![\"Nigel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/19940101F1-0288.jpg.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a good line in isolation, and it\u2019s a better one once you know what happened next.<\/p>\n
Two years later, the BBC took over exclusive UK broadcast rights to Formula 1 and Murray Walker became the voice British viewers associate with the sport to this day.<\/p>\n
Coverage that had been patchy highlights through the 1970s grew steadily through the \u201980s and into live, full-race broadcasts by the early \u201990s.<\/p>\n
Harrison didn\u2019t live to see where that road eventually fully led as he died in 2001, but the pattern he described \u2013 casual interest turning into real fandom the moment the sport is actually put in front of people \u2013 is the same one Formula 1\u2019s American expansion has run on more recently.<\/p>\n
Exposure is what grows an audience, as Harrison described trackside in France in 1977.<\/p>\n
What makes the observation more than a novelty footnote is who was making it, as Harrison wasn\u2019t a celebrity being walked through the paddock for a photo opportunity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Harrison with Mansell in 1994<\/p>\n
\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n
By his own account in the interview, he\u2019d been going to races since childhood in Liverpool, remembered the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, and had spent 1977 quietly working his way around the calendar under his own steam.<\/p>\n
One of his songs in his Thirty Three & 1\/3 album includes a reference to the Tyrrell P34, F1\u2019s most famous six-wheeler.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter Long Beach I went to the Spanish Grand Prix and two weeks later, of course, I went to Monaco where we met up again,\u201d Harrison added.<\/p>\n
\u201cA week later and I am here at my first bike grand prix, which is really great. So, I am a kind of motor sport groupie at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrison\u2019s television comment is closer to an argument than an anecdote, and it\u2019s one the sport has spent the decades since more or less proving right, twice \u2013 once when the BBC deal took hold in Britain, and again more recently in the US, on the other side of an ocean and a streaming revolution he never saw coming.<\/p>\n
The George Harrison of the interview would probably have found nothing surprising in an American teenager discovering Formula 1 through a Netflix binge rather than a race weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a good line in isolation, and it\u2019s a better one once you know what happened next. Two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7335,28002,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-582748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-formula-1","tag-george-harrison","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}