RIDE AT DOUBLE

TWO women who completed the fastest trip around the globe on a tandem bike show off certificates marking their world record.

Catherine Dixon and Rachael Marsden rode 18,000 miles in 263 days on their bike “Alice”, smashing the previous record of 281 days.

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Catherine, from London, said the pair had “amazing experiences” raising £35,000 for Oxfam and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

The telly writer, 49, said his social worker father had been taking some children to a foster home when their estranged father attacked him with a Stanley knife.

He said: “It was the nightmare of a policeman standing there and my dad had been stabbed.

“He wasn’t dead but he had been stabbed and he had his face slashed open with a Stanley knife.

“The kids’ biological father, who was a dangerous guy, was waiting armed with the Stanley knife.

“He stabbed my dad in the stomach, slashed his face, stole the car and was driving around. So the police showed up at our house.”

The satirist said the attack left his father permanently scarred but the wounds were not visible behind his beard.

The nightmare “oddly” didn’t leave him worried about his dad being attacked at work again. He said:

“This was leafy south Oxfordshire, it was so outside our normal realm of experience that it didn’t seem an event that would likely repeat itself.”

The presenter said life would be very different if Covid-19 had hit the country back in 1989, saying: “We’d be huddled round a steam-powered radio and you’d queue up to use the phone in your own household.”