‘I will follow the route my grandfather did on D-day…’
build for Chris Dugan, an amputee soldier, which was then ridden over the Alps.
“Chris has now got a ride with the True Heroes race team, so he’s currently training up with the guys and I think next season he’s going to make his debut. He was in a real low place when I was chatting to him initially,” reflects Titch. “He’d just lost the leg and was not having a great time. He was a good kid to do something for. The show lifted him quite a lot and that was really the main intention of it all. Off the back of that he’s in a really good space now - it’s a massive success story.”
The excitement from the pilot ebbed away as lockdown put a halt to proceedings and Titch didn’t hear from the BBC for a year – but then came the commission to do a series.
“I think that whole process took three to four years,” Titch says. “But we eventually got there, and the first three episodes have gone out!”
Now midway through (catchup on iPlayer if you’ve missed them) the series has six episodes, with the first being dedicated to Toby Gutteridge (see right).
Behind the first season
Episode one of The Speedshop saw a bespoke sidecar created for Toby, an ex-SAS soldier who became paralysed and needs a ventilator after being shot in the neck. But the project wasn’t just for the TV show. Toby and Titch had been talking about the project before the show was on the cards.
“We had chatted about how to get Tobes out on a bike. The biggest hurdle we had was getting permissions from the ventilator manufacturer to say it can be done,” says Titch.
“No one wants to be liable,” explains Toby. “Their automatic answer was ‘no’.”
“But we then had the weight of the TV show and the BBC behind us, and it began to change,” says Titch. “Although it wasn’t easy, even then.” The NHS Southampton respiratory centre also rallied behind the project. After the manufacturer finally agreed, a statement had to be read verbatim on the show, but it was a small price to pay to achieve their goal.
“Now it’s been done once, anybody who is in Tobe’s situation and wants to do it, can do it.”
The sidecar outfit had to have a roll cage, ventilator and race seat; spacious access was needed and the team even fitted the exhaust of the Royal Enfield Interceptor to the opposite side of the bike. It was then painted by Deb Nelson to make it look like a World War Two bomber with amazingly convincing results.
But not everything went smoothly with the build. A faulty neutral switch took 24 hours to find and sort out, fibreglass had to be fixed after some of the cuts went wrong and long nights became part of the routine.
“We’d said after the pilot that we couldn’t do the lengths of overnights that we did,” says Titch. “We did 72 hours straight through on the pilot and got to the point where we were two steps forward, one step back because we were making mistakes, we were that tired. We were just trying to get the bike ready to deliver to Chris.
“There was a lass who worked on Gas Monkey who said that they never do overnighters, even if they say they do!
“I think that’s the thing that sets us aside from other build shows,” Titch says, “it’s real.”
‘This one’s personal’
This Sunday’s episode (April 10) is very close to Titch’s heart, as he divulged over a brew.
“Episode four is very personal to me because I got the opportunity to follow what my grandfather did. He was my inspiration to join the Marines and join the forces in the first place,” explains Titch.
“He was with 45 Commando during World War Two and landed at Sword Beach on D-day.
“So, I’ve built a bike specifically to go and do the same trip he did. I even have his map from D-day that he drew on himself. He marked their route and I wanted to follow it as closely as I could.
“For me it was a fantastic journey and there is a moment at the end where I was trying to find a location and I found it,” he teased. “It was very cool.”
So what’s next
Since getting his name and face on television, Titch has been approached to do several things on the box. “There’s plenty in the pipeline!” he beams.
Although the BBC haven’t yet told Titch whether there is going to be a season two for The Speedshop, he has already planned out a series in his head.
“We’ve emphasised to them that we really could have do with having an idea soon so we could do all the prep work needed! We want to do quite a few events with the focus of doing things that everybody can do. I want to do all the little local events like I do in episode five,” Titch says. “I love it.”