I might be setting myself up by nominating Hugh Hefner, the Playboy magnate, as my hero, but I have a few good reasons for doing so. Growing up in the village of Twynholm, in the south-west corner of Scotland, with a population of only 700, is about as far as you can get from Hefner's world of bunny girls, the Playboy mansion and the fast, expensive, glamorous lifestyle he presented in his magazine.
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In Twynholm, I was three miles from school and 30 miles from a town with even the most basic entertainment, like a cinema, or a McDonald's. It wasn't quite like living in the Highlands, but it was certainly pretty remote. The Playboy world could hardly have been further away, even when I got into motorsport, through karting and watching Formula One on the BBC.
Things started to change when I found out about this amazing magazine called Playboy, which was read by the truckies who worked for my father's road haulage business. These guys spend a lot of time on the road, on their own, so copies of Playboy, with stories from exotic locations around the world and, yes, pictures of naked girls, were pretty popular, as you might imagine. And when they were discovered by a young boy on the brink of becoming a teenager, who hadn't been able to get close to a girl, well...
I should point out here that I didn't become a fan of Playboy just because I wanted a quick thrill. I used to read it from cover to cover - every single word. People sometimes forget that it had some of the very best writers and that it was much more than a porn mag.
