As the daughter of Stirling Moss’s former secretary, Mia Forbes Pirie grew up in the company of the racing great. Seeking to know more about the man behind the fame, she arranged to meet at his home and arrived with a list of revealing questions. Unknown to both at the time, this would be his final in-depth interview.
Stirling had many remarkable qualities – unsurprisingly, patience was not usually one of them. On the day I interviewed him, however, he showed a surprising amount of patience with me. I call that love. He did not get frustrated when the tripod didn’t work properly. Nor did he seem to mind when I fumbled with the recording device for the second camera. I had never videoed-interviewed anyone before. This was a first.
I knew, however, that we all had something to learn from this man. A man I had known since I was born. This man who was my mother’s best friend and with whom, on occasion, I had negotiated my Christmas stocking. I was determined to dig deeper and find out what.
Motor racing is not really my thing. I have spent much of my time with the Mosses trying to avoid watching motor racing and only recently become more engaged with it. As a mediator and a coach, human beings are what I am interested in. So I had my questions ready. Susie (his wife) had helped me set up the lighting and, eventually, we were good to go.
How did Stirling achieve what he achieved? What were the characteristics that made up this man? What made him tick? How had he made the most difficult decisions in his life? What was he afraid of? What mattered to him? I wanted to talk to him about all of these things, and more.
He looked at me knowingly: we had a secret. These were not the questions he had been asked before
We spoke about death, and life. Things that are important to all of us. About his unusual lack of fear – and what had helped him seemingly to become fearless. I tried to understand how and why he had put in so much effort and planning and preparation for things that mattered to him and what made winning so important to him. Sometimes the people who are most talented at things do not really know why or how to break them down. Through nurture or nature Stirling had an extraordinary ability to focus and an enormous drive to win. I asked him three times why winning was so important to him. It was so central to his psyche that, despite the best will in the world, he did not really understand the question.
We talked about money, about fame, about the people he had loved. We talked about choosing a new career after losing the one you love (after his accident) and about how things could have turned out differently. I could tell that he enjoyed the interview.
