GUY MARTIN

The only thing I keep from the races I've won are the handle bar grips from the bike, the rubber bits.

My idea of splashing out would be buying a new spanner. I've got about 300 - you can't have too many in my opinion.

I don't go to racers' funerals.

There's a line you have when you're racing, and you can ride up to that line. If you push beyond it, you might crash. But first is first, second is forgotten. That's what we say.

I'm not much of a chef, so people keep buying me cookery books to broaden my culinary horizons, but I've not got far past shepherd's pie yet.

Not everybody would choose to be a firefighter or an ambulance driver. Not everyone wants to see the nasty bits of life.

It's bred in me that I only see real work as getting stuck in and getting your hands dirty.

I should be paid to be a spokesman for Ford Transit.

We all buy our meat wrapped in plastic because we don't like to think about the animal that died.

I don't want to be famous.

People who race bikes don't talk about crashes. They keep going.

I feel that I'm in good company behind the wheel of the Williams FW08C. It was the first F1 car to be driven by the great Ayrton Senna, and it won the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix.

As far as I am concerned, the Ulster Grand Prix is my favourite race.

I'm a bit embarrassed about how little I know about the First World War. I didn't even know that tanks were used in it.

I like being in control of my own destiny, really.

I love Scarborough. I think I have more wins there than anyone else.

For my first race, when I was 19, I'd bought a 600cc bike. And that was far too big for me, really. I shouldn't have really had something like that. But anyway, I went and raced, and I crashed. In my very first race! But I never gave in. I kept going back and back and back.

I get home from work at six or seven. When I'm busy, I set my alarm for three, get out of bed at quarter past three. I have a cup of tea and read a magazine and take the dogs for a walk up the lane. Go through my text messages and reply to anything that needs it, then get my biking gear on ready to cycle to work.

Racing's been good to me, but I'm bored of it.

Going back because it's what I did and I was sort of all right at it is not a good reason to race the TT.

I have a night job driving tractors on biomass farms.

I've had my eyes opened to so many things. But still, all I really want to do is my truck job. It's like an ingrained, default setting.

I like pushing myself.

I do all that TV stuff, and it's not real work.

I work nights on a farm in the summer when harvest starts. I work on a civil engineering site down the Humber Docks where all the refineries are. So that's my day job from seven to four. And then I build engines at night.