Andrew Clarke: A life in and around motorsport, Australian Rules Football and law firms hardly seems like a path to writing the life story of a father enduring not just his own medical issues, but those of a son who battled for 17 years of life. But it did. From very early in Andrew’s working life with the short-lived reincarnation for Footy Week, he was involved with ghost writing columns for football identities such as Leigh Matthews, Warwick Capper and Robert DiPierdomenico, as well other stories and profiles pieces on the people involved in the football world.

From there his love of motorsport was to draw him away from AFL, and the VACC and then Chevron Publishing allowed him to play in the sandpit that had been his childhood. In his adult life, Matchbox cars, Tonka toys and his own carefully crafted race tracks – in the sandpit – turned into stories on real cars and racing car drivers and that became all consuming, along with work marketing law firms which could be the strangest work combination in history.

In 2008 the chance came up to work with Australian motor racing legend Mark Skaife on two books, one a picture-based biography and the second a full autobiography with Random House (now Penguin Random House). Spending six months getting into Skaifey’s head was the perfect job for Andrew, and that evolved into the same tasks with people like F1 World Champion Alan Jones, AFL footballer Matthew Lloyd, racing driver Greg Murphy, Olympic Gold medallist Lydia Lassila and now with Cameron Miller who has a very different and non-sporting story to tell.

In all, Andrew has written 20 books, mostly on car racing, and will continue that theme this year with books on the Indy 500 and the Bathurst 1000 among his writing projects. He also works on radio as an expert reporter on motorsport, and presents on the history of Australian football and talks about his involvement as a coach with the Pakistan Shaheens in the AFL International Cup.

Andrew is the father of two active children who push the sporting and artistic boundaries through various levels of football, dancing and music (did we mention Andrew also managed bands at one stage and wrote music stories?) and his enjoying the prospect of one day scaling back and doing the ‘big’ project.