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This year – this week, in fact – there have been two competing motorcycle shows in London. Martin Gelder tries to pick a winner while making “vroom vroom” noises and bouncing on seats… The Ally Pally show sponsors MCN announced last year that the long established event at Alexandra Palace in North London would be…

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How do we define ourselves? By our jobs, the way we dress, or the music we like? By the bikes we ride or lust after? Episode two from Trevor Oz Brooks… In my younger days (sigh) I had a clear picture of who I was. I was Big Twin man, not Step-Thru boy, despite cutting…

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Even though more of us fell off last year, motorcycling is getting safer. Fact. Martin Gelder wades through the Department for Transport Road Casualties Report to find out what causes motorcycle accidents… The Department for Transport’s annual report on road casualties in Great Britain came out last month. Most of the press reports at the…

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‘Tell us what you think’ and ‘have your say’ seem ubiquitous these days. Magazine editors listen closely to every word you tell them. Whether magazine editors act upon those words is another matter entirely. Frank Westworth admits defeat… ‘I don’t bother reading magazines any more. They’re all the same.’ I scratch my head in an…

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Familiarity breeds… you know. Roger Houghton, a visitor from South Africa, takes a fresh look at the UK while he visits its classic motorcycling heritage sites… I am a classic motorcycle nut and my dream trip was to visit the ‘pilgrimage sites’ of the now virtually extinct British motorcycle industry – once the largest of…

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Back in the day, the young lads of The Paddock weren’t averse to a quick sprint to demonstrate their riding prowess. Ian Caswell remembers ones particular evening when things got a tiny little bit competitive… In my early days of knocking around the Paddock there were several of the occasional riders who I knew only…

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John Ryan shares a final selection of his classic motorcycling photographic memories from the days when South London dealer Mocheck developed competitive production racers… In 1977, Mocheck’s racing effort moved up a gear with a genuine, factory-supplied RSC (Racing Services Centre) engine. Here’s the bike being prepared for its first test Old and New 400…

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Dave Wooding started his riding career with a Triumph 3T. He also rode a Bantam-based Villiers-engined oddity and a BSA B31, but it’s the Triumph 350 twin which he remembers the most fondly… Everyone remembers their first time, but how many have a photo of the event? I remember that for me it was on…

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Riding old bikes produces many wonderful moments. Frank Westworth dredges through his memory for some memorable AJS and Matchless rides… I accept at once that you ride your old motorcycle (perhaps it’s an AJS, or Matchless; no-one is entirely perfect) all over the place and at every available opportunity. In those distant days when the…

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How did Japan’s motorcycle industry come to inherit the market position which the British bike business once held? Steve Cooper of the VJMC makes some suggestions… If you had to single out one attribute about Japanese machinery which really inspires owners it has to be the technology that made the manufacture of these bikes possible.…

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