TIPS FROM THE TOP HUGH DENNIS
The comedian( centre) reveal show a boy hood love for cycling has lasted beyond the terror of testicle torsion ...
GROWING PAINS
When I was growing up a bike was something you gave up - you didn’t want to be seen on a bicycle when your mates had a motorbike or a car. Now it’s great to be on a bike at all ages. I try and ride whenever I can. An ultra-marathon runner once told me ‘do it for your mind, not your body’ that’s my approach to cycling now.
TORE THE PARTS
I joined the Cyclists’ Touring Club at 14 and rode everywhere, even going from Devon up to Yorkshire one summer with my brother and cousin. But then, as an impressionable teenager, I read something about cyclists getting ‘testicle torsion’ in a magazine and so I knocked the long-distance cycling on the head for a while.
LOOSE NUTS
I live in central London and get around on a ‘Boris bike’ - fortunately I’m rarely riding during rush hour. We rehearse [BBC sitcom] Not Going Out at Teddington Studios so I ride my bike along the Embankment, through Richmond Park. It’s great cycling there right up to the point when all the Strava boys are going nutty, flying past me on the Cycle Superhighway trying to beat their previous best.
LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
I used to be proper ‘MAMILed up’ about 10 years ago, doing a couple of Etapes, taking part in RideLondon and the like. I do find cycle talk amusing still – these middle-aged men talking about getting the lightest frame and lightest wheels and I just think ‘how about just getting the lightest you – that’ll do the trick’!
GORGE"OUS RIDE
I take part in Ride Across Britain, which is fantastic. It’s so egalitarian, you see people on all sorts of bikes from all sorts of places. I rode the Okehampton to Bath leg last year up Cheddar Gorge, which was amazing. I was due to ride this year but I over-extended my knee playing football – you’d have to be riding very strangely to do that on a bike. I’d complete the whole thing but it always seems to clash with filming.
Hugh aims to be a part of the Deloitte Ride Across Britain 10th anniversary ride from 7-15 September 2019, see rideacrossbritain.com for details.