The Medicated Toilet Roll of Fate

From Cyril's memoirs dated 17 June 2006

Electric motorcycles are in the news more and more lately. I ended my full-time career in the motorcycle industry in 2000, while working for Yamaha, a very go-getting bunch who have put some great technology into our road bikes – the EXUP power valve and Deltabox frame to name just a couple. But they missed the boat on this one.

You may recall a colleague of mine from my days at BSA, Peter Cartwright, he of shaven dog, V5 lawnmower and faecal-powered engine infamy. Yet it must never be forgotten that behind an often catastrophically confused mind lay a razor-sharp engineering intellect.

Back in 1999, I received from Peter a highly detailed proposal for an electrically-powered motorcycle, meticulously drafted in his distinctive brown ink. The fact it appeared on scores of sheets of crisp Izal medicated toilet paper stuck together with Elastoplast may have fazed someone not familiar with Peter’s eccentric methodology, but I didn’t let it muddy the issue. Unfortunately, Yamaha top brass didn’t see it in quite the same way and refused to follow up the project.

I wasn’t going to be stopped there and wanted to help the unfortunate Peter to realise what could have been his greatest achievement. I’d built up a few handy contacts in almost 50 years in the business and managed to get an independent engineering firm (whom for legal reasons cannot be named) to take on the project and decide its feasibility. Despite my warnings, they decided a face-to-face meeting with Peter would be necessary if they were to fully understand his concept, so I made arrangements with the authorities at his care home to be able to take him out for the day.

I thought it would be a treat for Peter to be collected by motorcycle (apart from having been a road rider, he was an excellent scrambler in his day, only missing out on a ride in the 1958 British Grand Prix at Hawkstone Park due to being heavily beaten the night before by a gang of teddy boys in an alley, in circumstances still shrouded in mystery), so on a bright May morning I went along on my V-Max. I’d have taken my company R1, but my neck was undergoing a recurrent bout of spasms, the result of an injury picked up many years previously during a bed-based incident while grappling with my former Soviet discus champion wife, Anoushka. (Powerful thighs, clamping action, suffocation and panic. I’m sure I need say no more.)

We’d arranged to meet in a pub close to the engineering firm’s headquarters, reasoning that it would be a more relaxed atmosphere for the rather edgy Peter. I’d booked the small conservatory, which was ideal, with plenty of light and soothing views of the well-kept gardens. Introductions were made, pints ordered and soon Peter was chatting away eagerly seeming every bit the young genius I’d worked with all those years before.

Now, I maintain to this day that it was the care home’s responsibility to tell me about Peter’s medication, particularly its perilous incompatibility with alcohol. About an hour into the meeting Peter excused himself to go to the toilet. There was nothing to warn of the performance to come.

We were alerted by screams from the public bar – those of several elderly women and of a V-four engine being held against the rev limiter. I ran through in time to see Peter, having filled the bar with acrid rubber smoke, heading straight for me, his eyes a demonic blaze and teeth bared as he hunched over the V-Max’s bars looking like a coke-fuelled stunt-riding pensioner. I stepped aside and he rode through the open double doors into the conservatory, straight through the closed French windows and into the garden, his Izal-based plans, snagged on the left handlebar, trailing in the breeze.

The police apprehended Peter several miles away. He’d ridden the V-Max into a village duck pond and when they arrived he was still sitting on it, catatonic, up to the fuel tank in muddy water. A small gathering of locals were edging slowly nearer to view the lunatic in their midst.

So, there you have it. The Izal plans were never found and Peter never again spoke of his ideas for an electrically-powered bike. Actually, he didn't speak at all for three months. It was a disaster that I firmly believe set back the development of such machines by many years, all triggered by just one pint of Ramsbottom’s Inappropriate Fondle. You live and learn.

Kevin, camping and carnage

From Cyril's memoirs dated 14 May 2006

Ah spring. A time of fast motorcycles, beer gardens, buxom lovelies and… camping. A roll of material strapped to the saddle offers the magical freedom of rapid travel with shelter at hand. But a tent isn’t the most secure accommodation.

A very good friend of mine, Bob Scammel, has a son, Neil, who rode his just-launched and exotic FireBlade to the 1992 Cambridge Folk Festival. The lad had more interest in poke than folk and having heard that the festival is awash with single females (a cruel fallacy in my experience) he decided to try his luck.

