Longmore Way Down

From Cyril's memoirs dated 4 November 2007

‘Cuppa tea mate?’ Those words, in an unmistakable Black Country twang, were uttered to me a few years back by Lee Longmore, swiftly followed by, ‘Wait there mate and arl getcha a bacon sarnie. Brown sauce or red?’ All of which would have been extremely welcome if at the time I hadn’t been trapped beneath a Yamaha R6, having been skittled off in a South London street by, I kid you not, a transvestite dwarf on a minimoto. Lee Longmore was not that dwarf. He was far stranger than that.

I first met Lee in a San Francisco coffee shop. Well, I say I met him, but in fact he sat across from me on a low sofa, dressed in running kit, including very short shorts, his legs sprawled wide in a rather forced show of masculinity. It was difficult to know whether or not his genital display was accidental or for my benefit (maybe my leathers had caught his eye?), in any case, the boys were certainly out of the barracks and remained so until the arrival of a young couple he knew, the woman looking rather unnerved having, on her approach, also been treated to Lee’s ‘last turkey in the shop’ impression. I rode away from the coffee shop and didn’t expect to see Lee again, so when I came round in that Clapham street and found him standing over me I was relieved that his full leathers covered all eventualities.

Since that day, I’ve got to know Lee pretty well – linked, as we are, by a love of motorcycles. He was one of the first to buy a Triumph Daytona 675, putting in his order after reading the pre-launch article in Bike (foolhardy given his renown gullibility. He once spent an evening drinking Tennant’s LA, assuming it was a trendy beer named after the Californian city, and was confused as to why he remained sober). Shortly after buying the Triumph, he rode to Italy to visit me and Francesca and I found him a slightly freakish guest. At one point I could have sworn he was wearing bike boots as he clomped around upstairs, but it was his normal, bare-footed Frankensteinian stomp.

He also brought along several Airfix kits, over which I’d catch him hunched in the small hours, like an obsessive elf. He brought a rope ladder, which he attached to the balcony of his attic room and kept rolled but ready for action, ‘merely as a precaution, Cyril’. And he insisted on ‘tweaking’ my computer, claiming to be a professional who wrote Triumph’s ignition and fuelling maps (a blatant lie). It cost me a packet to have the labyrinthine chaos unravelled by a real professional, who handed it back with a pained expression, saying that unravelling the mess had been like ‘peering into the mind of a psychopath’. Perhaps Lee really should write fuelling maps.

But you couldn’t wish to meet a nicer psychopath and that week, while Lee stayed with us at our modest house in Montemona, we went on some great blasts together in the Testa di Cazzo hills, he being a brisk and smooth rider, though far too keen to advertise his Advanced Motorcycling certificate (‘Cyril, you might think, What’s that child’s bike doing there? I think, Where’s the child!’).

It was rather sad what happened to Lee Longmore on his return to London. His behaviour became increasingly erratic, he put on weight and would be seen cruising the streets on his Daytona wearing overly-tight designer clothes better suited to a man half his age, and, in warm weather, a large and unsightly sweat patch swamping his back. He rigged up a PA system to the bike and would ‘talk’ his route for the benefit of the general public, spreading the Advanced Motorcycling gospel.

Then one day, this normally mild-mannered man simply flipped. Approached at traffic lights in Cricklewood by a tramp asking for spare change, Lee stepped off the bike, letting it crash to the ground, threw his helmet to the floor and challenged the shocked tramp to a fight. When the tramp backed away, Lee took out his frustration on the bike, laying into it with fists and boots. When the police arrived the bike was in flames and he was in tears, squatting in the gutter stripped to his underpants, trendy clothes burning along with his beloved Daytona, sobbing ‘I shoulda bought a f***** Mini’. If only I’d been there to offer the poor chap a nice cuppa tea.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

From Cyril's memoirs dated 22 September 2007

I took the Multistrada to Florence the other day, sent on an errand by Francesca. The sun was beating down, the skies were blue and the Duke was running sweetly. What could possibly go wrong? Ha!

I headed across country and by the time I reached the town of Radda in Chianti both the bike and I were warm and into our stride. I've lived in Italy for almost seven years and have come to accept that the majority of Italian riders and drivers have as much a concept of risk as they do of a chip butty. They seem to know no fear. I’m amazed that Italian men can walk without pushing before them a small wheeled trolley, given the apparent size of their balls. But then, fear doesn't come into it, because fear requires you to believe that some day your luck will run out.

I was humming along at a decent pace when I noticed headlights in my mirror. There was a series of bends coming up, in the middle of which, I knew, was a humpback bridge set at 45 degrees to the road. With the first right-hander approaching, I drifted left to the centreline and was about to pitch in at about 80mph when a horn blared and an Aprilia Tuono carved past on a mission. Well, my adrenal gland may be rather withered, but there's still a bit of juice in it yet and I took up the challenge, hoping that the increasingly tight turns and uneven surface would, for a while at least, help me to stay in touch with the thundering Aprilia.

