Where are they now?: Barry Sheene

BARRY SHEENE, MBE, who won the 500cc title in 1976 and 1977 to become the world's most recognised motorcycle racer, is returning to the fray this week for the British Grand Prix at Donington. Sheene, 42, will be side-by-side for Sunday's race with another former two-wheel charger, the present No 2 in the Williams Formula One team, Damon Hill.

Sheene and Hill, old friends and now fellow commentators, will be working for Australia's Channel 9, where Sheene has covered motor sport for six years.

The Londoner lives on Queensland's Gold Coast, having moved there in 1987 with his wife Stephanie, daughter Sidonie, son Freddie, parents and parents-in-law. The whole tribe live on three and a half acres by the Nerang River.

He has several business interests on the Gold Coast, and in the UK, he appears in television commercials for Shell and he is kept busy by Australia's proliferation of international motor sport.

The most widely told tale about Sheene is of his encounters with airport metal detectors, protesting at the nuts and bolts holding his body together. One of Sheene's most spectacular crashes occurred at Silverstone in 1982 after which his battered legs were repaired with 27 screws. But he says: 'I don't have any metal in me now.'

(Photograph omitted)