In early June 2026, work experience student Albi Best joined the team at Stephen Leslie Productions and kicked off her week with us by interviewing author, presenter and Motor Sports Commentator of the Year, Micheal Hill.
Albi attends the Brit School, studying theatre and is excited to be learning about all of the behind the scenes work with Stephen Leslie Productions and helping out with all current projects.
Albi conducted the interview with Michael in Hampton Hill.
In the show, how have you managed to show that Superbike races and theatre performances are more alike than it may seem?
Good question. I think one of the ways we did it was, if you think about a motorbike racer on the track it’s just one person, but there’s a whole load of people behind the scenes that people don’t see and I think what we did in the show was we showed by bringing you know, not just the production side of it with Steve and Lucy and the PR but also from the theatre side there’s so many moving parts, so with the lights and smoke and the effects and things like that so I think we were able to show that there is quite a lot of similarities and I think also the way you prepare is quite similar as well.
Can you tell us about the two Wheels track for Life Charity and those who it will help?
So two wheels for life is a charity that was founded about 30 years ago by a former grand prix racer from America called Randy Mamola and a lady called Andrea Coleman. Basically what they do is they take primarily used items from riders in MotoGP and superbike helmets and leathers and various other things and they get auctioned and then all of the money goes to buying motorcycles which are then given to doctors and nurses who then take medical equipment and vaccines etc to remote places around the world so they do a lot of work with HIV and AIDS and they did a lot of work during the pandemic, delivering vaccines so it’s kind of a motorcycle charity that uses racing to facilitate people around the world.
The original target running time for the show was two and a half hours however in the end the show was about three hours long. If the show had been 8 hours long, what would you like to include?
I think we could have made it 16 hours long! We had so much content, and that was the thing because obviously we had rehearsed and it’s very different ,as you will know, getting in front of a live audience and you’ve got them giving you feedback and then you feed from it and there’s parts of the show where it was a little bit kind of freestyle but there’s no timer you know, if ive got a tv show there is a tv director saying you’ve got two minutes so when I just kind of went wondering off i just thought oh well everyone seems to be enjoying it we’ll just keep going!
But i think i would have liked maybe to have included some things things that are not necessarily the dark side but bits about when people crash and maybe a few more things like that which we didn’t but i think from the people I’ve spoken to I think we had a really good mix of everything so we had everything from sort of narration of the history of the championship to audience participation and we didn’t just focus on the world championship which originally when we talked about it that’s what we were going to do but we then kind of brought in British championships and American championships and I don’t really know what else we could have put in. we could have maybe put some crash sequences in and maybe have two guests, so maybe have a guest if the first and the second half possibly but i think the show was pretty well rounded and nobody seemed to mind that it was you know two and a half, maybe three hours long on the night, you know everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Did you find it more nerve wracking waiting at the start line of a motorbike race or waiting backstage for the performance to start?
Waiting backstage before the show started. I was so nervous because ive done theatre before but this was very different and for me, my book came out last year and there were bits from the book that i was a little bit unsure about in the beginning because I didn’t want it to be just a ‘ Michals career’ kind of thing so I was quite nervous about that and obviously I had some family members in and there were people in the audience that I didn’t realize were coming until that day and it was just a bit, I suppose just daunting a bit because I didn’t want to mess it up and I didn’t want to say it in the wrong way but I think in the end it was definitely waiting to go on stage that was more daunting but it’s really weird like when the music started my heart rate it felt like it was probably 200 beats so it did feel quite similar to waiting for the lights and waiting to go racing but then the minute I walked out and the crowd you can just feel the energy and I was like ah okay and then you forget about. I’d do it again. I’d do it again tomorrow.
Are there any particular dates or towns that have been organized for the upcoming tour? Is that anywhere you are particularly excited about?
I think I’m excited to take it anywhere where there are people that will come and see it because I think I wasn’t really sure how it would be perceived you know there’s lots of shows where it’s just like a chat with a rider or a guest where this was so so different so I think the fact that it went so well and now people are saying are you going to bring it here are you gonna bring it there which shows me that there is an appetite for it so ill be exited to see it anywhere. I put it on my social media and a lot of people were saying in the midlands so I think the Midlands wherever that would be would be Nottingham, Darby, Leicester, I don’t know. My mum obviously has said it would be kind of nice to do something that’s a bit further north so in the back of my head I’m thinking it would be kinda cool like starting out in the north east if there was a northeast venue that would tie in quite nicely. I’d actually really like to take it overseas. Doing it in the UK is great but obviously I work in a world championship and I work in the US so I think if there was a possibility in the next year or two to be able to take it to the states, Australia would be nice wouldn’t it be Steve! If we could have a couple of European venues and something overseas but I think the kind of show that it is it’s something that we can continue to grow it as we go because it always be a new world champion and there will always be new things happening or you know exciting races or overtakes so I think we can potentially do something over the next few years that just keeps going like an annual thing maybe.
We’d like to thank Albi and Michael for their time.