Having endured finger-in-the-ear caterwauling and interminable fiddling, Neil decided to seek some fiddling of his own, homing in on the prettiest drunk he could find. All went well and the girl advised Neil, also rather worse for wear, that her friend had gone off elsewhere so she’d be alone in her tent and to join her there in ten minutes. In the meantime, Neil returned to his own tent and, displaying youthful high spirits and imagination, took blue and red felt pens to his erect manhood to create a mini Pepsi-era Kevin Schwantz, presumably as a form of sexual ice breaker.

Lord knows how long this penile doodling took, but long enough for the girl to come looking for her Romeo. Unfortunately, she lurched drunkenly into the FireBlade, toppling it onto Neil’s tent as he lay there admiring his handiwork. I’m afraid Kevin Schwantz took the brunt of the impact. Apparently the ambulance men dropped Neil off the stretcher twice while leaving the field, so wracked were they with barely suppressed giggles. It was, by all accounts, an excellent likeness, if a little crooked.

A second incident features yours truly. It was summer 1986, I was working for Suzuki and had borrowed one of the all-new GSX-R1100s. Good grief, that blew the cobwebs away as my then wife Anoushka and I blasted down to Bordeaux for a week’s sunshine. Ah, I can still hear her excited screams as we tore through northern France.

We arrived late afternoon, pitched the tent on a busy site then nipped into town to sample the local vin de pays. Afternoon turned to evening and the wine flowed on. At about 9pm, in walked a couple wearing lurid Cordura bike jackets and speaking English. We got chatting, they were very friendly, and the rest of the evening flew by with plenty more plonk consumed. Fine, you say. And it was, but not for long.

Staggering back to the site we got chatting about the Bol d’Or 24-Hour and it turned out that this chap – the name of whom escapes me, despite having read it so many times in solicitors’ letters – had never been. I became very animated about the mêlée of anarchic celebration that used to be the campsite when the race was still at Paul Ricard in the far wilder south, near Bandol. I raved about the lunatics who would remove the header pipes from their bikes then rev the motor at full throttle. It doesn't take a genius to see what’s coming next.

Ever equipped with a decent tool kit, I set about the GSX-R. Working by torchlight with double vision slowed my progress somewhat and the rest understandably got bored and went to bed. It must have been 4am when I carefully wheeled the bike into position, the exposed exhaust ports as close as possible to the doors of the sleeping couple’s tent. I’d strapped the throttle full open with a bungee so I could watch the effect from a distance. I could hardly bear the excitement. I pressed the starter and ran.

If you’ve never heard the unfettered racket from a pipeless large capacity engine at full tilt, it’s hard to describe, but it’s fair to say that it’s highly disturbing on a deep, gut-churning level, perhaps like some infernal machine Satan might use to instil naked fear. And that’s rather apt given that I hadn’t anticipated the pulsing 12-inch flames that instantly set fire to the tent. I think I was in shock for a second or two, long enough to see the poor couple (in pyjamas!) fight their way out of the flames with ashen faces, thinking themselves engulfed by Gallic Armageddon. I rushed to the bike but couldn’t release the bungee (in my drunken panic I completely forgot about the kill switch).

My last memory of the whole sorry mess, other than Mrs Thingy and the Suzuki screaming in chilling discord, was of a rapidly advancing Anoushka who summoned all her might as a former Soviet discus champion to knock me out with a clean blow to the jaw. I must say, I’ve had better holidays.

It's an ill wind that blows nobody's mind

From Cyril's memoirs dated 15 February 2006

Fat, long and exceedingly slippery. Suzuki’s Hayabusa really is a marvel of aerodynamics and I remember thinking when it was launched in 1999 that the designers were brave not to be led by aesthetics, but by physics. Handing over large amounts of cash for a greased rhino with a jet pack up its chuff didn’t deter the punters, bent, as we all are, on speed.

A key tool in the development of fine aerodynamics is the wind tunnel and I first encountered one in 1968 while Global Sales Director at Triumph. We were involved in an exciting project aimed at increasing road bike top speeds by standard fitment of a highly aerodynamic fairing. It should have reaped great rewards, but while you can factor in all manner of known characteristics for raw materials, the same is not so easily done when one is dealing with a human mind. In particular, that of our new aerodynamics engineer, George Hardle. Such a tragic waste.

