Formula One has been ruined by PR and sponsors, they say. Never mind the fact that without the sponsors many of the teams would find it hard (impossible...) to compete -- the fact that sponsors all have corporate interests to protect means that drivers are now personality-free zones allowed to speak only in product-friendly taglines.
Back when James Hunt was promoting sex as the breakfast of champions and a man wasn't a man without a venereal disease and a nicotine habit, F1 drivers were characters, without a bland or boring soul among the bunch.
Aren't rose-tinted spectacles lovely?
Sitting in the first FIA drivers' press conference of the 2016 season on Thursday, it was interesting to observe the faces of Jolyon Palmer and Rio Haryanto, the two rookies present. After the usual round of opening questions the focus turned to Lewis Hamilton and his recent adventures on Snapchat. As a marquee star, Hamilton is of interest to the F1 media in general, and to the British press in particular -- hometown heros shift papers, wherever your hometown happens to be.
To a journalist on deadline, Hamilton is like manna from heaven. When there's not a race win to write about, the Briton's celebrity lifestyle is an easy source of headline material. Given his attachment to social media - the separate Instagram accounts for both man and dogs, the Snapchat stories, the occasional ill-judged tweet -- Hamilton allows journalists to mine his life for material even when he is miles from any paddock.
Sitting in the back row of the press conference, listening in as Hamilton was quizzed about the more controversial aspects of his recent trip to New Zealand, Palmer and Haryanto both visibly blanched on more than one occasion. Intimidated by this first exposure to the press pack in a feeding frenzy (albeit a far lighter frenzy than others we've seen), you could see both drivers mentally setting their social media accounts to private.
There's a timeless saying (or proverb, or curse, depending on your perspective) which states "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it".
In recent years, the F1 press pack has been crying out for drivers with personalities, racers who show us the man under the helmet and not just the well-drilled PR machine. So too have the fans. But when we get a glimpse of a personality that's not to our tastes, rather than sigh 'different strokes for different folks', the instinct is to go on the attack.
It's not just a media thing, but a human one. Perhaps tribalism is a factor, with passionate Fernando Alonso fans lashing out at Hamilton just as the Briton's biggest supporters are quick to criticise the Spaniard. But life is not a zero-sum game. Backing one horse doesn't prevent a gambler from appreciating the form of another, even as he is cursing the money lost on a bad bet.
As fans, as media, and as people, if we are to demand that our heroes (in this case our F1 drivers, but the principle is universal) reveal some of their true selves to us, we should refrain from criticism when it turns out that the reality of the individual is different from the fantasy. If not, they will return to showing us as little as possible.
Life is messy, and people are imperfect. If we want to look behind the veil, we must accept that there will be times where we don't like what we see. To expect perfection of our heroes and role models is to demand that they act like the PR-friendly automatons we profess to hate.
If we want to 'get to know' our celebrities, we have to accept that every single person on this planet is going to be a plonker some of the time. It's called being human, and none of us are immune.