Behind Every Man

From the early eighties, Damon was to share his life, with all its joy, tears, triumph and disappointment, with Georgie. It was at a friends fireworks night party on a cold November 5th 1981 that Damon was introduced to the woman who would eventually become his wife. At the time, Damon was still a bike courier and Georgie did not make the connection between the surname and Damon's famous pedigree - and Damon was not offering any clues!

It was only when she saw Damon's mother's wall covered in pictures of Hill Senior that the penny dropped. Georgie is not her real name, but it has stuck and she feels at home with it. "It suits my alter-ego". Her maiden name was Susan George and when she was doing her Arts degree at Kingston Polytechnic, her fellow students gave her the nickname to save confusion with other Susan's. After finishing college, she became an illustrator and fashion designer - a job that would sometimes take her to far flung parts of the world. With dark brown hair and eyes to match, Georgie offers a quite unassuming character and seems completely unfazed by the glamour of the motor racing world.

From the start, Georgie has supported Damon and his motor racing ambition, although like most of the drivers wives, girlfriends and mothers, she finds watching the race a nail biting and often frightening experience. "I won't watch the start - I can't. The noise, the smell, the rushing around just gets to me. It reaches a crescendo, then it all goes quiet. All you hear are the engines. You feel their vibrations through your stomach." For all that, Georgie admits that the whole motor racing fraternity fascinates her. "The people involved are so incredibly focused." She sees the sport as an obsession for those partaking. "Anything else is a distraction, even us at times." Damon: "She has known me since before I started and finds it quite amazing that I have got where I have. But she is terrific, because she's had to make such a lot of sacrifices."

In 1982, Damon had moved with his mother and sisters from their house in St.Albans where they had been for just a little over five years. It had been Bettes ambition to move back to London once Samantha had finished her schooling. Their new house was to be a handsome but modest three-bedroomed Victorian terraced house on the Wandsworth borders in south-west London.

Within a couple of years, Damon had moved out and rented a flat nearby. In the Summer of 1988, Damon and Georgie, now his fiancee, bought the three-bedroomed house in Wandsworth that was to remain their home for the next six years.

"It was a great step for me, because until 1987 I was paying rent, which was just throwing money away. I am very careful with money. I have been without it a couple of times and I think its just the worst feeling in the world. When my father died, his estate was in a terrific mess. Ever since that happened, I vowed to go out and make enough not to worry. Slowly that's coming true. I am very conscientious about putting money aside."

Damon felt that he was fairly well house-trained - but was aware that maybe it is not always the norm among his fellow drivers. "Do you think Ayrton Senna empties the dishwasher?" He said at the time.

Georgie and Damon were married in October 1988, and with wedding bells still ringing in their ears, the happy couple began to focus their minds on their immediate future. Damon had no permanent drive and now Georgie was to give up work as she was expecting their first child.

Damon: "I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I began 1989 with a mortgage, no money, no job and interest rates were going through the roof. Then Oliver was born with Down's Syndrome.

Oliver Graham Hill was born in March 1989. Georgie remembers her initial emotions: "It was a great shock when Oliver was born. I found the first twenty-four hours, maybe the first forty-eight, difficult to cope with. But Damon was brilliant. He loved Ollie the minute he saw him and he looked after him until I came round. I wouldn't have got through without Damon. While I was weeping and being hysterical, he just got on with being a daddy."

Damon recalls. "My reaction, was that Oliver was the most important thing and everything else was irrelevant - so that helped as much as it might have made things difficult. Georgie: "We've benefited from him too. He made us grow up, grow together and think about someone other than ourselves. I think Damon already knew, but I hadn't sussed it out until Oliver arrived, that life isn't perfect. You have to get on with what you are given. Children are sent to us for a reason and our job is to care for them and love them. It's difficult to say without being gooey but it doesn't matter to me if Ollie has Down's syndrome. He is my son and I love him unconditionally."

