Bultaco
Comerford’s offered me a Bultaco trials machine, on which I spent many happy and successful years. The times I used to travel with Malcolm to the Bultaco factory to pick up machines for him to ride all over the continent! It was my job to do most of the driving, some of the spanner work and do all the signalling.
I think it was at the Spanish World 250cc round when Malcolm had a fabulous ride in the first leg and finished second to Joel Robert, but when they went to the line for the second leg Malcom’s Bultaco stopped. He put his hand up and pulled back and I ran to him with a plug and plug spanner and our mechanic followed. I looked over to Joel and pointed to his back wheel, his hand went up and the starter stepped down; his mechanic ran over, shook the back wheel and said all was okay. By this time we had fitted a new plug and the Bultaco fired into life. Joel looked at me with that cheeky smile and put his thumb up, and away they went. Joel won and Malcolm finished fourth giving him third overall. Needless to say I bought Joel a few drinks that night and boy could he drink — and ride the following day! Joel once said that Malcolm was the fastest-ever rider downhill; what a compliment.
When we were not abroad I would ride as many scrambles and support races in the summer as possible, and actually beat Malcolm at Farleigh Castle, although it was only because he and Vic Allan collided and it took him some time to fire his machine up and Vic to untangle himself from the chestnut fencing. Malcolm was not a happy bunny on the drive home, he made sure I landed up buying the meal and drinks at our regular pub stop when we were in that part of the country, just because I had won more money than him in the main race that day! I got great satisfaction from travelling the continent with Malcolm and with so many other brilliant riders, who were all incredible characters. It is very difficult to explain to anyone how strong a friendship there was in those days. I was a member of the winning Western Centre scrambles team one year, which was not really surprising as the team consisted of Malcolm, Andy Roberton, Bryan Wade, Randy Owen and myself.
In the early seventies I was offered a 250cc Montesa Cota by the importer with semi-works support and had a reasonably successful year but when the offer of a full works contract came along from Graham Beamish to develop the 250cc Suzuki RL I jumped at it. The amount of work that we put into the Beamish Suzuki was enormous but we made it into a competitive machine. I achieved two national runner-up awards and national class awards and then Suzuki brought the 325cc trials model out, which again needed lots of fettling but again proved to be a winning machine. I rode my last Scottish Six Days on this machine.