But the other chap was really on it, using all of the road even when you'd have needed to be clairvoyant to know it was safe. By the bridge, I knew my capacity for lunacy was lacking and backed off. A good decision. The Tuono pitched into the left-hander very early, using the other side of the road, just as an Alfa saloon coming the other way appeared from behind the bridge's stone parapet. The rider picked up the bike and manfully tried to wrestle it down again in time to make the bend, but clipped the bridge wall and was pitched into the air, landing quite gracefully flat on his back in the long grass at the side of the road. The Alfa driver wouldn't have seen any of this and carried on. I pulled over and dashed to where the rider lay.

He hadn't moved and when I flipped up his black visor he didn't seem to be breathing. I felt for a pulse and found nothing, so unzipped his leathers ready to give heart massage. Well, that's when things all went a bit wonky.

As I pulled down the zip I suddenly felt as if I was in a Seventies aftershave advert, because not only was there no other clothing beneath the leathers, but an ample pair of breasts lost no time in escaping their confinement. He was clearly a she. Perhaps out of a deep-seated sense of guilt, owed mainly, I suspect, to that incident with Auntie Margaret when I was 12, my first reaction was to zip up the leathers. I was in the process of herding the escapees back into their leathery pen when the woman sat bolt upright and pulled off her helmet to reveal a tumble of raven hair and fierce green eyes. Ah...

Back home, Francesca eased a packet of frozen peas into my underpants in an attempt to halt the swelling and bruising (the old family jewels were rapidly resembling a couple of small mangos and a saveloy). She asked me to repeat exactly what I'd said to the woman. I admit that my Italian isn't what it might be, despite my years here, and with the awkwardness of the situation I became a little tongue tied. When Francesca had stopped giggling she explained that the English equivalent of what I'd blurted out would be, 'I'm very sorry, but I thought you were dead and I was chasing your lively breasts.' That's the last time I play the good Samaritan. I felt a right tit. Left one, too.

Too much monkey business

From Cyril's memoirs dated 14 September 2007

Speed, to me, will always mean Bonneville Salt Flats. And prison food. The other evening Francesca and I were rooting away in the store room at the back of my office, getting up a good old sweat humping and humping box after box of old papers and documents from years back. I managed to drop one and amongst the spillage I noticed a notebook from a trip to Bonneville during my days at Suzuki. I've reprinted some of that notebook here, and hope that, should this memoir ever see the light of day, I'm not sued by any of those still in a position to do so.

15 June 1980: Finally, after some outrageous bribery, the warders have given me back my notebook. How do I describe the catastrophic events of the past five days? From the beginning, I suppose. So...

10 June 1980: We fly into Salt Lake City and collect the hire car. There's immediately an argument as to who will drive, with Barry [Sheene] insisting that it's him. I tell him I'd heard enough stories of what he and Stavros [Steve Parrish] had got up to with hire cars and hand the keys to our chief technician, Don Prior. Barry goes into a sulk in the back of the car and all the way to Bonneville lets go of silent but utterly nauseating farts, chuckling each time we’re forced to wind down the Chevrolet's windows in panic.

Check into the hotel and meet with the rest of the crew. The bike and spares are here, having been shipped over ahead of us. I remind everyone of Suzuki's desire to keep this under wraps, hence the unliveried bike and choosing a relatively quiet time at the salt flats. We're not here to break records, but we do want to push this bike to the limit. Early night, big day tomorrow. Passing through the bar I wish Barry goodnight. He calls me a c***. Light heartedly, I'm sure.

11 June 1980: This morning Barry puts in some very high speed runs before complaining of a loss of power. Don Prior begins to take a look, but even under the awning the sun’s heat is intense and he's clearly flustered. With uncharacteristic clumsiness he pulls the bike on top of himself, taking a heavy blow to the head. He insists all is okay, but it was a mighty knock and he has a cut that might need stitches, so I send him with one of the mechanics to get a check up with a doctor in town. He returns two hours later with a bemused mechanic and a chimpanzee ventriloquist’s dummy which is dressed in a Stetson hat, fringed leather chaps and blue waistcoat, complete with sheriff's badge. Don assures me that he's feeling fine. Or rather, Mr Kenny Roberts the Chimp assures me.

12 June 1980: Don comes down to breakfast with Mr Kenny Roberts on his arm and speaks only through the dummy throughout. This sets the pattern for the day, with the chimp advising Don on carb settings and revised ignition timing. Don clearly finds it awkward working with a dummy on his left hand, but when Barry suggests he 'put the fackin' monkey down' Don becomes agitated and we let him get on with it.

