I'm sure a little bit of GM dna resides therein but I'm very attached to them!
It was slightly disturbing to see myself in action on the box the other Sunday night and apparently TV puts about ten years on me, but it's good to know that I played a small but crucial part in Guy's victory!
Oh, and if anyone from Doctor Marten is reading this, I take a size nine!
A
