1982. Eventually Space Station is set up after a year of Alastair trying to gain the funding and property he needs.

After months of trying to set up the business I was in despair, I wanted to go back to motor racing.  I could have gone back easily enough, I just put my hand up and say: ‘I want to motor race again,’ and a team would have hired me.

But a friend took me down to his rubbish tip – and it was a rubbish tip – in Colnbrook. He said: ‘You can have quarter of an acre at the back,’ so I leveled it off with his bulldozer, paved it myself, went to the East End and bought shipping containers. My fortune is based on shipping containers and I still own 340 of them. I put them down in rows, rented them out and the people liked what I had to offer.

Within months I had 50 containers and then I had 70 and then I had 100. Then I opened another site and another site; I got ahead of myself at times. At one point I had my daughter running a site that I couldn’t afford to stock with containers but I couldn’t afford not to take it because the landlord might have given it to somebody else. Poor Ruth was sitting on this empty site for me, sleeping on the floor during the day because she was so bored.

The government would send a woman out every six months to see how I was getting on because I was still receiving my £40 a week grant. When she first came out I had one business and the next time I had two and then I had three and I was too busy to talk to her so I just had to say: ‘You just sit there and I'll be with you later.’ She soon realised I wasn’t just taking the money and watching Magic Roundabout on daytime TV.

• 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