After lunch, Barry threatens to refuse to ride unless 'that bloody lunatic puts down the fackin' chimp and gets on with his bleedin' job'. In the event, Barry relents, but the afternoon session comes to a premature halt when salt crystals are sucked into the engine, damaging the bore and a valve seat on number one pot. A heated row develops between Don Prior and Mr Kenny Roberts, Don castigating the puppet-chimp for advising they run without air filters.

It's now late in the evening and Barry and I are enjoying a few drinks in the hotel bar. Then Don appears, having worked on the motor all evening, and still with Mr Kenny Roberts on his arm, its synthetic fur matted with grease and looking rather worse for wear. As does Don.

Barry, choosing the diplomatic route as ever, says: 'Don, I've had enough of this. You've bleedin' cracked. Give me the fackin' monkey, I'll fackin' put an end to this bollocks.' With which he lunges at the dummy and a bitter struggle ensues, during which tables are knocked over, with glasses crashing to the floor. Finally, Barry bursts free from Don, triumphantly holding aloft the head of Mr Kenny Roberts.

'That's it. It's fackin' over, you nutter,' he shouts, throwing the head across the bar with some force. Unfortunately, it ricochets off the jukebox and bounces onto a table, knocking a drink into the lap of the local chief of police, who’s been watching the whole sordid performance.

So, there you have it. We were all eventually released after paying substantial fines and while at least some of the work we carried out at Bonneville did find its way, many years later, onto the Hayabusa, Don Prior was never quite the same again, though he did complete a successful 1981 summer season with a refurbished Mr Kenny Roberts as Kenny and Don on Blackpool’s north pier.

Morag McCuddie

From Cyril's memoirs dated 19 August 2007

I recently read an article about haggis stalking in the Scottish Highlands, and it took me right back to the late 1990s, a tuned Yamaha V-Max and Morag McCuddie, fearsome Queen of the Lathe.

Morag is an engineering legend within the industry yet all but unknown outside it. This could be down to her outright strangeness, but I'd say that makes her interesting. She’s certainly always interested me – but not in the way you might think. She stands six feet four and even now, in her 70s, has the physique of a Clydeside riveter, complete with ham-sized, hirsute forearms. She always wears a kilt, exposing mighty legs, and I certainly wouldn’t like to see those broad, calloused hands tossing anything less substantial than a caber.

We first met in 1958 when I was working for Ariel and we immediately got along well. I’d been sent to her workshops in Oban on Scotland's rugged west coast to convince her to try to iron out problems with the new Ariel Leader that had flummoxed the chaps at the factory. Morag was either idiosyncratic, an imaginative liar or plainly mad, depending on your view. During that first meeting she told me that she’d built the great Bob McIntyre entirely from spares and insisted that he only managed to pull off the previous year’s first ever 100mph TT lap thanks to last-minute tweaks she’d made to his pelvic oil galleries.

It was a lovely day in that summer of ’58 and she invited me to join her for a jaunt into the hills on scramblers. We rode for a couple of hours then stopped on a hilltop to admire the view, our bikes pinging in the background as they cooled. Morag turned to me with a wink and I watched as she reached down and opened the flaps of her knapsack. She reached in and pulled out a couple of mighty smoked salmon sandwiches and, more importantly, a large bottle of Glenfelch single malt whisky (label motto, “Ye'll sup more wi' a straw!”).

Well, my hazy memories of the rest of that afternoon come to me only in brief and seemingly unconnected episodes, like clicking aimlessly through YouTube. I know we wrestled, and I know that at least part of that wrestling took place naked. I know that we also rode the bikes in the buff and that for some of the time I wore a slice of smoked salmon both as a wig and a loincloth. The next morning, I could hardly move for midge bites, my skin a Square Four workshop manual in Braille. And to this day I have a scar on my right buttock in the shape of the exhaust heatshield on Morag’s B33. It has become a ritual that every time I see her I have to show this brand (I’m convinced she did it on purpose when I was comatose), at which point she roars with gravelly laughter and slaps me on the back with the force of a dockside crane.

So, jump forward to 1998 and my arrival in Oban to bring details of work Morag was to take on for Yamaha (my then employers). As usual, she mulled over the proposal for no more than ten minutes before suggesting a drink. She went to the courtyard at the back of the house and appeared from one of the outbuildings on her tuned V-Max. At Morag’s insistence I foolishly left my R1 at the house and climbed on the back.

By the time we reached the Beaver and Merkin I was in need of a drink and the first few pints of Grainger’s Disgraced Ghillie slipped down with unseemly haste. Before I knew it, we were deep in our cups and Morag was demanding I bear my buttock to show the heatshield scar. Despite the crowded tap room I did just that. But even after all those years I wasn’t prepared for the hearty slap on the back and, leather jeans like shackles around my ankles, I stumbled forwards, hit my head on the bar and was knocked out cold.