Over the years a friendship had been forged between Triumph and the Moto Guzzi factory and I'm proud to say that I’d had much to do with that process, going right back to the 1957 TT when, while working for Ariel, I’d got chatting to a couple of Guzzi mechanics looking after Bill Lomas’s race bikes. They spoke no English, but it’s amazing what sign language can achieve (including, unfortunately, gross misunderstandings. To this day I’m baffled as to how ‘Let’s go for a pint’ came across as ‘Your mother's breasts need milking’, but the Italians seem to have a sign for everything and an insult to match. Giuseppe and I can now laugh about it, but whenever we meet up I insist on showing him him the scar. Those Neapolitans are jolly quick with a blade). So, when Triumph wanted to use Guzzi’s famous wind tunnel at the Mandello del Lario factory to develop their new fairing, I managed to secure its use for the whole of March 1968.

George Hardle became a problem on our eighth day in the tunnel. He’d struck me as a curious character on joining the firm a month previously. He stood about 5ft 5in, was in his early 50s and carried a large paunch, gained, I imagine, from over eating as he was teetotal. He was bald except for a curtain of grizzled, mousy hair and had a bushier version of Hitler’s contribution to facial grooming. None of this was especially remarkable, but when one tried to look into his eyes they’d dart around and never meet your gaze. Basically, he seemed a little demented.

That day, our famous test rider, Les Colcroft, was on the bike and moving around to get the best aerodynamic position with the gale blowing full tilt. But the instruments showed a lot of drag still evident, despite (actually, because of, though no one dared say it) huge amounts of plasticine that Hardle had added to almost every surface of the fairing, remodelling it continually and with ever increasing fervour. By 3pm Hardle, beside us in the control room, was visibly distressed, pink face glistening with a sheen of sweat. He began banging on the thick glass of the control room window, cursing Colcroft for an inability to streamline himself effectively. This was nonsense and had more to do with Les being perched behind a fairing which, loaded with pounds and pounds of plasticine, looked like a five-year-old’s rendition of the head of a triceratops.

Suddenly, Hardle left the control room and entered the tunnel, the huge propeller still sucking air through full blast. Struggling to keep his feet, he pushed Les off the bike and jumped in the saddle, briefly assuming a racing crouch as his tie whipped behind him and his flapping trousers rode up to his knees. But within seconds he was off the bike and began punching and kicking the plasticine-laden fairing. Les stood by helpless, bracing himself against the wind blast, while Hardle pulled off huge chunks of plasticine, throwing them first at Les, then at the control room window. He really was in quite a state – if only it had ended there.

Leaving his tie in place, Hardle tore off his shirt, which stuck high against the wire mesh ahead of the propeller. He then dropped to his knees and pulled more plasticine from the fairing flanks and began stuffing it into his mouth. It was clear that he was having awful trouble chewing it, but he remained hunched and determined in the roaring wind.

I’m afraid my final memory of George Hardle is of him utterly naked except for brown brogues and a tie, pressing his waxy, hirsute body against the control room window, his genitalia distorted hideously against the glass. His teeth, revealed by a deranged grin, were covered in gobs of brown plasticine.

So next time you’re slipping through the air with 150 on the clock and more to come, spare a thought for George Hardle, well-endowed aerodynamics pioneer and long term resident of The Verniers, a rest home in Tipton for bewildered former engineers.

Top Ariel dealers recommend it

From Cyril's memoirs dated 21 January 2006

When an office junior at Ariel Motorcycles in the 1950s, it was decided I should be sent to investigate one of our dealers in nearby Solihull in Birmingham. They were suspected of rum shenanigans and I was to apply for the post of trainee mechanic, a position which, if I got it (I did), would enable me to report back to head office. I had my misgivings and didn't want to be what might now be termed a 'grass', but I had little choice if I was to keep my job.

JL Morris was a long-established dealer set in crumbling Victorian buildings in a dingy back street. JL 'Jimmy' Morris himself stayed mainly in the ramshackle office at the side of the showroom floor. My immediate boss, in fact the only other employee, was Charlie Hake, a 50-something mechanic of dubious morals and questionable hygiene. My introduction to Charlie came on my first morning. I was in need of the toilet and was directed by Jimmy Morris to the privy in the yard. I opened the door and there was Mr Hake, boiler suit around his ankles, hunched over his manhood in furious activity. I must have stood there for a couple of shocked seconds, long enough to prompt Charlie to say, 'Look kidda, either come in and gimme a hand or shut the bloody door.' I shut the door.

