Alastair has to sign on to the dole in order become eligible for a grant to help with his business.

I was signed on! In 1982 I was signing on the dole. The Government had a grant for people who were on the dole to get them back into work: £40 a week. So I went down to the unemployment office in Maidenhead and said: ‘Right I want my £40 a week,’ and they said: ‘You have to be unemployed.’ I said: ‘I am unemployed,’ and they said: ‘No you have to be signed on and unemployed for 8 weeks,’ and I said: ‘Show me where to sign.’

Signing on was an adventure in itself. You had to go and queue every fortnight get your money. The whole place would be full with 200 people at 8 o’clock in the morning when they opened. The staff would all be talking about what they saw on Eastenders the night before ignoring us completely so I would say: ‘Excuse me it’s 8:05,’ and then ‘it’s 8:07, are you guys going to open up or not?’ One morning I said: ‘Look you’re going to make all these people late for work.’ It was funny because of course they all had jobs. Some days you’d be there and the builders' van would turn up with six guys in the back and they all jumped out with their work clothes while the van does a U-turn outside and they'd jump back in and drove to their job.

Starting the Self-storage business took me a year because I’d been totally disillusioned by growing up in the world of Grand Prix racing. When I worked for a Grand Prix team everybody wanted to help me. It didn’t matter who it was, you rang them up and said: ‘This is the McLaren Grand Prix team,’ and they’d do anything you wanted. But now when I rang up and said: ‘This is Alastair Caldwell,’ they’d say: ‘Yeah, who, and?’ I didn’t realise what the real world was like.

• 1943 Alastair's early years
• 1955 Licence to drive
• 1957 Alastair's High School years
• 1959 Evading the police
• 1960 Becoming a mechanic
• 1966 The Tasman series
• 1966 Leaving New Zealand
• 1967 Joining McLaren
• 1967 CanAm Door Catches
• 1967 Monza
• 1968 South Africa
• 1968 CanAm
• 1969 Driving the Formula 1 Cars
• 1973 Fittipaldi joins McLaren
• 1973 McLaren Team manager
• 1974 Montezemolo
• 1975 Hunt replaces Fittipaldi
• 1975 Hunt gets paid little
• 1976 Inventing the Air-Starter
• 1976 Six-speed Gear Boxes
• 1976 Misbehaving in Canada
• 1976 Japan
• 1977 Adidas Uniforms
• 1977 Changing Tyres
• 1977 Leaving McLaren
• 1979 Nelson Piquet
• 1980 Skirts on Formula 1 Cars
• 1981 Leaving Formula 1
• 1982 Making Lists
• 1982 Signing on
• 1982 Creating Space Station
• 1991 Highland Fling
• 1991 Classic Marathon
• 1992 Getting the Austin A35
• 1992 El Salvador
• 1993 Carerra Panamerica
• 1993 Centre of attention
• 1993 Nicest car in rally
• 1993 LeJog
• 2000 London to Sydney
• 2000 Porsche Racing
• 2000 Porsche Crashing
• 2001 Ferrari
• 2001 Inca Trail
• 2004 Berlin - Moscow - Berlin
• 2005 World Cup Rally
• 2007 Norway
• 2008 Liège-Brescia-Liège
• 2008 An Icelandic Odyssey
• 2008 North & West Africa
• 2009 West Coast America
• 2009 London to Casablanca
• 2010 New Zealand Festival of motor racing
• 2010 New Zealand Big Sky Adventure