Blue Bird's over.... until November

In the build-up to the Goodwood Festival of Speed I was as excited as I ever get by the prospect of seeing Sir Malcolm Campbell’s 1935 Blue Bird return to these shores once more from Talladega, USA. It was to be displayed alongside the National Motor Museum’s magnificent Donald Campbell Bluebird CN7. While Campbell, the father, had commonly presented his great record breakers’ chosen name as two words, son Donald adapted it postwar as one. But once the Festival began I never did get the chance to stroll across to the Goodwood cricket ground to examine that evidently splendid display, and have only ever seen photographs of it. Dammit.

But just the other day, looking at a friend’s memorabilia collection, north of Watford, I noticed the most extraordinary little item, framed and hanging on his office wall. It was Sir Malcolm Campbell’s BRDC Gold Star, dating from 1933 and accompanied by – of all things – a crisply folded 10 shilling note…

Looking closer I noticed something hand written on this half-a-bar, and then realised its significance. The note had been preserved, it would appear, by Lady Campbell, as in Sir Malcolm’s neat, wellformed script the lines read: “To my Darling with love from Malcolm” – and then “This note was in my pocket when Blue Bird averaged 272.108 at Daytona 22nd February 1933.”

Now that really does put some flesh and blood into the legend. Sir Malcolm – who was really regarded at the time by many within the British motor racing world as an unlikeable martinet – also had a softer side…

And his rebodied 1935 car is still on loan from its NASCAR owners and on display in this country at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu – where it will remain until November. If you missed it at Goodwood – and can tear yourself away from the streamlined A4 Pacifics with ‘Mallard’ at the York Railway Museum, don’t miss Blue Bird – two words – down there in the New Forest. The clock is ticking…

Doug Nye