Over the coming weeks it became clear why the motorcycles being sold at JL Morris were ill-prepared and often displayed a bewildering array of faults and bodges. Charlie Hake simply couldn't keep his hands off his wedding tackle long enough to get any work done. His trips to the toilet were frequent and when not actually pleasuring himself he'd be talking about sex in all its forms while tweaking feverishly at his overalls. It was certainly an education for me and while it was many years before I learned the correct names for certain depraved acts, I soon became well versed in the vernacular.

Now, Jimmy Morris had a tan boxer bitch called Honey, which was allowed to roam freely throughout the workshop. On too many occasions to put down to chance, the dog would be missing at the same time as Charlie Hake. It was decided that the clinching evidence needed to get rid of Charlie was to catch him on camera in flagrante delicto with Honey the dog. So HQ supplied me with a Kodak Brownie and a flash cube.

Over the next few days I watched carefully when Charlie and Honey disappeared. It turned out he was leading the dog to a store room at the back of the workshop. What puzzled me was why this poor creature followed so willingly.

It was a Friday afternoon when I decided to take the plunge. I'd already planned my photo-assault, greasing the hinges of the store room door so I could ease it open without a tell-tale creak. Indeed, when the time came it opened silently and with the door ajar I could hear vigorous licking and slurping and already my mind was several steps ahead, awash with images of strange congress. On top of that there was a sickening smell of what I can only describe as warm meat. My stomach churned as I eased the door further open and carefully peeped inside. The scene before me was beyond anything I'd imagined. There lay Charlie Hake, flat on his back, overalls around his ankles, eyes closed in rapture as his arms reached back to grip the forks of a 1951 Square Four. Honey was paying close attention to his John Thomas with her big pink tongue, and why? It was smeared liberally with dog food. Suddenly there was a groan, Honey's lick rate increased, I pressed the shutter, scarpered, jumped on my Red Hunter and high-tailed it back to HQ.

The picture proved enough to get Charlie Hake the sack, and I believe the original print hung around at the Ariel offices for many years, being brought out at Christmas parties and the like. In retrospect, I do feel a little sorry for Charlie as his only wrongdoing, in my eyes, was the bodging of the bikes. I mean, who hasn't, at one time or another when feeding Tiddles or Fido, glanced at that marrowbone jelly and felt a flicker of mischief? Have I said too much?

Ginger kids, grands prix and donkeys

From Cyril's memoirs dated 5 January 2006

These short January days put me in mind of pre-season testing for MotoGP – or the 500 class as it was during my working life. As wind batters the shutters, logs crackle on the fire and while my lovely young wife Francesca nips upstairs to slip into something a little more comfortable I shall relax my grip on my stiff hot toddy and put into writing something which, were it ever to get into the public domain, could cause ructions. Is this the alcohol talking? I fear so, but...

The final four years of my full-time employment, leading up to my retirement at the end of 2000, were spent at Yamaha in the UK. While not officially linked to the 500 GP race team I was lucky enough to have close access due to my friendship with certain movers and shakers.

Back in 1997 Valentino Rossi first began scaling the slippery pole of GP stardom when he won the 125 World Championship at his second attempt. It was clear to us all that here was a star of the future. That year we’d had plucky Luca Cadalora and that lovely chap Norick Abe on the YZR but certain besuited gentlemen high up in Yamaha made it clear that for the next season they’d be bringing in a pocket rocket youngster. The team would get the latest YZR, the OWK1 (or the Owki-Cokey as it was ‘hilariously’ dubbed – I hasten to add not by me. Which reminds me, that coming season, following Simon Crafar’s first ever GP win at Donington Park, several of us performed, by way of celebration, a spirited late-night and rather adult version of the hokey-cokey in the paddock, with plenty of ins, outs and an abundance of shaking it all about. I could be wrong but I seem to recall a rather disgruntled Kenny Roberts Jr appearing outside his motorhome in tartan dressing gown and Kermit slippers, complaining about the noise. But poor old Kenny had had a terrible day on his dad’s KR3, so if indeed it was him then all must be forgiven as I sympathise utterly. My own father insisted on building me a bicycle instead of buying me the Elswick Hopper I’d been admiring in the local shop window. The result was acute embarrassment outside the school gates followed by a broken front tooth and a punctured lung. I now regret being so rough with father, but I was only 15, had a bit of a temper and didn’t know my own strength. After all, he'd tried his best with that bicycle given the restrictions of his wheelchair. I digress…).

