the end of the night David and I would have to take the rubbish out. Now, having just catered for three hundred-odd people, the kitchens used to generate a hell of a lot of rubbish, and the bins were a hell of a long way away. It wasn’t quite as simple as opening the kitchen door and sticking the black bin bags outside. Come the end of the evening there’d be a mountain of them piled up and they would need taking to the big industrial bins out by the garages right on the other side of the building. In the kitchen there were these tall trolleys designed to have metal trays slotted in them which were usually stacked with plates. Once we’d bagged all the rubbish, David and I would take those metal trays out, pile the trolleys high with black sacks and wheel them off. You could get about 16 black sacks on each trolley, and even then sometimes you’d need to do more than one journey.
Those trolleys used to make a hell of a racket, like a load of pots and pans being chucked down a staircase. You could hear us coming a mile off, which, given what lay ahead, was not a good thing. You’d take a run up the disabled ramp then go along this 150-foot-long corridor, past the toilets and through the door at the end, for which you needed a key. Once through that door you were into the back areas of Castle Howard. Imagine, it’s a really old castle, all little archways and tiny dim lights. We’re talking proper creepy. Not a place you really want to be late at night with nobody else around, or even with your best mate if he’s just as freaked out as you are and who is making you even more jumpy.
What made it worse was that you knew somewhere out there, down that corridor, waiting for you in the dark, behind a door that may or may not be locked (in our overactive imaginations it was always unlocked and open) was Tasha the dog. Tasha was this absolutely massive possessed dog that used to bark and snarl like it hadn’t been fed in a decade. It was like a huge St Bernard Wolfhound cross and it used to frighten the shit out of everybody. If you listened really hard you could almost hear him sniffing you out as you stood there at the beginning of the corridor.
Needless to say, taking the rubbish to the bins was not something we looked forward to. You knew that if, God forbid, Tasha did actually get out he’d come screaming round the corner and rip you apart in ten seconds flat, no question. So we always had a plan of what we’d do, how we’d jink the trolleys and kink them this way so we’d be able to use them as a barricade before making a run for it. Ideally, though, you just wanted to get to the other end of the corridor as quickly and quietly as possible, and hopefully Tasha wouldn’t hear you, or if he did you’d already be past his door (whichever one it was) and it would be too late for him to break it down, run out and claw you to shreds.
The corridor ran right under the Howards’ private residence, so rubber matting had been put down to dampen the noise of the trolleys going backwards and forwards late at night. This was good. It at least gave us a fighting chance of making it past Tasha unheard. To up the odds even more in our favour, to make sure that the trolley didn’t bounce and make a load of noise, and to ensure we got out of there as quickly as possible, as soon as we hit a straight stretch we used to jump on the trolleys and zoom down the corridor, jumping back off just before we hit the door at the end that led out into the courtyard area where the bins and garages were.
Normally that was the end of it. You’d unload all the bin bags, chuck them in the industrial bins, turn round and go back, praying to God that Tasha hadn’t come to in the meantime. One night, though, something caught my eye. I’ve no idea how I saw it, it was just there in the corner of my eye, a flash of red paint through a crack in one of the garage doors. In that courtyard, just next to where the bins were, there were three big grey wooden garage doors. Usually what was behind them wasn’t of much interest so I never bothered looking. The Howard family liked Land Rovers and Saabs and Volvos, which have to be the worst cars on the road not least because their drivers feel so safe in them they have absolutely no fear of taking everybody else out. But this one night the garage doors were open the tiniest bit, just a crack, and I could see this little bit of red paint.
I knew instantly what it was. I turned to David and shouted in a whisper, ‘There’s a fucking Ferrari in there!’
I told him to wait there, I was just going to have a look. I don’t think David was upset about having to wait behind and stand guard, he was just shitting himself, giving me a look of terror that said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it!’
I crept over to the door and pressed my eye to the gap – no harm in that. It was eleven pm and I was sneaking around the Howards’ private garage when I should have been doing the bins – hardly a hanging offence. I was only there about five minutes, just looking through that crack, not doing any harm, but always looking back at David to make sure nobody was coming. He looked at me suddenly with an expression that said he knew exactly what I was thinking, and he started shaking his head. But it was too late. I’d pushed the door open.
I found myself inside the Howards’ private garage looking at this stunning Ferrari. It was a 308GTB, with a hard top, but the fibreglass model. I knew this because I’d just given the bodywork a good tap. I may have been just nine years old but I knew my Ferrari 308GTBs from my 308GTSs (the soft-top) and I knew my fibreglass bodies from the later steel ones. I tapped on the body and looked at the deep spoiler at the front. Then I went round the side and ran my hand along the door panel and over the little black door latch. I gave it a little pull just to see what it did. And of course the door opened. I figured if I got caught at this point I was in deep shit anyway, and with the door open I was practically in the car already, so I thought, ‘Sod it,’ and I got in.
I just remember thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I’m in a Ferrari. I’m in a Ferrari!’ This was in the days of Magnum, when Tom Selleck used to drive a red 308GTS, so literally there was no cooler car on the planet. Remember, around that sort of time I was looking at my school mates’ dads driving their Opal Mantas and thinking, ‘Why can’t my dad drive an Opal Manta?’ That was about the size of it in my little village in North Yorkshire; but here I was sat in a Ferrari. Of course when you’re a kid you have no idea about the worth of adult things like bricks and mortar, so to my nine-year-old car-obsessed mind this Ferrari was worth more than Castle Howard itself. It had to be at least a couple of hundred million quid surely, maybe even a trillion.
What I knew for a fact, though, was that I’d never sat in anything like it before. It had all these little toggle switches, a big chrome plate on the gated gearbox, black leather seats with these little studs on them (which they now call Daytona seating), a grey/black dashboard top, a black leather steering wheel with three metal spokes and the little prancing horse in the middle…I just remember staring at that little horse, mesmerised by it. I was only in the car for four or five minutes, but it’s like a photographic memory. I took in every single detail, drank it all in, absorbed it, convinced that I was never going to see another one as long as I lived, let alone sit in one (and if I hadn’t I’d probably still have died happy knowing that I’d had the chance to experience one and taken it). This was my moment to see and remember everything about it.
And that’s when I noticed it. The smell. That Ferrari smell. I’d never smelled anything like it ever, and the only time I’ve smelled it since is in other Ferraris. It’s a special, Italian sports car, leather, luxury, money, petrol, passion kind of a smell, and it’s unforgettable.
Nor will I forget the panic when I suddenly realised that of all the things I’d seen, not one of them was an interior door handle. I spent the next two minutes frantically searching for a way to get out (the door release on the 308 is extremely well hidden). Eventually I got the door open, and after rubbing my fingerprints off the paintwork I legged it back to David who was now looking more terrified than he’d ever looked at the thought of Tasha tearing him limb from limb.
That was the first time I sat in a Ferrari. As long as I live I’ll be sure of one thing: I’ll never forget that car. Every detail is still imprinted on my memory. As for who it belonged to, I never found out for sure. Of the two Howard brothers I always imagined it was Nick who was the proud owner of the 308GTB. Whoever it was, and whoever left that garage door open with the light on and the car unlocked, they made a young boy very, very happy – and later cost a grown-up chef a hell of a lot of money.