Re: £25pw? LUXURY!
Yup! I worked for most of the F1 teams in the early 90's and they thought it was such a privilege to work for them that I earned £6000/year. I built the first in car telemetry, test day timing systems, on-car monitoring hardware, etc. - in the days when one person was allowed to do the whole job.
It's given me some anecdotes, but I had to leave to get a properly paying job when I got married!