We were at pre-season testing somewhere in Spain, can't recall where exactly. All was going well, with Simon and Norick putting in good times on the OWK1, but by the end of the first day there was still no sign of this fabled new boy. Just as the team was packing up for the evening, a taxi appeared and out stepped a diminutive figure with a shock of wild, curly, bright ginger hair. He introduced himself as Flamoes Beffen, an 18-year-old Dutch lad who, until now, was unknown to any of us. It was too late for any riding, so I offered to give little Flamoes – or ‘Flam’ as I very quickly dubbed him – a lift back to the hotel in my hire car.

As I drove we chatted. Like most Dutch, who are ever happy to accommodate foreign tongues, his English was excellent. He told me of his racing in the domestic 250 championship, where he’d finished a lowly 12th the previous season. However, despite uncompetitive machinery his talent must have shone through as Japanese talent scouts had approached him with a view to riding for Yamaha – and here he was. He seemed a nice lad, softly spoken and even a little star-struck, hardly daring to believe his luck, I don’t suppose. If only that luck had lasted just a little longer.

I’ve never had a good sense of direction (it was once said of me that I couldn’t find my own cock with both hands, but then my grandmother did have a colourful turn of phrase). So, becoming ever more enmeshed in one-way systems and crowded back streets, we found ourselves in a lively part of town as night fell. It was a very warm evening and I was absolutely parched, so I suggested we park up, have a beer at a bar and get our bearings. If I’m honest, I’d pinpoint that decision as being the catalyst for what was to unfold.

Well, one beer led to another, which led to another bar and another beer and some tapas. Flam started to relax and in fact became very animated, laughing at anything and anyone and singing Dutch drinking songs at the top of his voice. I quickly learned a chorus or two and we became quite a hit, the more we sang the more beer the barman provided for free. We must have been a strange sight, a grey-haired 62-year-old and a ginger dwarf both caterwauling in Dutch. If only it had ended there.

As I told the Spanish police, I remember nothing after crawling to the toilet, where I was found some time later, having divested myself of troublesome clothing, lying with my cheek on the soothingly cool porcelain footplate of one of those distinctive ‘hole-in-the-floor’ Continental toilets. Not my most dignified moment. The police were very keen to learn how I knew Flam and questioned me for some time – keeping me at arm’s length you understand – before letting me go. I never did find out why Flamoes Beffen was deported back to Holland and I refuse to go on rumour alone, because, as we all know, gossip and hearsay can distort things terribly. I mean, the donkey possibly, but the Jack Russell? He was only a small chap, but I just can’t see it.

So, things might have been very different for Yamaha’s 1998 season and after several more years, despite great riders such as Bayle, Abe, Crafar, Biaggi and Checa, it took Vale Rossi, as many of us had always thought, to finally wrest the laurels from Honda. But, you know, whenever I catch a glimpse of a ginger youngster, or indeed Ronald McDonald, or hear the distant braying of a donkey, I wonder what truly happened that night, and of what might have been.

Suzuki's GSX-R750 prompts a frank and revealing exchange of emails

From Cyril's memoirs dated 27 December 2005

From: deaconblue@purgatory.com
To: cyrilgreen@libero.it
Date: 12 October 2005

Dear Cyril

I read with interest your account in Bikes and Bikemen of the invention and naming of Suzuki's SRAD induction system. Now, you and I both know that the naming process was long and hard and took place at a seminar in Berkshire in April of 1995. As I recall, it wasn't you who came up with the acronym which was to grace the following year's GSX-R750T. No, in fact I coined Suzuki Ram Air Direct after several of your suggestions were rejected, including, if I'm not mistaken, High Air Intake Rate Yield, or HAIRY. I’m surprised you seem to have forgotten this, but am prepared to put it down to the heavy medication a man of your age and condition must be forced to endure. I look forward to seeing a letter in Bikes and Bikemen correcting the error.

