When Playboys Ruled the World - Barry Sheene & James Hunt - 360p - MP4 - [[OptimusPr1me]]

James Hunt and Barry Sheene prove playboys did not always rule the world

There is a famous photo taken of James Hunt after the United States Grand Prix in 1977. He is perched on the side of his winning McLaren M26, the engine still warm, a cigarette in his right hand, a can of beer in his left, and a Penthouse Pet (a sort of supermarket own-brand version of the Playboy Bunny) at his side.



Booze, fag, car, skirt. In that one image, all the staples of the Brut-era Don Juan are present and correct, with the possible exceptions of a bag of coke and a bottle of baby oil. For certain men of a certain age, it represents an aspiration, an exemplar of masculinity, an era when men were 'men' and cigarettes were good for you.
ITV's documentary When Playboys Ruled The World, which aired last week, was an opportunity to rekindle some of these old delusions.
The programme itself was very good indeed. It tracked the lives of Hunt and Barry Sheene, 1976 world champions in Formula One and motorcycling respectively, as they merrily travelled the world with their trousers around their ankles. The research was scrupulous, the archive footage revealing, the interviewees well chosen, the narrative arc predictable but compelling.
Above all, it was shamelessly nostalgic. The good old days. The golden era.
All the old tropes. Look at these men, it seemed to be saying. Look at these good-looking, successful men, driving fast machines for a living and cavorting with pretty but strangely silent women. Look what mavericks they were.

We learned that Hunt used to take cocaine in front of Max Mosley. Wild!
During the Japanese Grand Prix, he and Sheene would invite several dozen air hostesses back to their hotel rooms and roger the lot of them. Studs! "In my days," observed Stirling Moss, "the drivers used to go out after a race and chase girls. These days, they thank Vodafone." Boo for the modern world, with its responsibility and money and fidelity!
Because, of course, real men used to sow their wild oats as far and as indiscriminately as possible. Hunt's nocturnal activities earned him the nickname 'Hunt the Shunt'. Charming. Wouldn't we all love a nickname like that?
The programme compared the likes of Hunt and Sheene with stars of the sterile old today. It pointed out that Tiger Woods and Wayne Rooney were actually made to feel ashamed of their indiscretions rather than being feted for their virility, scandal of scandals. In a way, they had a point. When you listened to England's footballers after the France game, dispensing the party line as adeptly as they had earlier dispensed with possession, it was hard not to hanker for a rent-a-quote like Hunt, who said things like: "To hell with safety, I just want to race."
But when you hear the notion of the 'good old days' evoked in relation to sport, invariably it corresponds with the youth of whoever's invoking it. I wasn't a racing driver in the Seventies but I can well imagine how exhilarating it must have been to wake up daily in a pool of Cinzano and vomit and then watch your friends being incinerated in a huge ball of fire and twisted metal.
Golly, sport was a lot more fun back then, wasn't it?
To be fair, although When Playboys Ruled The World offered a romanticised view of the era, it did offer a counterpoint. All you needed to do was roll the tape forward. Penniless, Hunt sank into depression and alcoholism and died of a heart attack at the age of 45. Sheene shattered his leg in a crash in 1982, which gave him chronic arthritis. In 2003, his 60-a-day smoking habit caught up with him, giving him cancer of the stomach and oesophagus.
He died too. But at least both of them had had an orgy with a roomful of air hostesses, which is the main thing.
Of course, Hunt and Sheene didn't demand that their lifestyle be apotheosised. Instead, we must blame their contemporaries, riding in their slipstream, legitimising a generation of troglodytic boors masquerading as 'characters'. Sport may have been a different beast in those days. Its proponents may have smoked a little more, got a little chippier with journalists.

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