We’ll be celebrating the life and work of Michael Cotton in the coming days here on DSC, because his professional legacy is an important one, from Editing Motoring News and Motor Sport, writing for numerous daily newspapers, authoring countless books and helming the PR efforts of Porsche GB at an important moment in the sport, Mike’s words were amongst the most important, most comprehensive and most entertaining that were available to those following the sport that we all love.
In later years he wrote for DSC, his series of ‘Sportscar Heroes’ long-form interviews remain amongst my favourite content that we have ever featured here. You’ll get the chance to share them again over the next two weeks.
For this writer an encounter with Michael was always a pleasure, a chat, an exchange of information (and a bit of gossip), but always a delight.
To his entire family, but especially today to his son Andrew, who followed in his footsteps to professional motorsport journalism our profound condolences – Michael was a very special guy, a proud dad and grandfather too. He’ll be missed in the sport, and infinitely more so no doubt by those closest to him
It was no surprise therefore to receive calls to chat about him yesterday, one in particular from a protege who is still amongst the media corps today, journalist, writer and PR man Serge Vanbockryck asked if he could write a piece remembering Mike – and with very special reasons for doing so.
He did, you can read below and join us in remembering not just one of the good guys, but one of the very best.
GG
Remembering MLC
It was not the usually cheerful Andrew Cotton – editor-in-chief of the Racecar Engineering monthly and since many years a professional travel companion to many a sportscar race somewhere on the globe – I had on the phone last Thursday evening.
For good reason, for Andrew had bad news to convey: his dad, the great Michael Cotton, had passed away a few hours earlier.
To those who have been around motorsport long enough to remember the days when electric vehicles were just a rare breed that only existed in California, Michael Cotton was the quintessential sportscar journalist who had literally “been there and done that”, respected by all involved in the sport, whether driver, team owner or series organiser. For the young journalist which I once was, débuting in the exciting Group C era, Michael was an example and a benchmark, long before I had even met him in real life.
In those days in small-town Belgium, sportscar media coverage was virtually non-existent, unless you were only interested in the 24 Hours of Spa. Or Le Mans – courtesy of one Jacky Ickx. Thus a mandatory, weekly trek to the one Brussels news agent that carried Motoring News was of vital importance if in those pre-internet, -wifi and -smartphone days you really wanted to know what had happened in Daytona, Sebring or Fuji the previous weekend.
And you could count on MLC, as he signed his articles (though to this day I don’t know what the L stands for), to report in minute detail on how the race had developed, which team had suffered what mechanical gremlins, what the drivers had to say and what the latest rumours were.
For Michael had the unique talent to not only know everybody, often on a personal level, but also to get along with everybody. And vice versa. He was to sportscar journalism what Jabby Crombac was to F1 reporting, Murray Walker to TV commentating or Paul Frère to technical writing; respected by his own generation, revered by the next. And because of his extraordinary human skills he got the actors to confide in him, which resulted in better-informed articles.
When erstwhile F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone took over the promotion the FIA World Sports- Prototype Championship as the newly styled “FIA Vice-President for Promotional Affairs” it was crystal clear to even those with poor eyesight that the end of sportscar racing on an international level was but a matter of time; very little time. Especially when Bernie, emphasizing his disdain for anything non-F1, told Michael in a conversation that he’d pay him £100 if he’d ever spot him at a sportscar race. Count on Michael to politely tap Bernie on the shoulder a few years later in Silverstone, on the grid of the WS-PC race, saying: “I believe you owe me £100.”
Michael was probably born at just the right moment in time, which allowed him to live his professional passion in an era when journalists still were what the French call des grands reporters, respected conveyers of news and information on events you’d most likely not heard of, let alone would have volunteered to travel to. But Michael would go, and go in style, sharing a Jaguar E-Type or other sportscar with a fellow writer and drive to a rally, then on to an F1 Grand Prix and then to a sports car race on three consecutive weekends in three different countries in continental Europe, avoiding motorways if they could help it, spending the days between the races writing interviews and background stories, enjoying life on the road and looking for post offices in forlorn villages from where to phone in his articles to an impatient editor of the newspaper or magazine.
This all was what made Mike’s reports, articles, interviews and books so enjoyable to read: they were written at a time when journalists still had, well, time. There was no need for speed in spreading a half-baked rumour this very second just to beat your media competition for those were the days when any news hadn’t really happened before the magazine or paper actually rolled off the press.
These were also the mechanical days rather than the electronic days, when the Mulsanne Straight had no chicanes, when press rooms were filled with the deafening rattle of countless typewriters and a threatening cloud of blue smoke, originating from equally countless Gitanes, Raffles or Belga hung against the ceiling.
Working as a journalist probably wasn’t the safest professional option then, for health nor financial reasons, but by God did Mike Cotton and his fellow globetrotters make it sound exciting!
So it was that one day – after a year or so as a professional, independent journalist – I decided to cover the World Sports-Prototype Championship, as the WEC was called back then, jumping in at the deep end, thinking I’d figure out how to swim, or at least drown trying.
Fortunately for me, Mike, for reasons unknown, decided to take me under his massive wings. Maybe it was the language thing – I’m from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium and Mrs Cotton was from The Netherlands.
He introduced me to the other journalist-writers I had so often read the names of in bylines or on the spines of books – Rainer Braun, Gustav Büsing, Jean-Marc Teissèdre, Paul Frère – with an almost instruction to help this young fellow from Belgium. And so they did. Fortunately for me, for originating from a country which Monty Python considered less interesting than even Finland wasn’t exactly a door opener.
It is a near certainty that I would not have hacked it without the guidance of MLC nor would have had the enduring passion for sports car racing and the people working in it, which in one way or another way has been paying my bread and butter for all these years. And for that I will always remember MLC.
Bon voyage, my friend.
Serge
Pictures above courtesy the Cotton family
