Bev Wakeford-Brown (aka Bev Flanagan)
The female rider who competed in a man's world and trounced many of them in the process
On February 7, 2021, Beverley WakefordBrown passed away. On behalf of Classic
Scooterist we send our condolences to her friends and family.
Better known by the scooter fraternity under her maiden name, Bev Flanagan became a force to be reckoned with in the competitive, male-dominated world of scooter sport.
In the 1960s she was a member of the Bromley Innocents, where she met Nev Frost, who eventually became her first husband; it was his influence that inspired her to take up scooter sport where she excelled in every possible area, both on- and off-road.
She competed as a sidecar passenger in partnership with Nev (which she herself described as “one of the scariest things I've ever done”). She was also very handy with a spanner and often she and Nev would rebuild their racing combination late into the night, then take it racing next day, often completely untested. The engines they built were highly tuned and unreliable, which often resulted in her doing some fettling at race meetings whereby she would be stripping the engine down while Nev competed on another scooter in a different race class.
It wasn't just as a sidecar passenger that she excelled; she was also an accomplished solo rider, winning many trophies in her own right, or as part of a scooter race team over her years in scootering. The competitive streak didn't end there and after Nev and Bev moved on from scooter sport, the pair also competed successfully in windsurfing events of the time.
Away from track (and water-based competitions), Bev also won the ‘Queen of the Road' trophy in 1968; she also became involved in working with the Lambretta Concessionaires and her picture appeared in the PR material of the time.
I personally knew Bev for a number of years; in everyday life she was a fairly quiet and unassuming character. I remember sitting in her lounge once browsing through her photo albums and saying that we should run a feature in Classic Scooterist specifically about her. “No one would be interested in that” was her reply. In the end she agreed to do it, but under the caveat that she had unfinished business to take care of in the Amazon jungle (in later life, she became a staunch supporter of conservation and became involved with saving primates displaced by the destruction of the rain forest. Unfortunately, we never found time to complete the magazine article – something
I will always regret.
To my knowledge, Bev never again revisited her past scootering triumphs and in more recent years she actually bequeathed the majority of her scooter trophy collection to me (she had been approached in the past about the purchase of individual items in her collection and did eventually let a couple go – although she later confided in me that she regretted doing so). I'd never ever discussed her trophy collection with her in any way, so I felt incredibly honoured that she had chosen me to pass them on to. Maybe it was because Nev Frost's trophy collection had also been bequeathed to me and she wanted them to be kept together – I will never know.
Rest in peace Bev; you made the world a better place in more ways than you'll ever know.