Yours, Charles Deacon

----------------------------------------------


From: cyrilgreen@libero.it
To: deaconblue@purgatory.com
Date: 13 October 2005

Dear Charles

Many thanks for your message, but I feel I have to defend my ground on this one. I know for a fact that SRAD was coined by myself to great acclaim and relief from all involved after discussions had reached deadlock on day 18. You may not recall the decisive moment too well as I believe you were out of the room at the time on (yet another) toilet break. How is that nasty waterworks trouble, by the way? Incidentally, your embarrassing bladder-based 'accident' earlier that day could have happened to anyone suffering from chronic incontinence, although to have had the same mishap eight times in two weeks does seem a little unfortunate.
The fact that the problem was prompted by urethral chaffing during the 1992 Le Mans 24-Hour does make it seem a little more heroic, although as you were a mechanic, not a rider, I'm a little puzzled as to when this chaffing actually took place. It may well have been caused by going balls-out on something long and French, but I doubt it was the Mulsanne Straight. We'll say no more.
HAIRY, I'm afraid, doesn't ring a bell and I suspect your mind is playing tricks on you. It's only to be expected when a man suffers premature baldness, but you really must put that to one side, as I presume you do your rather fine toupee each night before bed.
Oh, and may I say that my only medication involves liberal doses of my lovely young wife Francesca and the finest Umbrian olive oil, usually taken separately, though not always!

Best wishes, Cyril
PS: how's the rash?

----------------------------------------------


From: deaconblue@purgatory.com
To: cyrilgreen@libero.it
Date: 16 October 2005

Cyril

Dear oh dear, you really are a bitter little man, aren't you? Do I need to send you a copy of the photo of me shaking hands with Masahiro Nishikawa as he congratulates me for my work on the GSX-R project? It would be a simple thing to take a quick snap of it in situ on my bedside table. No doubt you won't recall the photo being taken during Nishikawa's surprise visit to the seminar, as you were otherwise engaged in a maintenance store cupboard with a waiter you'd been chatting up at lunch. Or was that just another 'misunderstanding'? I'm sure 'the lovely Francesca' (or is that Francesco?) would be interested to hear all about it. Just write the letter, Cyril.

Charles

----------------------------------------------


From: cyrilgreen@libero.it
To: deaconblue@purgatory.com
Date: 27 October 2005

Charles

Please forgive my tardy reply, but I've had many more important things to do, such as fettling my small but lovely collection of motorcycles and tending to a troublesome boil on the dog's bottom.
It's a pity you had to bring up the incident in the cupboard with the waiter – and in such a threatening manner. Perhaps it's time to tell you that the photo you have cherished all these years is not, in fact, the GSX-R750T’s engine designer Masahiro Nishikawa, but rather Kevin Hom who worked at the Shell Minimart, Twyford. If you knew one iota about the team behind the GSX-R you'd know that Nishikawa has never sported an afro perm, is unlikely to be seen in a blue nylon snorkel jacket – least of all with the hood up – and didn’t, the last time I met him, have a lazy eye. We were all in on the joke, Charles.
As I recall, and you obviously do not, you then drank yourself unconscious in a self-congratulatory frenzy before being carried up to bed by the rather burly night porter. As a memento, I have in front of me as I type a rather interesting collection of snapshots. My word, it's not so much the length of those GSX-R750 conrods as the external diameter of the big-end. Ouch! Thank goodness for polished internals. And how are the old Chalfonts, these days?
If I were you Charles, I'd forget all about this whole SRAD business, before you make a complete TAWT of yourself.

Yours, still wincing at the thought

Cyril 'Polaroid' Green

Cyril witnesses first hand the advantages of a wipe-clean surface

From Cyril's memoirs dated 19 December 2005

I’m sure many of you enjoyed this year’s Motorcycle Show at the NEC in Birmingham, that thrilling coming together of the greatest bikes and equipment in a carnival atmosphere fuelled by fine food, refreshing ales and lovely girls. At least that’s what the marketing men would have us believe. I’m afraid my own experiences of the show were always rather mixed. To say I’m mentally scarred might be an exaggeration, but the flashbacks persist to this day. Luckily, my lovely young wife Francesca now knows how to handle me on finding me bolt upright in bed in the small hours, screaming ‘get the Bandit off the baby!’. Recurring nightmares are the worst.

