By : David Bremner

During 1998, Brian became the most high profile microlighter on the planet, with his successful circumnavigation of the world, and extensive coverage in national newspapers and television as well as the aviation press. He was awarded the Diamond Colibri and will receive the Britannia Trophy from Prince Andrew in March.

Indeed, throughout his life, Brian has appeared to court the lime-light and controversy and seems larger than life. So it was with more than usual interest and some trepidation that I knocked on the door of his home in Bethnal Green to find out more about the man.

Brian is an accomplished television and newspaper journalist, and comes across as polite, capable and articulate, but one has the feeling that there is very pair of eyes peering out from behind the mask, getting the measure of you before he will give you his trust. The house is sparsely decorated, the only apparent luxury being a series of pictures by award-winning prison artist Jimmy Gilbert, who was a friend.

In my review of his book, I said that I thought that flying was not his first love, and was used as a means towards an end. I was wrong : Brian’s love of flying is said to date from the age of four, when he was sat in a Hawker Tempest cockpit at Kai Tak airport, Singapore. Indeed it was probably inherited from his father, who was too tall when he volunteered for aircrew in 1940 and was posted to the Intelligence Corps, where he remained for the rest of his working life.

Brian won an RAF scholarship and was taught to fly Tiger Moths by, among others, the legendary Joan Hughes, the ATA pilot who later flew the Demoiselle replica in Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. He won a place at Cranwell, but the RAF decided he was not officer material and he was discharged. Maybe his individualistic approach would have been more suited to a wartime service.

It’s clear that all the family was ambitious and energetic; his parents emigrated from Dublin and his father joined the RAF, and Brian and his younger brother and sister were the first generation in the family to go to university. Both brother and sister have emigrated to Australia and gone on to very successful careers in medicine.

Brian admits that his restlessness comes from the rootlessness of moving away from their extended family and his father’s RAF career. I believe that Brian may have carried his father’s frustrated ambitions with him to Cranwell, and that his failure there has fuelled his need to prove himself in other endeavours.

He admits that fear of failure has been a primary driving force behind his adventures, and that what drove him to carry on during the appalling crossing from Greenland to Iceland was the thought of what people would think of him if he gave up.

Much of the ‘60s was spent trying to find a new direction. He travelled all over the US, trying without much success to write fiction, exploring and dropping out.

In 1968/9 he set out on his first adventure, trying to drive a 1937 Austin Ruby from London to South Africa to woo Fiona Campbell, whom he would later marry. He crossed the Sahara and the Congo and got as far as Zaire before the poor old thing finally gave up the ghost, having travelled for 2,000 miles on three cylinders, 900 miles without brakes and five weeks without money. The electrics had long since packed up, which meant bump starting it every morning, and using a hurricane lamp held out of the window to see where he was going at night.

By the 1970 he was a freelance reporter for the BBC and in 1974 he saw a few lines in the Daily Telegraph about the new craze of hang gliding. He contacted Brian Wood, who had got into the news for remaining airborne for 7h, and promised to do a half-hour programme in return for being taught to fly.

The lesson, on a primitive Wasp 229, consisted of showing him how to assemble it ad clip himself in, followed by a hefty shove down the slope, but Brian quickly caught on to what was required, and within a weekend or two was soaring on Rhossilli, the site in south Wales of so many early hang gliding records.

He was hooked immediately, and spent every available moment at Long Mynd. He was runner up in the 1976 National Championships at Pickering, but got himself elected on to the council in order to change the system (and also to head off a prospective World Championship to be held in South Africa, about which he had understandably strong opinions).

He devised the National League as a round of competitions to which the best pilots were invited. At the end of the season the lowest scoring dropped out, and new talent was invited to replace them. A National Champion was declared, but the important point was that a ‘circus’ of the best pilots met regularly to compete. The rules evolved to match growing skills and technical advances, and the result was that the British ruled the world in hang gliding for 10 years even taken on the legendary Americans in an American Cup and defeating them 7-2, for which Brian was awarded the Prince of Wales cup by the Prince himself.

This method of competition was adopted by microlighting, and has proved extremely successful here, too.

Brian’s ambition, fuelled by this fear of failure, makes him a man of passion. He approaches everything in life, from his journalism to his love life to his adventures, with total commitment you only have to read Global Flyer to see how every hurdle, diplomatic or physical, is attacked with an awesome passion.

This passion inevitably turns him into a political animal. He stood for the chairmanship of the Young Liberals against Peter Hain. In hang gliding, he was very closely involved with the council, and the animation with which he talks about the shifting power struggles is very evident even now. He was eventually deposed from the council over the Newton Aycliffe sponsorship affair something which has clearly hurt him very deeply. This may explain why he was remained outside the politics of microlighting so far.

The thing that just might get him involved is his belief in a sense of adventure with a capital A.

Brian has never become involved with general aviation, which he believes to be ossified by regulation until there is no adventure left. The pioneering spirit which he sees in hang gliding and microlighting is, he believes, a neglected quality, and one which should be encouraged to allow people to explore themselves fully.

When he set off for Australia in a Rotax 447 powered Shadow, he had less than 100h microlight flying in his log book. He was intelligent he had been a member of Mensa but had given up a well-paid secure career in television. During practice flying in the UK he regularly got lost four times in one flight! And yet it is just this sort of challenge which he believes is so important for the soul.

The personal cost of his need for adventure has been high, too. Brian’s marriage has been a casualty of the Global Flyer challenge, although he is very close to his children, and he takes a huge pride in James, just starting a military career at Sandhurst, and Jade, who is at Trinity College, Dublin.

Brian calls it the New Aviation, and it is the subject of a book which he hopes will shortly be published. Called The Children of the Wind, it chronicles how the over regulation of sport aviation led men like Richard Miller to go back to the earlier pioneer Otto Lillienthal and seek a new path through Francis Rogallo to a New Aviation which he believes is in the middle of a Golden Age, as did the first branch of aviation in the 1920s. It promises to be a fascinating read.

And what now? Brian is starting a new career as an inspirational speaker, using the Global Flyer trip to inspire listeners to rise to new challenges, but is also looking to get back into journalism to pay the bills! When I asked him about new adventures, it’s clear he’s not short of ideas, but I was sworn to secrecy. You will just have to wait and see.

And finally, the title of this piece. Who called him an amateur ? Brian did, that’s who. An amateur is someone who does a thing for the love of it. In Brian’s case, it’s passion, not love, but that’s close enough in my book.

Reproduced from Microlight Flying (MF) (March-April 1999)