The Bookworm Critique
By Mark Glendenning, Australia
Atlas F1 Columnist FLAT OUT, FLAT BROKE: In a world where history is so often written by the victors, Perry McCarthy's autobiography ' Flat Out, Flat Broke' is a breath of fresh air. The tenacious Briton's name has long been associated with the farcical Formula One campaign undertaken by the Andrea Moda outfit in the early 1990s that saw McCarthy get within a hair of his dream of becoming a fully-fledged Formula One driver, only to suffer the indignity of failing to ever qualify for a race. This is not, then, a 'my life in Formula One'-type book, but rather the tale of the lengths McCarthy went to in his efforts to get there. Travel writers sometimes talk about the journey being far more interesting than the destination (although something tells me that they're not thinking of 20 hour plane flights when they say that), and this type of thinking forms the basis for this book. You don't need rich parents to succeed in racing, but it does help. A lot. McCarthy did have rich parents for a while, but their good fortune did not really coincide with his racing efforts, and other than one occasion when Perry ran out of money and his father finally decided to finance his season on the understanding that he either won the championship or quit altogether, they had little bearing on his career. Had Perry been given the silver spoon treatment in his youth there's no doubt that he would have achieved greater success in F1. He'd also have had a far easier time of getting there in the first place. The downside is that under those circumstances this book wouldn't exist, which would be a real shame. This book has already developed a reputation for being one of the funniest racing books to have hit the shelves in a long time. It's certainly rare nowadays to find a motorsport autobiography that threatens to make you laugh out loud with every turn of the page – it's not a book that you want to read on public transport, unless you want people looking at you strangely because you keep giggling. Indeed, a few passages from the book - like the time he impersonated James Hunt in order to get an introduction to a potential sponsor, or when he clapped a couple of paper plates together and tried to get into the F1 paddock by pretending to have a pizza to deliver to Ayrton Senna - are already well-known even amongst those who haven't read the book yet. But there's a lot more to 'Flat Out, Flat Broke' than that. McCarthy's sheer determination to succeed, always with the odds stacked heavily against him, and frequently with extra pleasantries such as the very real threat of losing his house lurking in the background, is nothing short of inspirational. You just would not believe how far McCarthy pushed to get an extra thousand pounds in sponsorship, or an introduction to a potential backer, or an excuse to get into the F1 paddock without a pass. A clued-up young driver who is looking for a way to make that next step in their career but can't find the cash to do it could learn a lot from McCarthy (although I wouldn't suggest that they replicate some of his actual schemes!). It works all the better because McCarthy is never preachy about how hard he slogged to get to the top of the racing mountain, possibly because I'm not even sure that he ever intended to set himself up as an example to younger drivers. He simply describes things as they were, and more often than not is extremely funny in doing so. I often wondered whether his great sense of humour might have been a handy self-preservation mechanism, because McCarthy certainly faced some tremendous adversity, and the mental pressure alone would have reduced many others to selling their helmets and buying a set of golf clubs. While money was a major and constant hurdle in McCarthy's efforts, it was apparently coupled with some extraordinary bad luck, usually at the most inopportune moments imaginable. McCarthy himself states that he wrote the book because, "it's unreasonable to expect, or even believe, that so much aggravation could happen to one person, just because they want to go round and round in circles," and he has a point. Finding a passage that captures the feel of the book is difficult, because you're really spoilt for choice. In the end, I gave up and opened a page at random. This is what I got.
"I continued my search for sponsorship but, with very little money for expenses, even the search was proving tough. A little episode with Wang Computers underlined the problem. I'd been chasing them for quite a while and one day I talked their marketing manager into coming out for a lunchtime chat. My budget for this power meeting was £10 and I'd calculated that would be sufficient for the cost of our sandwiches, plus a couple of pints. However, I hadn't figured that there would be another mouth to feed. Any racing fan with a pulse will get a kick out of this book. It's as funny as it is endearing, and tells the tale of the eternal underdog better than any other title that I can think of. It should also be a textbook on determination and ingenuity for young drivers searching for sponsorship, because if they read between the lines a little, they can probably learn more from 'Flat Out, Flat Broke' than from most of the 'How to Find Sponsorship in Three Easy Steps' titles that pop up from time to time.
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