There’s no doubt that Crispian’s book is a tough read, sometimes depressing, often crushing our idols; people and sportsmen we looked up to. This time Munroe took the start, with the team’s strategy resting on the hope that he would hold up most of the field before handing over to Goodwin after a short but steady stint. To feed his apparently insatiable appetite for fame and attention, Munroe had hired a public relations specialist, Panic Publicity, at the start of the season, and this company probably organised the original Soho launch.

Come the first round of the championship, at Silverstone on 28th March, the pre-season optimism continued when the team’s lead driver put the McLaren on pole position with a lap over eight seconds quicker than the car’s custodian could manage. Now going by the name James Munroe, he fooled himself that he was ready to live the second part of his childhood dream: he was going to become a racing driver. The kind of white collar criminals we hear about all the time – who just don't happen to get into professional racing. Biography: Crispian Besley is a first-time author with a life-long interest in cars and a passion for motor racing. Through his extraordinary duplicity, the ultimate vanity project was unwittingly financed by funds embezzled from his employer.Remarkably, he found responsible employment yet again, in March 2015, by which time he was 51 and once again using his real name, James Cox. He stayed in front for five laps until encountering a backmarker, a Marcos Mantis, that crossed his path just as he was about to lap it, forcing him to spin in avoidance.

Indeed, the only recognition he ever seemed to receive over the course of two seasons with the F355 came at Croft, North Yorkshire, when the race commentator lavished inordinate attention on his car just because its red-and-white harlequin livery looked similar to nearby Sunderland football club’s team strip. For all his many failings, which included a lack of talent behind the wheel of a racing car, what is undeniable is that this figure of intrigue and amusement amongst the paddock crowd was not only passionate about fast cars but also had great taste in them. In 1995, soon after joining the company, he had established ghost companies — Execom Management Services Ltd, Thinexcel Management Services Ltd and Business Visions Ltd — and registered them at his home address of Almond Close, Wokingham, with he and his wife listed as directors. A serial conman and deluded ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasist, James Munroe — born James Cox —appeared to typify dull, unremarkable respectability but led a very public and extravagant double life. Cox was tracked down and found to be living in a Premier Inn hotel in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, at the time of his arrest.Despite more than thirteen years working in this industry, I was unaware of many of the stories featured. As Goodwin’s international career was in the ascendency, this wasn’t a drive he needed or even particularly wanted, but he accepted it on the basis that it would do him no harm, keep him race-sharp and reward him with, in his words, ‘a crazy amount of money’. In the case of James Cox (aka James Munroe), his craving for attention suggested that he received his highs not so much from racing one of the fastest and most desirable sportscars ever made but more from the publicity and kudos that went with it. People in the British GT paddock were intrigued about where this previously unknown driver had come from, especially one who not only owned a McLaren for road use but could also afford to own and race another one.