Standing up for cycling
Ned takes to the stage for his own celebratory tour of Britain
I am completing my third and final Grand Tour this autumn. Having been on the road for the Giro and the Tour de France already in 2022 (I missed the Vuelta, preferring instead to attend the prematurely ended Tour of Britain), I decided in my wisdom to add an additional 28-stage Tour to my calendar, starting in Plymouth and finishing in Edinburgh, via pretty much everywhere in England and Wales.
Imaginatively titled the “ReTour de Ned” (we put a placeholder name into the theatres last winter, and it kind of stuck because I couldn’t think of a better one), these 28 dates constituted my first one-man show for four years. If you have not ever been present at one of these evenings, then it’s worth noting that they are probably not what you are expecting. Designed at least with the ambition to entertain and amuse, they are a kind of surreal, sometimes musical and visual examination, and occasional re-enactment, of various aspects of road racing, and specifically the Tour de France. They aspire to be an escapist celebration of our wonderful, idiosyncratic sport; a dose of nostalgia for the heat and light of July, just as winter is drawing in and the nights are getting longer. But mainly they are supposed to be a laugh. I hope if you came to a show, you at least smiled from time to time.
During five long weeks on the road with Rhys, my outstanding and astonishingly hard-working tour manager, criss-crossing the country, I was struck by a few things. Firstly, the sheer numbers of people who came to see the show: 10,000 souls booked babysitters and taxis, had curries afterwards, met up with friends, or simply made their way there alone. During such straightened times, I was gobsmacked by the turnout, and humbled. One woman messaged me after my show in Southport (I think) to say she’d enjoyed the evening, and was waiting for the bus home; a ride that would take two hours!
There is a kinship in this community; a shared understanding that though we are few, we are many. Interest in this sport may have ballooned through the “Wiggo” years, but it is still far from mainstream, and disappears under the radar when held up against the juggernauts of football, rugby and cricket. And yet, what we lack in numbers, we make up for in unadulterated passion. There was always a sense during the ReTour de Ned that we were sharing a secret among friends.
Cycling’s ability to laugh at itself is another admirable quality of its adherents. This is a good thing too, because there are repeated targets for my (hopefully wellintentioned) mockery during the course of the evening: especially those who invest too much in the minutiae of gear ratios, or over-romanticise aspects of road-racing culture. I did four shows in Yorkshire, the self-proclaimed centre of the British scene since 2014 and the “Grandest of Grand Départs”. Outside of the county, I made sure that Yorkshire got taken down a peg or two. But, two-faced as I am, inside its borders, I told a very different story. There is much to take aim at, but, on the whole, the cycling public is able to roll with the blows!
From time to time, I was made aware of a special guest in the audience, a birthday being celebrated, or a notable achievement demanding recognition. On such occasions, we would, as one, take note of their presence. Sometimes, this was spine-tingling. Stan Brittain attended the show in Southport, at the age of 92. Stan had won a silver medal at the ’56 Olympics and completed the ’58 Tour de France, becoming only the third Briton ever to do so. And there he was, nimbly rising to his feet to take the ovation that came his way from a sell-out crowd. It was wonderful.
But a week later, we got news that his teammate from the 1958 Tour, the legendary Brian Robinson, had died. The next day, I was doing the show in Ilkley, close to roads on which the great man had trained and ridden all his life. I asked the crowd to cheer his memory to the rafters of the venerable King’s Hall. The noise was immense. I stood on stage, clapping, watching it all, and scarcely able to take it in.
We have something special to hold onto; this love of our sport. It actually does things that not much else can in these fractious times. It binds us together. And that, more than anything else, is the lesson I will take from my final grand tour of 2022.