As he has grown they have found that he tends to bring out the best in people. "When they meet him, they really take to him and want to play with him, talk to him and be involved with him. His sweet, angelic face draws people to him." says Georgie. "I don't think of Ollie as our son with Down's Syndrome - he is our son. I think it would be a sad world if we only had perfect people in it."

Their second child, Joshua Damon, was born in January 1991 and Georgie and Damon admit that they would like more!"

On the outside, they could be any other young family - Georgie feels that being in the public eye hasn't changed them too much. "I still have to go to Sainsburys" she says. Damon points out that "I still put the dustbin out late at night - sometimes just in my underpants. Mind you, nowadays I have a good look around to make sure there is no one there."

Damon and Georgie are clearly a couple devoted to each other and their children. Damon recalls how Georgie could not believe that he had been so pampered. "I had women all around me with my Mum, who took on all the responsibility and my sisters. Georgie soon sorted me out. She knocked some sense into me."

Damon has always had a strong belief in where he wanted to be at a particular time in his life. He would probably be the first to admit that has not always been possible to keep to that timetable, But Georgie says admiringly of him: "He's a very charming, well-mannered guy. Lovely in fact. Wherever he goes, people like him - but underneath, he'd stop at nothing to get where he wants to go."

Damon: "I was very privileged for the first fifteen years of my life, but now I'm going to have to get on with it like Dad did. He started from scratch and made it his own way. I think in my twenties I very much wanted to force my own plan on my life. I wanted things to happen My way and tended to battle on in one direction, not allowing anything to affect me. But after a while you realise that things are going to happen or they're not. As long as you can say you've done your best and not soft-pedalled anywhere, then you should be satisfied." However, he says, he thinks he is very much like his father - especially when it comes to refusing to accept defeat. "If someone tells me I can't do something, for whatever reason, I just can't accept it.

Although concealed deep within Damon's persona is a certain ruthless trait - surely needed by any driver aspiring for the top, most descriptions of him tend to concentrate on his other more obvious attributes. A quiet, pleasant, serious man; someone with great mental resilience... Damon describes himself as "slightly batty in some ways, in others, fairly level-headed. Actually, I have a split personality. One half of me thinks I am better than everyone else and the other half keeps doubting me. If other people doubt me, the half that thinks I am better comes out, but sometimes I have doubts and I have to prove myself to myself. So I am motivated by this stick and carrot routine."

"I think at times I appear miserable when I'm not. People come up and say 'cheer up, it can't be that bad', and I don't know what they mean. I might be having quite positive thoughts at that moment, but it seems I still look miserable. I'm not." On race weekends, though, Damon's concentration is total, and like his father before him, the people around Damon learn when the time is best to leave him to himself. "Georgie knows my moods and knows to give me space on a race weekend. I can be quite an ogre, but she forgives my outbursts. And then she gets her own back during the week!"

Damon's personal off-track transport has not always accurately reflected the glamorous image of a racing driver. In fact, until he signed for Williams-Renault in 1993 and they provided him with a series of their top of the range cars such as the Clio, Safrane and Espace he had never been one for owning a 'flashy' car.

He must have looked a little out of place in the car that he was using in 1987 - a Ford Escort 1.4L. "People tend to be disappointed when they see what I drive on the road, but it's perfect for my job, even if it is a wee bit slow. I must admit I have to consciously adjust when I come off the circuit, otherwise I try to drive off at 100mph, and it still feels like I could get out and walk faster."One of his earliest cars was a VW Beetle that he promptly painted inside and out with Hammerite and later he could be found driving another VW - a Golf this time. As the Hill family expanded, the mandatory estate was acquired, in the shape of a Mercedes - room for the golf clubs too!

Perhaps the busiest room in the house for Damon is his 'study' - adorned with pictures of his father, this corner of the Hill household is a hub of business activity. Damon has often admitted that his job is 90% business and 10% driving. Early in 1989 it was looking more like 100% in favour of the desk. Spending much of the day with a telephone glued to his ear, Hill needed to fix a drive for the year to continue his steady climb up the sport's ladder.