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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cBut very early in the piece last year something changed; I\u2019m not sure what it was. I\u2019ve never had a scuffle with James, there\u2019s been no swear words, there\u2019s been nothing untoward unfold other than very early in the piece he very clearly decided that he wanted change.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted it to be newer and fresher, which I fully understand and I actually support. I employ young people, I support young people. The category that I promote (i.e. Toyota 86s) has put 10 of the current drivers in the regular field of 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d be crazy to think that you can just keep on walking the plank forever and not have renewal, so I have no quarrel with that notion at all. And television is a presentation business. I don\u2019t need someone to tell me what my date of birth is or the colour of my hair, I\u2019m well and truly aware of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I had actually been dialling myself away from on-camera roles, but there was a couple of things I enjoyed doing. One was the Hino Hub and I quite enjoyed going wandering on the grid and doing a few of those sort of things from time to time, but the rest of it was just the commentary stuff. But as we sort of got deeper into the year, I realised that he wanted to make a change.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo cut a long story short\u2026 we had a whole bunch of meetings. It was like an episode of Utopia: we talked about a lot of things and got nowhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably chief headline in it was the offer was to stay connected on the basis of an 80 percent paycut.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of hard to swallow\u2026 I wanted to keep going if I could. I love work, I wanted to work, I have to work. It\u2019s just something I wanted to do. I don\u2019t want to sit around and watch daytime television. Sarah would kill me, quite rightly so.<\/p>\n
Unpacking an Epic Bathurst 1000 | The Undercut<\/p>\n
THE Bathurst 1000 once again turned out an all-time classic race, with all of the winners and losers put under the microscope in this episode of The Undercut!<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea was to pluck me out of the commentary box, low level duties on the periphery, but then he wanted me to come back and do Tailem Bend and (Bathurst). I said that\u2019s a really difficult thing to do, because first of all, anything else that I could do to bolster my income is going to take me away from trying to do anything at the race meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m going to open a bakery tomorrow or suddenly become a painter, I\u2019m in motor racing and have been in motor racing all my life, I\u2019ll die in motor racing. So it\u2019s going to be difficult because anything else I can do to top myself up is going to be in conflict with what you\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you can\u2019t just arrive at what we like to term as the semi-final or the grand final in many respects and suddenly be plugged into what\u2019s going on. You can\u2019t just bomb into this car race here, you have to live it. You have to live everything that\u2019s happened. It\u2019s Race 30 of the championship season, 11 events in, and unless you\u2019re glued into it along the way you just don\u2019t know the storylines.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I had grave reservations but I didn\u2019t say no. But I was really concerned about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then he was rolling out a bunch of things that were kind of challenging to manage: one, the research says you have got to go; two, the networks want change; three, the language is old; four, you\u2019re out of touch with the modern drivers.<\/p>\n
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