It was the celebrity collaboration we didn’t know we needed: Martin Brundle and Kim Kardashian – together at last!
Brundle’s grid walks remain unmissable sporting TV and the great man delivered another live masterpiece on Sunday, culminating in a worlds-collide celebrity interaction for the ages.
The Monaco grid is a particularly confined space with an even greater than usual number of F1 hangers-on and general randoms, and thus the most challenging assignment in the calendar for Martin’s unique method. This year was an all-timer.
I find watching his walks to be in equal measure deeply entertaining and intensely stressful. Who will talk to him? Which celebrity will have no idea who he is? Equally, which very famous person will be a complete unknown to Martin?
Sunday’s renewal saw him face a formidable opponent right out of the gate: actress Cynthia Erivo, star of the Wicked franchise and all-round mega luvvie who always seems to be bursting into tears. “I’m not doing interviews today,” said La Erivo.
Rude.
She might not have been holding space for Martin but our man wasn’t going to dwell on that. He pivoted skilfully to Prince Salman of Bahrain, the McLaren top boy, who gave him a much more generous welcome. Back in the game.
Desperately pushing his way through the crowds in search of he knew not quite what, as if in some sort of terrible anxiety dream, Martin tried to talk to the back of a bloke who I think might have been the male model Jacob Rott. The back of Rott did not answer him, and nor the front of Rott neither.
I am hazarding an educated guess as to this individual’s identity, by the way, because F1 provides the media with a rundown of the celebrities who will be in attendance. It’s a tremendous mixture: on the one hand, a who-isn’t-who of influencers, grifters and nobodies, yet marbled throughout with some absolute greats of their fields – your Michael Douglases, the Catherine Zeta-Joneses, the Sir Mark Cavendishes of this world.
Also on this occasion, a good handful of England footballers who have sadly not attracted the attention of Herr Tuchel: Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Morgan Gibbs-White, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall… the double-barrelled surnames perhaps gulling class-obsessed Monegasque organisers into thinking them posh?
Further to these, from the world of the performing arts and popular music, may we present for your delectation Dadju, Rampa, Pawsa and Reezy, names who will need no further introduction to any reader of His Majesty’s Daily Telegraph. Martin dodged or missed many, but thank God for good egg Karen Gillan from Doctor Who, who very sweetly said: “Oh you are the legendary news reporter.” Martin, charmingly: “Oh no, I’m Martin Brundle from Sky Sports.” In a world of Erivos, be a Gillan.
By now, though, security and hired goons had started to get twitchy and Martin had to say “Don’t push me mate, I’m nearly famous” to a huge gorilla of a bloke in a black suit who was the personal protection for, I kid you not, Donald Trump Jnr. Absolutely superb.
But the toughest assignment was yet to come: the final boss of up-themselves celebrities, actual Kim Kardashian herself, with a lesser Kardashian (understood to be Khloe) riding shotgun like a very well-coiffured minder. Kim was there in her capacity as Lewis Hamilton’s current girlfriend but had sadly not done her homework in the Karen Gillan style and completely blanked the man who once stood on the podium fully five times in the 1992 F1 season for Camel Benetton Ford. Shocking.
Martin: Kim, Martin Brundle, Sky F1. How, how are you today? […] Are you enjoying F1?
Kim: 🤔⁉️❓️❔️🤨
😂😂😂😂 #MonacoGPpic.twitter.com/KZTqa63erM
— Sir Lewis Updates (@LH44updates) June 7, 2026
“Normally people will have a quick chat with us,” Martin muttered. Kardashian major and minor were not bovvered. Their loss, and there was absolutely only one winner on the day. I don’t know how Martin does it, or indeed why he does it, but his legend only grows and Kardashian was left looking like a right ratbag.
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