– such as me and my fellow young cyclists when, at the training camp in Stirling in 1989, Millar advised us not to ask him about the Tour de France because it wasn’t ‘relevant’ to us. But underpinning this apparently insensitive remark was the conviction of someone who knew what he was talking about, and knew he was right.
When he was in his late teens, on the other hand, Millar seemed convinced that he would be different – that he knew how to make it, and would succeed if he applied certain principles. In an interview in 1991, Bilsland observed, ‘Millar was one in a million. He always knew where he was going.’ He had, he added, ‘an inner hardness’. Bilsland’s conviction on this point has not changed in the years since then. ‘From day one he said he wanted to go to the continent and turn professional,’ he says. ‘That was his aim. And it’s always easier if your father’s gone before you.’ When pressed on his use of the word ‘father’, Bilsland rejects the suggestion that he was a father figure to Millar. ‘Not really, because I wasn’t that much older than him,’ he explains. ‘It was more a case of me saying to him, “Any way I can help you, I will.”’ Bilsland must have been fond of Millar. ‘Yeah, I like him. I think he’s a great guy.’
Bilsland speaks in the present tense sometimes, at other times referring to his former protégé as if he is no longer around. The reason is that he is uncertain about the current state of their relationship. Like everyone else, and despite their previous closeness, he has no idea where Millar is. He has heard rumours, but nothing concrete, and nothing from Millar himself. When Millar was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2003 it was Bilsland who attended the ceremony on his behalf, at the request of the organizers. He didn’t hear from Millar, and he still has the small trophy presented to Millar, in absentia, on the night. Yet he remains fiercely protective of someone he remembers with great fondness. So much so that when I initially contacted him he refused to talk about him. ‘Robert’s a private person,’ was Bilsland’s response. ‘He wouldn’t want a book written about him.’ Although no one else refused to discuss Millar, I did sense, in the case of one or two of his old acquaintances, an initial hesitation, and guardedness. Some seemed to want to protect Millar, though from what, and for what reason, they did not know. That much became clear when they all asked the same questions. Where is he? What’s he doing?
Bilsland’s refusal to talk about his former protégé, however, was a big problem. And one of the difficulties, quite apart from the fact that I considered his input essential, was that I could see his point. Millar had given his consent to my writing a book by email through a third party, which, I had to admit, hardly constituted a ringing endorsement. But it was all I had, it was all I was likely to get; and I felt strongly that the story of Britain’s greatest ever cyclist, the man who had single-handedly turned thousands of us on to the sport, deserved to be written. Bilsland’s knockback was therefore a hard blow. So I wrote to him, outlining my plans for the book and the motivation that lay behind it – and thankfully, he relented. When we met, he couldn’t have been more helpful.
Neither could he have been more convincing in his respect and admiration for Millar. He appears genuinely upset by some of the stories that have circulated around Millar, particularly in relation to his legendary inability to get on with people. ‘I never found that,’ Bilsland insists. ‘He was shy, and OK, to try to speak to him was like drawing teeth sometimes, but I could chat to him. When he came home for the winter he always came into the shop [Billy Bilsland Cycles] and he could be chatty.’ And anyway, suggests Bilsland, to focus on how Millar interacted with people who in many cases were complete strangers is to completely miss the point – or the point of his cycling career at least. ‘Robert did it for himself,’ he says. ‘He didn’t do it for adulation.’ And then he adds, making a clear distinction between romantic notions – or delusions – of the sport and the cold reality of the business of professional cycling, ‘Robert did it for money, which might be the root of all evil, but it’s handy to have.’
Bilsland is matter-of-fact rather than sentimental. A well-built, stocky man who turned 60 in 2006, he is cheerful and friendly. He has a permanent twinkle in his eye and he laughs a lot, a silent laugh that begins deep in his stomach and eventually overcomes him, causing his shoulders to shake. But while he appears more genial and good-humoured than Millar, he can be a straight talker, too. ‘Robert didn’t suffer fools, never did,’ he says. ‘Big words were a thing with Robert. He doesn’t do bullshit. Some people are egotistic, but Robert didn’t have a big ego. I can imagine him now, wherever he is, if he meets someone out on his bike and they say, “You do a bit of cycling?” He’ll say, “Aye, I do a bit of cycling.” That would be it. End of conversation. He’s a downbeat, unassuming guy. A very bright guy. When I think about chatting to him, he was just a good guy. It’s a pity.’
‘If you speak to Robert, tell him I’m still alive,’ he smiles when I leave him at the station in Glasgow.
Apart from Bilsland, Millar was also hugely reliant on his father, Bill, for transport to races. However, although he was close to his mother, his relationship with his father was, by all accounts, strained. Those who knew the family say that father and son were similar: physically small, slightly built, quiet. Bill walked with a limp, often with the aid of a walking stick, as a result of polio.
‘Robert was a great mammy’s boy,’ says Arthur Campbell. ‘His father had a bit of a limp and I think he was a bit … I wouldn’t say Robert was disgraced by it, but he didn’t appear to have the same respect for his father as he did for his mother. His mum was a seamstress, and she never kept very well.’ Willie Gibb gently disputes Campbell’s suggestion, recalling journeys to London and Manchester with Bill Millar at the wheel. ‘He was good,’ says Gibb. ‘He went out of his way to help Robert. He was a quiet guy but helpful. I never picked up that Robert was embarrassed by his father’s limp, though he didn’t always appear grateful for the help he gave him. I think it could be as simple as the fact that his father would have been the sterner of his parents, the disciplinarian of the family. Robert wouldn’t have liked that.’
David Whitehall remembers one exchange between Robert and his father at a race in Aberdeen to which Bill had driven. ‘Robert seemed ashamed to be seen with him; he’d kind of usher him away. It was like his father was the delivery man, taking him to races, and then that was his work done until it was time to drive him home. I remember he put the wrong wheels on Robert’s bike. Robert was furious. “Dad, you put on the wheels with the big tubs [tyres]!” He gave him a right dressing down. And his dad just took it, you know, in a mea culpa type way. He’d kind of be saying, “You know what Robert’s like.” Others found it quite awkward.’
Neighbours of the Millars on Nithsdale Drive remember Bill with affection. Contrary to Millar’s quote at the head of this chapter, they don’t recall him ever being out of work. Rather, he had risen from being an ironmonger’s assistant at the time of Millar’s birth to become a salesman. Describing Bill Millar as the ‘perfect neighbour’ and ‘always well dressed, very dapper’, they explained that his passions were ballroom dancing – which he did with aplomb, despite his limp – and gardening. He tended a small patch in front of the Millars’ flat. Though quiet, he was cheerful, he could be outgoing, and he was, according to those neighbours, ‘quite proud of his boy’.
Bill Millar was occasionally sought by the media for a comment as his son’s career blossomed, though he didn’t appear to be effusive. When in 1984 Robert really hit the heights in the Tour de France his father was approached by Channel 4 and asked for a reaction. ‘We tried to get his father to give comment,’ recalls the Channel 4 commentator, Phil Liggett, ‘but he said, “I’ve got more children than just the one who rides the Tour de France. It’s very good that he’s done it, but I like my other children just as much.” It was a strange interview. His dad didn’t seem to want to know.’ Even later, when a journalist phoned the house to arrange an interview with his son, Bill Millar replied, ‘He is difficult … you had better check with Robert himself.’
It is
