I’M THE FACE…

If one magazine can lay claim to having ‘changed culture’ it’s probably The Face. It’s credited with launching the career of Kate Moss and in November 1988 profiled a young Glaswegian scooterist called Riki Hussain. The opening paragraphs say it all:

“Riki Hussain is Asian, he says he’s from Bradford but he has a Glasgow accent and he wears badges deliberately chosen to break the rules. Riki is messing around with a bit of scrap metal in the makeshift industrial unit where he works. He is Asian, but wears a badge honouring the history of the Waffen SS. His parents are immigrants from Pakistan, yet he wears another badge celebrating the estranged satanism of The Omen. And to throw things into bizarre relief, he is mending an old scooter which has been daubed with the unlikely name Black Gestapo. So welcome to Glasgow…

…His weird taste in badges which he describes as ‘just a wind up’ are inexplicable grenades worn by an Asian who claims he’s a Mod, dresses like a Hell’s Angel and works in an Indian restaurant at night. Would you buy a chicken tikka from Riki Hussain?”

Although it certainly plays to The Face’s regular readership, the article is an astounding piece of journalism. Partly because it perfectly captures a moment in British scooter history and partly because it manages to do so despite being written by an ‘outsider’. In this article, writer Stuart Cosgrove and photographer Christian Thompson created a document that deserves its place on the shelves of any serious student of scootering history. Although The Face is still around, its back issues don’t include this edition. Copies do crop up on eBay and if you can find one at a reasonable price I’d suggest you snap it up.