I have vivid memories of the 1975 Manx Grand Prix as I took the race days off from my regular marshalling duties at Lambfell to watch elsewhere on the course.

It gave me the opportunity to try get some more practice with the Braun Reflex 35mm camera that I’d bought a couple of months earlier from leading local press photographer Bill Peters, who ran a general photography and film developing business on Prospect Hill, Douglas - opposite the pub of the same name.

At that time there were no restrictions on marshals carrying a camera and/or taking images. Equally so, you could marshal in different sectors with the permission of the sector marshal, so I asked the chief at Ballaugh Bridge if I could marshal there, and he said: ‘Yes please.’

How things have changed.

Danny Shimmin was the local hero in the Manx and he had been tipped as a likely favourite for several years.

But the Junior was led from start to finish by Newport’s Wayne Dinham, who had also been quickest in practice.

He’d finished runner-up the previous year to Bernard Murray, but on this occasion he led home fellow Welshman Dave Williams by 2min 24.8sec with a new race average speed of 101.23mph. His fastest lap on Harold Coppock’s then rare TZ350 Yamaha was 102.71mph, not quite as fast as Phil Haslam’s amazing ‘ton buster’ of 103.15mph in 1973.

Ulsterman Sam McClements was third and Shimmin fourth.

Alan Jackson of Preston won the Lightweight from Roger Cope and Rick Burrows, while later the same day McClements took the Senior from Keith Trubshaw (long-time local resident and former travelling marshal) and Jack Higham.

The images of Dinham and Jackson (taken at Brandywell) were the first I had printed in the local paper (Manx Star), so I was extremely proud.