However, my most vivid memory of the show didn’t happen at the show itself. 1982 was the show’s second year at the NEC, I was Suzuki’s UK and European Sales Manager and we had a beautiful GSX1100 Katana on the stand. After setting up ready for the show’s opening the next morning, several of us decamped for a beer or two at the Bartons Arms in Birmingham’s Aston district. This locally-famous Victorian-era pub was a lively place back then, full of local ‘characters’ and certainly not the place to start an argument.

One of my sales team, Andy Craven (30-something, single, balding, Star Trek enthusiast with fungal problems – I’m sure you get the picture) was wearing a now much sought-after Katana paddock jacket made from what can only be described as purest nylon. How it glistened under the pub lights. The evening was going well, with several pints of Brew XI lubricating the conversation as we stood at the bar, when an enormous chap, who might best be described as a skinhead, tapped Andy on the shoulder. As Andy turned around and gazed up, our laughter came to an abrupt halt. I have to admit that in Andy’s more irritating moments (that is, any time he was in your company) I’d often harboured vivid daydreams of him being beaten ferociously by broad-shouldered, heavily-muscled men with fists like steam hammers, yet with my dream seemingly about to come true I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for it. But, it must said, Andy had one of those very punchable faces.

‘It’s a sword, ay it,’ boomed the large youth in a distinctive Brummie twang.
‘What is? What are you talking about?’ Among Andy’s many failings was an inability to accurately judge potentially explosive social situations.

‘That, on yer back, mate. Katana. It’s a bloody big sword, ay it.’
‘It’s a bloody big bike actually ‘mate’,’ said Andy with a derisive smirk. He turned back to us with a sarcastic chuckle. I suspected his Essex accent wasn’t cutting a lot of ice at this point and my toes curled inside my shoes in grim anticipation.

‘Yowma rude little git, ay ya?’ said the skinhead, who then, extraordinarily I thought, walked away to the bar. As the rest continued with subdued chatting I watched as this chap ordered two pints of snakebite – the infamously punchy mix of cider and lager later banned in many pubs – downing them one after the other before leaving. I felt very relieved to see the back of him and got in another round.

I think it was the screaming women, and some men, who alerted me to the return of our close-cropped friend. He marched across the large pub creating a bow wave of back-stepping punters. In his hand he did indeed have a bloody big sword.
Andy, now a little worse for wear, was oblivious and still had his back to the approaching maniac. However, his attention was caught when the skinhead took up a splayed-legged, baseball batsman’s stance and whacked Andy’s backside with the flat of the sword.

‘THIS,’ he boomed, ‘is a fucking katana! The greatest killing weapon of all time and capable of slicing through a human torso in one stroke.’

Andy leapt the air and spun round, and was now facing the lunatic while gripping his freshly-thwacked buttocks. He had the expression of a cornered guinea pig. As the whole pub looked on, the skinhead lifted the sword in two hands high above his head then brought it down very slowly onto Andy’s scalp. He then slid the tip down his forehead, nose, mouth and chin (is it just me, or was all this rather homoerotic?). The sword came to rest on Andy’s thin brown belt and with a very deft flick of the wrists the belt and trouser waistband were cut clean through. I clearly recall that as everyone in the pub stood in rapt silence, ‘Happy Talk’ by Captain Sensible was belting out on the jukebox. I don’t think Andy appreciated the irony.

Well, I’m not sure if it was Andy’s custom to go without underpants, but if not he certainly picked an unlucky evening to do so. (Which reminds me of the time I was discovered lying in a lay-by, next to my neatly-parked Yamaha FZR1000 Genesis, my bottom half utterly naked and covered in butter. But more on that another time.) With Andy’s snipped slacks gathered in a heap around his ankles, a pair of pants would have helped in at least two ways. They'd have saved him from the humiliation of presenting the assembled throng with something not unlike a pink bar-end weight peeping from a ginger nest. And they would have baffled the high-pressure exit of that rather unfortunate by-product of extreme fright. I’ve seen such jet-like eruptions from cows in a milking shed, but never from a human. Everyone has their talents, it seems.

Those of you who know the Bartons Arms will understand how the Victorians’ extensive use of ceramic tiling on floors and, thank goodness, walls, came in rather handy during the subsequent clean-up process. And, you know, it’s true what they say about sweetcorn. Quite extraordinary.