Dicko’s view
Our columnist admits to listening now and again
This issue Dicko becomes a ‘people person’ as he listens to those around him at Telford show and realises it is all about the people.
THE Telford Classic Dirt Bike Show for me, on the surface, is like all other events, it’s all about the bikes. As at the Stafford shows, or the Scottish Pre-65, or any event you care to name, I stalk the land, camera cocked, looking for motorbikes. New bikes, old bikes, historic bikes, shiny bikes, rusty bikes, rare bikes, bits of bikes… just bikes. Any old bikes. It’s all about the bikes. Right?
Except that at Telford this year I had what some might call an epiphany, I decided that it was actually all about the people.
The light, like the legendary ones that flash in the TT Grandstand as fast approaching machines arrive at The Nook, suddenly blinked on in my head while I listened to Sammy Miller as he enthused over his amazing 1939 AJS V4 GP machine and then waxed lyrical about the equally fabulous Brough that accompanied it.
There’s nothing unusual in that – I’ve listened to Sam many, many times and I could repeat his words verbatim if asked but maybe this time I actually listened. I appreciated the bikes as they stood – but they came alive as Sam talked.
Telford was, as ever, packed with people who have been there and done that and who had worn-out a lifetime’s supply of T-shirts. They are not all Guests of Honour, some are happy to keep a low profile but have amazing stories. For instance trials great Rob Edwards, who was the Montesa factory’s favourite son back in the 1970s but whose health and life took a dark turn during a flag-waving trip to South America from which he never really recovered. Yet Rob remains one of the cheeriest, brightest people you could ever wish to meet. It is always a real pleasure to bump into Rob.
Also at Telford was the venerable Johnny Brittain. I spoke to Johnny at a previous show and he told a wonderful tale about riding a twin cylinder Enfield from England to Italy in the 1950s, competing in the ISDT and riding it home again. You can see that happening today.
At the Saturday evening dinner, my lugs remained pinned as I listened to the guest speakers. There were four, all with a very different story to tell and all told in a unique way. I hung on their every word. Jimmy Aird, a naturally amusing and boisterous character in an everyday situation, spoke almost shyly, as if he couldn’t really believe anyone would be interested in his tale. But of course we were.
Wayne le Marquand, the first-ever Haynes Four-stroke Champion, told the simple story of a motocross-mad Channel Islander and it struck a chord – because we all identified with the motorcycle madness.
Nick Jefferies was, well, Nick Jefferies, a naturally gifted all-round rider – a Honda factory rider at that – and public speaker who, on the night, overcame a seriously defective PA system, that would have totally defeated a lesser person, as he let us in on the secrets of belonging to a motorcycle dynasty and living with family legends like dad Allan, brother Tony and Tony’s son DJ. That story didn’t need a PA system Nick, it’s plenty powerful enough in its own right.
The main course of the evening was served-up by an ordinary-looking but extremely extraordinary man. Barry Briggs. Briggo has lived at least four lives while the rest of us have got by with just the one.
His whistle-stop gallop through those lives, for our benefit if we took the trouble to listen, (we did), accompanied by a blizzard of illustrative slides gave us just the skeleton of that life. Again, it was delivered in such a matter-of-fact way and was so easy to listen to it didn’t even sound that extraordinary.
So I bought his book and read it. Briggo’s is quite simply the best book written by a motorcyclist I have ever read.
Yet for all his achievements, which are many and varied, including running gold and diamond mines in deepest Africa and where four World Speedway titles are just the more newsworthy, Briggo remains Briggo.
For instance, a couple of years ago ‘we’ were riding bikes round Cumbria on one of the Nostalgia Scramble road runs in an absolute all-day rainstorm. We stopped for lunch at Ravenglass and into the Railway Arms walked a dripping wet Briggo and without knowing me from Adam, walked up and stated, pointing at his pal Bill Brown: “He sells us all this Wolf gear and look at him, sat in a construction worker’s jacket and wearing bloody rubber wellies!”
Browny grinned like a teenager – and so did Briggo! He could have been home in sunny California but was happy as Larry soaked to the (Wolf)skin with a bunch of likeminded motorcyclist – most of whom didn’t have the California option I admit!
So, while the bikes are our passion and we look for them, and look at them, and fix ‘em, and polish ‘em and buy ‘em and sell ‘em, and sometimes even ride ‘em, at the end of the day it isn’t actually all about the bikes.
What it is actually all about is the people, as without the people there are no bikes…