Trials Torque: Farewell Mart
By John Dickinson on 6th Apr 16
Inside this week's TMX we celebrate the life of trials legend Martin Lampkin who sadly died last Saturday.
As well as honouring Mart on our cover there's a plethora of content dedicated to the great man inside including a four-page special where friends and fans tell us their favourite Mart Lampkin stories. Former Editor John Dickinson got in on the act too with this fitting tribute to the 1975 World Trial Champion and all-round great Yorkshireman...
JD's tribute to Mart:
SO, four of us are walking down a busy street in Madrid, killing time on a Monday morning having to wait for an evening flight home following a Sunday night World X-Trial – or World Indoor Trial as it was known back in the mid 1990s.
Dougie Lampkin and Steve Colley had just bought houses, their first, and, somewhat to my bemusement, keep wandering into furniture shops and discussing decor.
After a while, probably all of 10 minutes, Martin Lampkin turns to me and says, with some meaning, "You know Dicko, if at any time you fancy a beer in one of these nice little bars, just say and I'll probably join you...”
Encouraged by this I tried hopefully, "Fancy a beer, Mart?”
"Thought you'd never ask,” he responded, and without breaking stride marched straight into a likely looking doorway with a hearty, beaming, "Dos cerveca por favor!” to the barman.
And that was that, the next couple of hours flew as we put the world to rights while Mart effortlessly made instant friends with the barman and an old guy smoking a cigarette with his coffee, at the next table.
As many, many people know, from his closest friends to people he had just met, sharing a couple of beers with Martin Lampkin was a pretty good way of passing the time.
He was relentlessly amusing, always competitive, derived gleeful pleasure from putting one over on you and was endlessly generous. Happy days indeed.
A decade earlier I was fortunate to spend time travelling with Mart, in the early 1980s, when he and a young Johnboy joined forces with Nigel Birkett in Birks' famous V6-engined Transit for the World rounds.
Martin ALWAYS had to drive and on one memorable occasion whizzed us from Vienna to Calais, single handed, in a high-speed overnight run to catch a 7am ferry.
This included one amazing, disc-melting, wheel-smoking emergency stop when traffic unexplainably came to a standstill.
Mart pulled on the steering wheel and stood on the brake pedal, straining until his eyes popped and as the Trannie came to a shuddering stop, an inch from the car in front, he said, "Birkie, that were all we 'ad!”
Nigel and Butch Robson were in no state to reply – asleep in the back they were suddenly pitched off the seat on to the floor and 30 pairs of RG boots flew off the top bunk and buried them.
Martin had picked the boots up at the factory in Italy in lieu of money they owed him...
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have a fund of such memories, as have many, many more people who came into contact with Martin.
As his lifelong pal Malcolm Rathmell reflected when requested to supply a tribute, "Where do I start, I could fill a book!”
Martin Lampkin: Yorkshireman, Englishman and above all Family man.
A big man in every respect, we have truly lost a colossus and the world is suddenly a much poorer place with his untimely passing.
