Micky Pople

Octane meets the 95-year-old and talks about his life with the stars as one of Bristol's Filton Fliers'

- Simon Charlesworth

THE FILES, NOW EMPTY, have covered the table. Precious correspondence, photographs, books, trophies and medals from Micky Pople's racing years now form a large moving collage. 'So much rubbish,' chuckles Micky as he sifts through everything. Every now and then, he singles out a photo or a document to recount a tale. Names and anecdotes tumble from his lips. Dinner with Jochen Rindt. Golf with Douglas Bader. Chatting with Archie Scott Brown. Racing around Hyde Park with Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger in their Bristol 402s. Les Leston, Donald Healey, Stirling Moss, Reg Parnell and Fangio. The perils of drifting a Comet tank on cobbles...

Born in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, Micky began his competition career in December 1949 at the Mendip Vale Hillclimb. He was 21 and driving his birthday present, a new MG TC. 'It had a hand-operated clutch because I hadn't got my wooden leg by then.' It was the loss of his left leg below the knee, in a shotgun accident when serving as an officer in the 5th Royal Tank Regiment, that led him to a new sport. While his father had raced cars on Brean Beach, fellow Burnhamite and HRG owner John Buncombe took Micky on his first motorsport outing.

A photograph from his Army days is then handed over. It's 'Scotty', a USAAF airman who taught Micky to fly Douglas C-54 Skymasters. 'Somewhere I've got some pictures of us being buzzed by Russian MiGs... I was on the Berlin Airlift,' he reveals with the sort of nonchalance only his generation can wield so lightly.