ARE YOU NEVER AFRAID?

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3304, 2 June 1931, Page 2

ARE YOU NEVER AFRAID?

WHAT THE KING ASKED SIR

MALCOLM. The King: Have you no fear at all when you are driving at these breakneck speeds? Sir Malcolm Campbell: None at all, sir. I would love to do 300 miles an hour to-morrow. When Captain Malcolm Campbell went to Buckingham Palace and, receiving the accoclade of knighthood, became “ Sir Malcolm,” the King and he had a talk which lasted nearly an hour. It was in the intimate atmosphere of the royal study that the King and the Speed King met. The King sat at a desk almost covered with photographs of Sir Malcolm’s car, Blue Bird, in which he broke the world’s land speed record at Daytona at 245.736 miles an hour. “ I think you have done a great thing for British industry,” the King told Sir Malcolmn.

“ I have done my best, but I had a lot of luck, sir,” replied Sir Malcolm. “ I was not out to break the late Sir Henry Segrave’s record, but to raise the^ speed, so that it would be more difficult for our foreign competitors. There are five foreign rivals anxious to break the record.”

It was then that the King put his question about fear, and Sir Malcolm told him: “ Speed holds no terrors for me if I have the right machine. I have had too long a schooling. But Ido get frightened at fifty miles an hour if the car will not answer its controls. It is all a question of controls’.” “.Do you go into training ? ” “ No, sir,” answered Sir Malcolm. “ at any rate, I don’t go into special training. I rarely touch alcohol, but I am always smoking cigarettes.” When the King asked him to tell of the record-breaking run at Daytona Sir Malcolm divulged a secret. “ Well, sir,” he said. “ I have never told anyone before, but I was really up against it. It was not my day. The weather conditions were appalling.

“ I jumped twenty, thirty, and forty feet at a time, and if I had not been strapped in heaven knows what would have happened. “ I knew I had to go through with it. I would have been letting my friends down if I had failed, and it meant so much for British prestige. But I still maintain that I was lucky lucky in having such a wonderful car. “ xt is a great machine, and it has done 200 miles at more than 200 miles an hour.”