JOHNNY Herbert, two-time grand prix winner, stands barely 5ft 6in, tips the scales at a shade over 10st, looks nothing like his 33 years, and is known as Shirley Temple because of his impish looks and ready smile.

But behind that facade lurks another Herbert - the complete professional.

Responding patiently to being quizzed about his public persona as the grand prix court jester, Herbert's voice drops an octave as he explains: ''We all have our own ways of getting rid of pressure. Mine is to joke and laugh. In the car on every lap of every test, practice, qualifying session race or during debriefs I give it 110%. I am hard on the team, the engineers and myself.

Hockenheim on Sunday week will be the setting for his 105th grand prix, which, statistically, is reason enough to dub him a veteran.

In the latter part of his ninth grand prix season, including one year which significantly only involved two world championship races, Herbert is still a contender, if not for outright honours, then at the serious end of the clamouring runners.

The fact that he ever made it into a grand prix car has a great deal to do with a high pain threshold which kept him conscious after a violently destructive accident at Brands Hatch in the summer of 1988.

Driving in the European Formula 3000 race, Herbert tangled with Swiss Gregor Foitek's Lola. While Foitek's car rolled down the track, Herbert's speared into the barrier, badly damaging both his legs and shattering his right ankle.

It appeared that Herbert's rise from karting, through F3 and F3000, had come to a shuddering halt, and his Benetton contract was merely academic.

He pleaded with the medics to save the damaged foot, and after an autumn and winter of determined recovery winced his way into a Formula 1 car for the opening grand prix of 1989 in Rio de Janeiro.

Herbert drove brilliantly, finishing fourth on his grand prix debut. In truth, the flowing Rio track did not put a premium on heavy braking and the fact that Herbert was far from fully recovered was concealed.

Thereafter, a sequence of tracks where intensive use of the brake pedal was necessaryexposed the reality, and the dreaded DNQ (did not qualify) appeared against his name at Montreal and Estoril.

F1 team management could not afford the indulgence of a nominal passenger, and Herbert hobbled back into F3000 in Japan before the former Benetton team manager, Peter Collins, put him back in grand prix harness for Lotus, with two races at the end of 1990.

Seven races followed in 1991 and the spectre of DNQ recurred in Canada. Thereafter Team Lotus were in decline, with Herbert salvaging a pair of fourth places from nearly four seasons with the once legendary organisation.

A binding long-term contract with Collins kept Herbert out of competitive machinery, and it was only when Benetton, run by the shrewd Flavio Briatore, bought out his contract to keep Lotus from the receivers, that an unfulfilled Herbert went back to from whence he came.

Herbert explains the logic of braving an F1 debut, knowing his shattered feet were not yet resilient enough. He says: ''It took two years to get back to acceptable F1 strength. But I was in a position where I had an F1 contract and if I did not do it then I would have taken two years before I was nominally fit.''

Winning the gruelling 24-hour Le Mans endurance race in 1991 in a Mazda helped in the rehabilitation process, as it erased question marks about strength and stamina.

As luck would have it, his partner in the highly competitive Benetton team was reigning world champion Michael Schumacher.

Parity with the German in terms of testing mileage with the new Renault-powered cars was never approached, but the Englishman was consistent, if not always blindingly fast.

He harvested 45 points, and finished fourth in the championship but, more importantly, collected two wins, at Silverstone and Monza where the Anglo-German double act proved magnetic again. Herbert's candour about his treatment and role within Schumacher's fiefdom arguably led to a move to the Swiss Sauber operation last year.

His new team-mate was another German, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, whose popularity within the team was not repaid by technical instinct and race tactics. Sluggish V10 Ford engines did not help the cause.

This year, with a Ferrari V10 power unit, and Frentzen embarking on an erratic Williams experience, Herbert has found the comfort of un-divided attention and support.

Herbert was courted briefly by Jackie Stewart's fledgling team, but plumped for a known quantity, while his experience with the lacklustre Ford Cosworth power unit used by Stewart may have had a bearing on that decision.

An insight into Herbert the racer is given when he says: ''This is, as the adverts say, a mind game. You have to be mentally prepared, aware of rivals' strengths and weaknesses. Once you find a frailty you attack it. You know who will stand firm or back off.''

This surprising ''do unto others before they do it unto you'' philosophy does not imply rough tactics, and Herbert's reputation for tough but clean wheel-to-wheel combat remains intact.

Twice Eddie Irvine has terminated Herbert's charges at the front - at Monza in 1984 and in Melbourne this year. Although initially angry, Herbert now shrugs and says: ''It only happens now and again with Eddie. There is no point in bearing grudges.''

Married to Rebecca and with two young daughters, Herbert and family live in Monaco, like a fair percentage of well paid, tax-sensitive F1 citizens.

His ''toys'' may include a burbling Harley-Davidson motor-cycle, but the racer from Romford, has both his repaired feet firmly on the ground.