The 1993 Australian Grand Prix is best remembered as the final time both Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost stood on a Formula One podium.
For Prost, it was the last race of his career, while Senna was killed six months later while leading the San Marino Grand Prix.
But for casual fans the highlight of the day may have come hours earlier, when Dame Edna Everage and Clive James were amongst those who took to the track for the celebrity race.
LIVE UPDATES: New Victorian club registers interest in Hill
READ MORE: Kiwi international targets stunning NRL comeback
READ MORE: What Sonny Bill got wrong about rugby switch
That presented something of a challenge for Supercars icon Neil Crompton, who was running the driver training program, given that Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna, was used to being chauffeured everywhere.
Nearly three decades later, Crompton can look back at the week with fondness, but speaking to Wide World of Sports about his just-released autobiography, Best Seat in the House, he recalled the stress of the occasion.
Indeed, Dame Edna’s ‘talents’ behind the wheel were such that a racing licence could only be issued on the proviso Crompton sat in the passenger seat during the race.
“That was about as weird as it gets,” Crompton laughed.
“Sitting in a race car, and I use the term loosely, next to a driver in a pink race suit, in an open-face helmet covered in diamontes, and a face caked in make-up, with horn-rimmed glasses and stubble, it’s a nightmare.”
The week leading up to the race would normally consist of the celebrities being given driver training by well known Australian racers, in this case Crompton, Brad Jones and Bathurst 1000 winner Tomas Mezera.
But Humphries wasn’t interested in learning about the intricacies of apexes and braking points.
“I picked Barry up at the Hyatt in Adelaide, and we were going to go to Adelaide International Raceway, and Barry is a very theatrical person,” Crompton recalled.
He said, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to worry about that, let’s go somewhere nice and have a picnic’.
“I think we ended up somewhere near Adelaide Zoo just talking about life. It was an unusual way to learn to drive!”
As Crompton recounts in Best Seat in the House, when Dame Edna attempted to race, “it was a tangled mess of missed gears and wrong directions. She literally could not drive a car.”
Crompton explained that the race had only just begun when Dame Edna loosened the racing harness and reached into the back seat for her signature gladioli, which she starting throwing to the track marshals, calling out, “Helloooo possums” as she made her way (slowly) around the circuit.
At one point Crompton had to reach over and grab hold of the steering wheel, as Dame Edna looked to be heading for the run-off, rather than negotiating one of the 90 degree corners in the early part of the Adelaide street circuit.
But worse was to come, as Crompton describes in his book, when Dame Edna missed a gear shift from second to third, instead putting it back into first gear, while McLaren boss Ron Dennis and Ayrton Senna watched on from the pitlane as the engine wailed in protest.
“Dame Edna turned to me in desperation,” Crompton wrote.
“In a split second she had morphed into Sir Les Patterson. ‘HELP ME, HELP ME!’ he boomed.
“I reached across, whipped the lever out of first gear and told him to push the clutch down so I could get the car back into third gear. Senna and Dennis briefly swung their heads around, searching for the source of the unwinding engine sound.
“I lowered my helmet visor and prayed for the chequered flag.”
While there was 24 women in the field, if you include Dame Edna, TV critic Clive James was also on the grid. According to Crompton, the global star was a delight to work with.
“It was one of the great highlights of that week, we’d befriended Clive James who was the token bloke in the race, and he was just an outstanding individual to spend time with,” he recalled.
“Intelligent, urbane, just an unbelievable bloke. It was awesome to hang out with someone of that calibre, but he had it completely cocked up.
“Clive thought that we should all be the atypical race drivers, the playboy lifestyle and the parties. Every time we’d get to the end of the training day Clive would say, ‘C’mon boys, what are we doing tonight?'”
“If the answer was that we were having dinner and going to bed he wasn’t happy! He had a totally warped view of what it was like.”
While netballer Michelle Fielke took out the win from aerial ski jumper Kirstie Marshall, Dame Edna finished a lap down, which is more difficult than you might imagine given the race was only five laps in length.
Crompton twice stood on the podium at the Bathurst 1000, but says the opportunity to work with Humphries is one of the highlights of his distinguished career in the sport.
“I reckon that would be right up there. It was great, I look back at it now and think it was very cool,” he said.
“Barry Humphries invited us to his concert in Adelaide, because he was performing there at the time, and I’d never seen Dame Edna in concert before. It was just astonishing. To switch from the motor racing stuff, talk about extraordinary talent, skill and mental capacity.
“Barry, at the peak of his powers, wow. To be able to pull off all those characters, and stand up on stage night after night without missing a beat was just unbelievable.”
Best Seat in the House is on sale now from your favourite bookshop or online.
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!
Incredible escapes: The worst crashes in motorsport history
For all the latest Sports News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
