Great Escape from junkpile of McQueen’s bike
HISTORIAN Dan Snow poses proudly yesterday beside the iconic motorbike ridden by Steve McQueen in The Great Escape – with the man who saved it from the scrapheap.
The Triumph TR6R was made to look like a Nazi machine for the 1963 war epic in which McQueen tries to leap barbed wire to get to Switzerland. When the movie was finished, the film company brought it back to England and sold it to a farmer, who used it to herd his cows before it ended up abandoned in a barn.
It eventually spent two decades lying in a caravan park in Norfolk before enthusiast Dick Shepherd found it after years of searching.
Dick, 62, said: “When the farmer died he left it to his cowman. He had started to strip it to do it up but never got round to doing it.” Now the bike, restored using 95 per cent of its original parts, is to star in a special event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the real escape.
On March 24 1944, a total of 76 Allied prisoners made it out of a tunnel dug under Stalag Luft III camp in what is now Poland.
All but three were recaptured and furious Hitler ordered 50 to be shot.
Next March 24, TV presenter Dan hosts an evening at London’s Eventim Apollo theatre where the bike will be on stage. The film will be shown at the same time in many cinemas.
Dan, 39, said the escape was “a story about never submitting to defeat” but joked: “I certainly haven’t been cast in the role of Steve McQueen – that would be an absolute disaster.”