OUR DRIVERS..
Presenters of PEKING TO PARIS
Jack Pizzey – Director & Presenter
Jack is founder of Films For Artists. Check out his filmography at www.filmsforartists.com
The Itala Boys
Johnathan Turner and Adam Hartley are two stylish English chaps driving a 1907 Itala , similar to but nowhere near as strong or powerful as Prince Borghese’s winning Itala. In fact the Itala Boys’ car turns out to be a load of trouble but, from the moment it strands them in the Gobi Desert, the more it lets them down, the more they laugh. They’re here to play even though it means trucking their Itala half way across Russia and finally cannibalising an old Russian car, these two jokers are going to get to Paris. Somehow.
Baby Driver
Michele Shapiro is a size 0- brunette from Manhattan in a little 1934 Chevrolet coupe with its owner Dan Rensing from the Mid-west. Dan is twice her age and it is chance that has put them in the same car with nearly 8,000 tough miles ahead. Michele is the driver and she’s determined to have her hands on the wheel every inch of the way to Paris, so just clench your teeth and hold tight, Dan.
Two Fast Ladies
Pamela Reid and Nicola Wainwright, both from England, share Pamela’s 1960 Sunbeam Rapier. Pamela has written off at least one serious racing car and likes to keep her foot on the accelerator; Nicola prefers the brake and, on a day of fierce racing through a Polish forest, one of them proves to be dead right.
The Aussies
Young engineer Andrew Mykytowich suggested to his truck-driver dad, Mick, both from Queensland, that they go for a drive one day, and here they are in the middle of Mongolia in a tent so cold their breath is freezing to the canvas. Queenslanders aren’t used to this sort of thing but they ain’t quitters and, with a blistering flow of language that identifies Mick as the salt-of-the-earth type that Australians cherish as Okkers, they unfreeze their classic 1958 Australian Holden FC and get on the road. Or rather the track. Well, just the trackless waste really. Oi Mate!
The Geordie Lads
Bob Fountain and Joe de Giorgi both come from near Newcastle and speak in the tender tones of Geordieland. Joe is a TV chef who’s brought his pans along in the hope of cooking some delicious pasta in camp (only it’s too cold and he’s too busy surviving), and Bob owns a pub. He bought the pub after being banned from it and he’s our night-life correspondent in the bars of Outer Mongolia and deepest Siberia. He also restores Aston Martins and Lagondas, and the Geordie Lads are driving a handsome red 1934 Lagonda drophead tourer.
The Rally Director
As well as the video-diarists, Fleet Street journalist turned creator of endurance rallies Philip Young is good copy. He’s a law unto himself. They say that when he and a colleague go off into the wild to recce routes for a new rally, they each just take a cheap old banger. And they compete each day to see who can break a law first. Philip set up the 1997 Peking to Paris (through Tibet and Iran) as well as the present centenary Great Race and he’s planning another in 2010 – this time through the ex-Soviet states known as the ‘stans. He’s a veteran of what Graham Green called the lawless roads.