Back Street Heroes October 2022

HELLO, AND WELCOME TO THIS ISSUE OF BSH. As I may’ve mentioned before, these editorials’re often the last thing written before a magazine goes to press as coming up with summat erudite and relevant for ‘ere is something I do find hard to do. This month, though, it’s doubly hard as I have to write about the death of a friend. Belinda ‘Billy’ Manning was for a fair few years the advertising supremo for BSH. She worked for us and Streetfighters back in the ‘90s, went off to run events companies and other stuff during the 2000s, and came back to BSH at about the same time as I did in 2013. In fact, she was part of the reason I accepted the job back then – starting afresh with…

For Cliff Sealey, this bike started out when his good friend Matt Donaldson said to him, at the 2018 Bike Shed Show in London: “I bet you can’t build a bike good enough to get in here.” That started the ball rolling. He (Cliff) had built five bikes previous to this one and, like most of us, had an image of his next build floating around in his head – an image of a low, quite long, big single, ideally with an engine from something like a Royal Enfield. He saw one, a 2007 500 Bullet, for sale in Glastonbury, not too far from his native Gloucester, bought it, got it home, and started stripping it. He didn’t bother with a drawing of what he had planned, just worked to…

Paul Garbut is the man whose vision of reviving the age-old tradition of beach speed trialling on the north-east English coast’s come to fruition with the help of a great team of friends. Never one to rest on his laurels, he’s developed the event into a four-day happening with the addition of classic vehicle parades around Bridlington, which further helps to connect the local populace to the event. The registration and scrutinising of the cars and bikes took place in a leafy picturesque church square, where locals and tourists alike were able to mingle with the competitors, chat to them about their race vehicles, and inspect the machines up close. There was a very chilled and relaxed atmosphere as the cars and bikes lined up on the sun-speckled green under…

Excalibur, the name of the legendary sword carried by King Arthur, was originally called, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first person to write down the story of Arthur in 1136, Caliburnus, and French sources, including Chrétien de Troyes who famously romanticised the story (and alleged it was Gawain who carried it, not Arthur) translated that as Escalibor, and Sir Thomas Malory, the author of Le Morte d’Arthur, the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend (published by William Caxton, the first person to use a printing press in England), changed that to the Excalibur we know today. Actually, there’s some doubt as to whether Thomas Malory actually existed (the book may’ve been written by someone else) so it could all be made-up bollocks… do you know what? I never…

AT NCC (National Chopper Club) London’s Diamond Day this year, meself and the good lady did indeed go in the van, but we did have a good excuse… honest. I was picking up some bike bits from one of the London lads to go to the powder-coaters and, I’ll be quite honest, trying to carry a Harris-style frame n’ tank, and a rocker cover, on a motorcycle with only one seat’s a bit of a tricky thing to do, y’know? Diamond Day is probably the NCC’s largest one-day event… or at least it used to be before dear Sadiq, the Mayor of London, extended the ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) out to encompass the area inside the North and South Circular roads in October last year – a move that’s…

A lot more years ago than he’d care to be reminded, Dave Collins, the guy whose ’66 Tiger 100 Triumph this is, was pottering about on a 50cc ’ped (so that’d make it either sometime in the late ’70s or early ’80s, I’m guessing) when, one fateful day, his faithful chicken-chaser cried ‘enough’ and died (not terminally, just temporarily). It was a wet, ’orrible day, and he was stranded by the side of the road with a dead ’ped, wondering what to do, when, as he says, “this big hairy-arsed biker, on a BSA 500 single in a Norton Featherbed frame that he’d chopped himself, stopped to help.” I’m a little concerned you know he had a hairy arse, Dave, but I s’pose the originals most o’ us wore back…