RORY TAKES REVIEWS UP ANOTHER GEAR
Former Top Gear host Rory Reid
At a bike launch a few years ago, I was sitting beside a very pleasant chap at dinner, and since I’d never seen him on a launch before, I asked him who he was with. “The BBC,” he said.
“Oh, really? What programme?”
“Top Gear,” he said.
D’oh!
The very pleasant chap was, of course, Rory Reid, and he told me a great story about how 15,000 people had applied for the job, and it had finally been narrowed down to 10, then the Top Gear production team decided not to take any.
He sent them a video showing them what they were missing, and they hired him immediately. I love stories like that.
Well, he must have forgiven me, since after presenting Top Gear from 2016 to 2019, in between winning awards and presenting BBC’S The One Show and Sky 1’s Gadget Geeks and contributing to Bloomberg, the
Daily Telegraph, Metro and BBC Radio 5 Live, he’s now Auto Trader’s director of Youtube content, with a whopping 444,000 subscribers to his Youtube reviews.
And Mirror Motorcycling has just teamed up with Rory and former Motor Cycle News star writer, and bike expert, my old mate Phil West, who produces Auto Trader’s bike news and views, to bring you even more bike stories and videos.
As well as tests of new bikes and older models, there are reviews of bike clothing, helmets, boots, alarms, covers and security, pieces on the best bikes under £10,000, adventure bikes, sports bikes, scooters and so on, advice on how to get the best out of life on two wheels, reviews on what a bike’s like to live with, and guides on how to go on your next adventure.
Auto Trader, of course, is the UK’S leading place to buy your next machine. A quick look earlier showed a very impressive 19,856 new and used bikes for sale, and it’s hardly surprising.
More than one person every second looks on there to buy a bike, adding up to 943,718 people a month.
And one of them’s usually me, playing that very dangerous game after a few glasses of wine of going on the site, finding myself muttering: “Oh, look, you can get a Vincent Comet for less than 20 grand.”
Now if I sold the house, the car and the cat...”
Geoff Hill @ghillster Fraser Addecott @Mirrorbiker