John Hodge Gray, 1959 – 2024

The year was 1982 and it was November. There was snow on the ground, ice on the puddles and sleet in the air. On Sunday morning the 28th of November, the Sabbath peace was disturbed by folk stumbling out of B&Bs and Hotels around the market town of Castle Douglas. Many of them had sore heads and baggy eyes and all too quickly found there was a famine of Anadin and Alka Seltzer. These vital supplies had been snapped up the day before by the wise and the wily who had been there before.

The occasion was the annual Dunlop’s Lancia Rally (later to become the Galloway Hills Rally) the end of season forest rally thrash for Scottish rally crews and one which attracted interest from across the water. Lured by the prospect of Saturday night parties and a Sunday morning rally, the influx of Irish crews was a regular feature. It seemed that all too many crews treated this event as less of a competition and more of an end of term celebration. Fortunately, it seemed the local Polis also had a distinct shortage of breathalysers and a disinclination to use them!

Amongst the bleary eyed hordes there was one bright eyed and bushy tailed pair of youngsters who had partaken sensibly of beer, spirits and wholesome food, and an early bed – early hours of the morning bed, that is! They were about to embark on their first forest stage rally.

John Hodge Gray was a 23 year old heating and air conditioning apprentice engineer from Carnwath with a self built 1600cc Ford Escort and was about to launch an amateur career as a rally driver. He and navigator Dougie Stuart were ‘seeded’ at 57 in the 100 car entry. The excitement was palpable and infectious. The service crew was hardly professional either, just a bunch of like minded pals out for a hoolie.

The rally started at 9.00am and after 12 stages would finish from mid afternoon onwards, allowing time for the Irish crews to get the ferry home from nearby Stranraer.

The two lads set off on their first epic adventure and survived a lurid spin on the third stage at Black Loch, the sliding Escort fully sideways through a pair of gateposts with not a mark on the paintwork. In the sixth stage at Drumjohn the exhaust came off over the infamous ‘yumps’ giving the service crew something to do at the road end. Then on stage 10 in Dundeugh, a tyre punctured but the driver didn’t notice till the Stop Line Marshals pointed it out. Back in Castle Douglas after 12 stages they found themselves in 31st place overall and sixth in class. Adding to their delight, they had finished just 2 minutes behind the number 33 seeds, fellow Coltness CC members ‘Uncle Shooey’ Steel and navigator James S McRae after 50 miles of stages.

The rally ‘budget’ restricted outings the following year in 1983 but the James Fleming Baldoon Stages was tackled by the twosome in the Escort. This time they finished 12th overall from a start number of 40, somehow managing to beat a certain Charlie Nichol and John Fife by TWO seconds and who had tied for 14th place with Andrew Smith and Jonathan Lord. Some sort of skullduggery was of course suspected by the two ‘vanquished’ crews but upon recourse to the bar at the Corsemalzie House Hotel later that evening (and into the early hours of the morning) the friendships were duly formalised and celebrated. Truth be told, I don’t really remember too much from that evening/weekend, nor do the majority of folks who were there!

John Gray’s first top ten finish was achieved that year when he and Dougie finished 8th overall on the Runway Stages Rally. There were only a couple of outings in 1984 as not only budget, but concentration on his engineering profession dictated what could be done. Rallying wasn’t about winning, it was about competition and enjoyment with work on the car being almost as enjoyable as driving it.

The year 1985 was memorable for three reasons. John Gray became ‘Jock’ Gray, and he and Dougie finished second overall on the Baldoon Stages just 9 seconds behind Kieron Hill in a Chevette HSR and 6 seconds ahead of a certain Murray Grierson in his Escort RS. Thirdly, Jock had an eccentric choice of navigator for the Autofit Stages Rally when he and a 16 year old Colin McRae finished 12th overall on the Autofit Stages Rally in Argyll.

This was typical of Jock, helping youngsters to get started. Even in the early days he was approachable, helpful and great company. In the incestuous world of Coltness Car Club where everybody seemed to help everybody else, Jock was a lynchpin. The words ‘No’ and ‘Not’ were not in his vocabulary and his converted byre/garage was a hub for like minded souls to gather. The tea was weak, the coffee was foul, the biscuits were plentiful and the banter was cruel, but the energy and fun was infectious.

It was the same at rallies, if Jock had spare parts that others needed, even his rivals, he was always helpful and then in 1986 a new partnership was formed, Fergus Loudon joined Jock’s ‘team’ as regular co-driver, although other co-drivers were pressed into service when Fergus’s work commitments interfered! After a solid start to the season with Dougie on the Snowman and Valentine, Fergus was then in charge of the exuberant presence in the driving seat for the rest of the season with 7th o/a on the Autofit, 14th on the Border and 11th on the Trossachs. That clinched the Challenger’s title as top Newcomer in the national Scottish Rally Championship that season with Jock finishing ahead of George Gauld and Colin McRae.

In fact, that partnership went full circle when Fergus’ son Stuart navigated for Jock on the 2017 McRae Gravel Challenge in the borrowed Rod McFarlane’s Opel Manta.

It wasn’t till 1989 that Jock scored his first ever outright rally victory and that was on the non-championship Baldoon Stages Rally after which he was ceremoniously dooked in the River Cree at Newton Stewart by his so-called ‘pals’ which included ring-leaders Willie Kirkhope, Colin and Alister McRae.

By this time, Jock was a ‘top seed’ but bad luck dogged his wheel tracks with gearbox and driveshaft failures in his Nova days and transmission and turbo troubles with his Sierra Cosworth. Victories and points, talent and speed frustrated by component failures. Even so, in 1990 he finished runner-up to the new Scottish Rally Champion, Jimmy Girvan, in the Sierra but didn’t score his first outright rally victory on a Scottish Championship round till the 1992 Snowman Rally when he and Fergus shared the victory champagne shower for the first time.

His rallying activities started to tail off after that with more responsibility and promotion at work and more family commitments at home. He had one last fling in the 2003 season when he acquired a DAM 4100 GTi. That resulted in a most dispiriting campaign with a car that was plagued with mechanical problems. Jock bore the brunt of those failures with resilience and good grace and was never one to mope about and kick the cat. Throughout his rallying, Jock enjoyed the competition and camaraderie. It wasn’t about winning, although he was fiercely competitive, it was about the enjoyment and that was shared with his huge circle of friends.

Now he had other things on his mind, two fast growing boys who shared their father’s interest in another lifelong passion – rugby.

His last rally outing was on the 2022 McRae Rally Challenge when he was co-driven by another of his ‘protégé’s’, Jordan Black and where Jock was his usual bubbly, irrepressible self, rarely happier than behind the wheel of a rally car. And it was that image that made the most recent news all the harder to bear. Nine months ago he was struck down by one of the most cruel of diseases, a wasting disease called CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). For Jock, in an emotional lifetime of thrills, spills, disappointments and great fun, it was just another ‘mechanical’ failure to be borne with great fortitude and dignity: “Ah well, it is what it is.” A phrase often heard in the past when others might have been in tears or deep despair and yet Jock just accepted it - and then smiled. All was well with the world.

For such a life to be cut short in such a cruel fashion is unbearable for any of us to comprehend, let alone his family and friends, and yet through it all, Susan and the boys, Cameron and Jordan, have been saints – even latterly when Jock was crashing his electric wheelchair into the furniture in timed races against his visitors around the groundfloor of the farmhouse at Liberton.

It’s just so sad, and so unfair.