It has just come to my attention that Bill Boddy - the legendary WB of Motor Sport magazine - has died at the age of 98.
He worked for Motor Sport for 80 years, was editor for more than 50 years and filed his last copy just a couple of weeks ago. That's a job for life if ever there was one. I started devouring his words (and those of Denis Jenkinson, his 'continental correspondent') at the age of 11, reading old copies of the magazine in the village doctor's waiting room. We still have a subscription.
It's difficult to find words to express how influential he was, particularly as he eschewed any sort of populism and was proud to stand up for the straight way he did things - even if it meant manufacturers wouldn't let him road test their products. Even the likes of Rolls-Royce. Eat your heart out Clarkson.
If ever there was an opportunity to use the words 'they don't make them like that any more' this is it.
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William Boddy and his superb magazine had a crucial formative influence on the learned but dilettante car enthusiast I am.
I was brought a copy of Motor Sport, and Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki book, when I fell ill with malaria at scout camp in Gloucestershire in the fifties, by the wife of the farmer to whose house I had been moved in view of my alarming, inexplicably high temperature. Nice Mrs Rowe made me what I am, in part.
Boddy was over 90 so his death is no surprise. Nor can one say it marks the end of an era, because his era at Motor Sport ended some years ago (causing me after a while to stop buying it after all those years). But it was certainly the magazine's great era: Boddy with the Motoring Dog whose comfort requirements were part of the reviews; Denis Jenkinson the Continental Correspondent who had sidecar-racing experience and passengered Stirling Moss in the Mercedes 300SLR in the 1956 Mille Miglia...
Like yesterday. RIP William Boddy. He has even influenced this website through me with the words 'mimser', the verb 'to mimse', etc. which were his. Bless him.
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IIANM This is the first reference to the word "mimser" on this forum. Young Gordon Bennett, I think.
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=58&m=734
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It isn't my word, and anyone might have got it from the real source. But After I started using it on the HJ site some others did too (it's a good word after all). I don't know whether GB was one of those.
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What I liked about WB in his prime wasn't so much his style (some of his sentences were even longer than mine) as his attitude.
He once abandoned a test report 'because the confounded car wouldn't start'.
And he once took a photo of a Morris 1800 beside a cow - 'the creature it most resembles'.
You won't see that sort of thing in today's motoring magazines, I think.
It's nice to see that Motor Sport, after a long period in the doldrums, appears to have returned to what it does well and contains the best writing on the market. It's a shame I now have little interest in the money-grubbing shenanigans of F1.
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>> After I started using it on the HJ site some others did too (it's a
>> good word after all). I don't know whether GB was one of those.
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Yes he was and thanks to the irascible Lud.;) we have the word here, it's the perfect polite term to desribe the hordes of hesitant, inattentive, unaware, incompetent mimsers terrified of the very cars they ride in (could hardly use the term drive) who make jouneys frustrating beyond normal endurance, they could push the motorised washing machines they call cars quicker in many cases.
I can cope with them most of the time in my car and all the time when i'm at work, but SWM who's patience isn't her strongest virtue suffers terribly at their capacity for causing mayhem, then they drive off into the sunset leaving gritted toothed drivers in their wake trying to get the system working again.
Bill Boddy RIP, another unique and entertaining individual gone.
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www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/news/9218840.Brooklands_to_host_celebration_for_deceased_motorsport_MBE/
includes
"To commemorate Mr Boddy’s life and his influence on motorsport, which stretched for more than eight decades, Brooklands Museum hosts a tribute day on Saturday, October 1"
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Guardian obit appeared some weeks after his death. Meant to link here when it was published bit forgot,
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/aug/21/bill-boddy-obituary?INTCMP=SRCH
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It was Bill who, with Michael Tee, coaxed 150mph out of the pre-production Jaguar E-type 9600HP, a feat which they could not repeat a few weeks later with a standard production model. A legendary fellow.
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Here's the Telegraph obit:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8653225/Bill-Boddy.html
My son tells me I made it into the MotorSport tribute.
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Bill Boddy - Armel Coussine
