Motor Racing journalist and 1950 World Sidecar Champion (Passenger). Born Denis Sargent Jenkinson in Honor Oak, South East London, and eventually known throughout the motor racing world as 'DSJ' or 'Jenks', he was a motor sports enthusiast from childhood. Whilst studying engineering at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London, war broke out and despite being a conscientious objector, he worked on the Experimental & Development Flight at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire. After the war, finding his Frazer Nash sportscar too expensive to retain,he went off to Europe to race motorcycles. After several fund-sapping mechanical failures he volunteered his services to passenger leading sidecar rider Eric Oliver, whose regular passenger had just returned to England. Diminutive, nerveless Jenks and long-limbed 'Spiderman' Oliver proved a formidable pairing and in 1950 he and Oliver won the World Championship on their Norton/Watsonian outfit. Whilst at the RAE he met Bill Boddy, Editor of Motor Sport magazine, and began working for him as their European Correspondent travelling around the continent in his Porsche 356 or Jaguar E-type from GP to GP. He loved racing and wrote with knowledge and passion, and whoa betide a driver who didn't measure up to his unswerving standards. In 1955 he was invited by Stirling Moss to navigate him round the Mille Miglia course in the works Mercedes Benz 300SLR sportscar. The combination of Moss's scintillating driving and Jenks' clever pace notes device, they won this legendary difficult road race. Jenks wrote numerous books on the sport he loved, and totally absorbed him. Whilst motor racing had a glamorous image, he always eshewed celebrity and "the soft life". He was happy living in a tiny dilapidated lodge-house deep in the Hampshire countryside. It lacked both running water supply and mains electricity. He continued reporting Grand Prix racing for 'Motor Sport' throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, but felt increasingly out of place with the exception of immense regard for, and a friendly relationship with, Ayrton Senna. Ultimately, upon Senna's death in 1994, even Jenks's iron interest faltered. Too much had changed since he had begun his roving racing life. He suffered a massive stroke in the summer of 1996, was cared for in a home run by the Brirish Motor Industry in 1997, aged 74. Jenks' funeral was more 'informal' than 'non-religious' and was conducted by one of the Queen's Chaplains, Canon Lionel Webber. The service at Aldershot Crematorium was a unique combination of of enthusiasm, good music and side-splitting humour, something Jenks would have adored. His ashes were scattered beneath a tree on a grassy island fronting the Phoenix Inn at Hartley Whitney, where he once had lodgings, and where he was a shareholder in Phegre Engineering, the Lagonda restoration and Weber agency housed in adjoining premises - and where before the war, the Vintage Sports Car Club - of which Jenks was a lifelong member - had actually been founded. (Edited by Doug Nye).