A biker-focused podcast with two iconic sportsmen at the helm. Sounds like a winner to us.
Once limited to television chat shows, the world of celebrity interviews has now, in the 21st century, expanded to blogs, vlogs and podcasts that cover an expansive range of subjects and personalities – and it’s only natural that the world of motorcycles is covered in that remit.
That’s where Full Chat comes in. It’s a new video podcast from the specialist motorcycle insurance broker Bikesure, hosted by former Olympic athlete Iwan Thomas and former Premier League footballer David Prutton. While they’re big names in their respective fields, they’re also passionate bikers to boot.
Ahead of the launch, we took the time to sit down with the famous pair to find out how knowledgeable, entertaining and bike-obsessive they are, as well as discussing how they’re hoping to bring new blood into the wonderful world of motorcycling….
Iwan Thomas is an Olympic and Commonwealth Games athlete, who formerly held the UK record for the 400m (at 44.36 seconds). His interest in bikes came early thanks to his bike-mad dad. Iwan’s first fix came, like so many others, with a 50cc scrambler riding across the fields – while his freedom on the road came with an Aprilia AF1 aged 16, soon followed by a TZR125 when he was 17. He passed his test on the little Yamaha, but it didn’t stay stock for long.
He didn’t follow the usual path of owning motorcycles of steadily increasing capacity, though. The demands of his athletics endeavours changed his focus, and Iwan put everything into training and competing. His coach wouldn’t have allowed any bike riding anyway; given that injuries are part and parcel of any physical sport, there wasn’t a need to raise the risk by riding a bike. However, Iwan retained his fanaticism for bikes, and after sustaining a few injuries in competition, he decided that having a bike really couldn’t make things any worse. That’s what led to the purchase of an R1, 10 years after the TZR – quite a jump from a tweaked 125 to a full-on litre race rep. At the time, he was living in Derbyshire and if his parents or coach happened to visit, the R1 was kept in a friend’s garage to prevent it from being spotted. But it wasn’t long before the “Why is there a leather jacket and helmet in your wardrobe, Iwan?” question came from his father, although the expected dressing-down didn’t arrive but instead the statement: “Let me have a go!” That timing did coincide with the athletics career slowing down, no thanks to injuries, so Iwan’s had bikes ever since, and it’s only family commitments that have curtailed time on the bike.
A number of television appearances due to his successful sporting career showed that Iwan was comfortable and competent in front of the cameras, giving rise to appearances on various TV shows, including co-presenting the MotoGP Tonight on BT Sport alongside Craig Doyle, and also taking part in the likes of Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity MasterChef, with the prize money from winning Deadline (a reality TV show similar to The Apprentice, running for just one season in 2007) happily financing the purchase of a Ducati 1098.
The list of bikes so far suggests that Iwan is a sportbike fanatic through and through and, while he did run a Honda Fireblade last year, he now owns a customised Harley Crossbones. He’s also a big fan of off-road bikes, having recently owned a Husqvarna FE350 – and the dirt bike bug that instilled the love of bikes into a young Iwan is about to be passed down to his kids with a little off-road bike to be used, like Iwan, on the fields.
David Prutton is a former Premier League football star. Having played centre midfield for Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday and more, he’s made the natural progression to football pundit on Sky Sports.
Prutton’s interest in bikes started a little later than his Full Chat co-host, and it was a chance meeting with a fellow footballer over in Los Angeles that first sparked an interest in powered two-wheelers. Sat outside a bar, David spotted a very cool bloke, with his girlfriend on pillion, riding a minimalist custom Harley (which, it turns out, had been built by ex-pat Brit Russ Mitchell, and his Exile Cycles business). This super-cool dude pulled up and stepped off and, once helmet and personality-hiding sunglasses were removed, Prutt’s recognised him as a fellow top-flight footballer! We’ll not mention the name – but suffice to say it sowed a seed with David, and it wasn’t long after that he was taking his bike test and subsequently buying a bike.
The first bike, a Honda VT125 Shadow, reflected that very first influence with its custom-based design – and that was followed by a similarly-styled Triumph America, and a bucket-list road trip of America (Death Valley, and the Pacific Coast road) was undertaken on one of that nation’s big-capacity v- twins. But he’s also owned BMW GS Adventures, including one that he rode all around Europe before it was stolen in Swansea, so he’s also open to other genres of bikes. Any assumption that sportsmen and women might only like sportbikes is clearly misguided!
The joy that David got from riding the big Bavarian adventure bike has also opened his eyes to classic Boxer twins, and it’s clear that he’ll be looking to expand his motorcycling remit to match Iwan’s more eclectic taste in motorcycles – and its highly likely that the podcast will reflect the guys’ plans for two-wheeled adventures.
Both guys were born in 1981, which makes them a little under the UK motorcyclist’s average age, but the way that they got hooked on motorcycling is indicative of how pretty much everyone got inspired to ride – either by family influences, or peer group pressure. And both of them expressed how motorcycling gives them freedom, too, not just the anonymity of travelling with a helmet that makes them unrecognisable, but also for the purity of simply travelling on a bike, clearing the mind and giving some separation from the pressures of everyday life.
With any luck, the fact that two very successful sportsmen will be talking about how brilliant riding bikes is with other folk who’re also very much in the public eye, we’ll hopefully see some beneficial promotion to the hobby that we know and love so much.
We’ll be tuning into Full Chat when it goes live next month – and we reckon you should, too.