Apparently, Morag McCuddie collected me up like a rag doll, and without even bothering to pull up my trousers threw me over the back of the V-max, cowboy style, and rode home through the town. What happened between then and the next morning I have no idea, but I can tell you that the long ride back down south on the R1 involved a rather ridiculous number of comfort breaks.

Fox me! Fox me!

From Cyril's memoirs dated 17 July 2007

Glencrutchery this and Cronk-y-Voddy that has brought back vivid and frankly unsettling memories of the TT.

In 1998 I was there with Yamaha, meeting others from the industry for an annual pow-wow. A friend of mine, Paul Carlton, was racing a FireBlade in the Production TT as a privateer, so one morning after the first early practice of the week I went over to the paddock to see how he’d got on.

Well, poor old Paul was in a bit of a state. His mechanic, the only other member of his two-man team, had gone down with something tropical involving worms and orifices after an adventure holiday in Belize and would have to rest his spectacularly enlarged scrotum on a soft pillow for at least two weeks. I promised Paul I’d put the word out to see what could be done. That, as it turned out, was my mistake.

Steve ‘Deadly’ Davies came recommended via a friend of a colleague’s brother and warning bells should have rung when I sought him out at the campsite in Peel. His tent was draped with an army camouflage net and a crudely home-made flag fluttered above it bearing the barely legible words scrawled in marker pen, “Swift and Bald”. It later transpired that it was actually “Swift and Bold”, not his favourite two washing powders but the motto of the Royal Green Jackets, of which he claimed to be a former member. I tapped on the ridge pole and out stumbled a ginger-haired man dressed in a tartan dressing gown and huge slippers shaped like penguins. He clearly had no shame, something that would become apparent as the week wore on.

I left him to get dressed and when I returned to ride together to Douglas so Steve could meet Paul, he was dressed in garish full leathers made up of a patchwork of colours, making him look like a cross between a jester and a bean bag. But next to him stood a beautiful and elegant woman who, inexplicably, turned out to be his wife, Sacha (affectionately known as Basha, for reasons unrepeatable here). I was with my own lovely young wife, Francesca. We’d been married for just nine months and were virtually inseparable (literally so at one point, but that was a rare spasm and eventually solved with a squirt of Swarfega and a lollipop stick) and it was soon obvious that Sacha and Francesca got on like a house on fire. If only I’d found Steve ‘Deadly’ Davies as likeable. I recall sitting on our Yamaha R1 watching Steve go through a bizarre, tai-chi-style stretching routine, complete with muted squawks, before getting on his 600 Bandit. ‘He’s very keen on Jackie Chan,’ Sacha said, rolling her eyes.

As weird as Steve was, Paul was desperate for a spannerman and Steve talked the talk, so the problem seemed solved. However, I called by a couple of days later and things weren’t going well.

‘Cyril,’ said Paul, pink-rimmed eyes struggling to focus with sheer fatigue, ‘the bloke’s a nutter. For a start, he precedes everything he does with ridiculous martial arts moves, complete with sound effects, so everything takes forever, and this is despite constantly saying, ‘crack on’, which is something I’ve yet to see him actually do. When he does get to work he’s not bad, but the bloke’s living in a dream world. He whispered to me yesterday that he’s actually on the Island on secret army manoeuvres and might get called away at any moment. It’s patently bollocks, Cyril. I mean, this is the man who claims with all sincerity that his red hair is down to a Welsh ancestor having been raped by a fox. He hates the things with a passion.’

Things came to a head on race Thursday when Steve was caught in the paddock toilets sodomising a Basil Brush soft toy, insomuch as that's possible at all. As the police led him away in cuffs he pleaded that he was actually a copper himself (that did turn out to be true) and that he’d been ‘teaching that bastard fox a lesson’, a defence which later failed to convince the magistrates.

Rubber

From Cyril's memoirs dated 28 June 2007

The smell of warm rubber always brings back such powerful memories. The thrilling, acrid whiff from the snot-bobbled edge of a Dragon Supercorsa after a wild ride in Umbria’s Testa di Cazzo hills. The pungent, all-enveloping scent on entering a tyre fitter’s workshop – and look, there’s the man himself, hands glistening with rim lube. Then there are the thrashings I received from my father, wielding a 19in Avon ‘Ne’r-Breach’ inner tube (deflated, I’m sad to say, else beatings could have been quite comical). The faint smell of rubber on my mother’s lips as she kissed me goodbye before I set off for school (I’d always assumed it was from her Marigolds, though thinking back, she never used them). And the vaguely fishy pong from the air let out of a police Triumph T110’s tyres round the back of an Okell’s pub on the Isle of Man one year. Yes, tyres. Perhaps the most all-round sensorially stimulating part of a motorcycle.

I recall, back in the mid-Seventies, my then-wife Teresa (oh, you remember, the asthmatic one with a penchant for spit roasts and swearing) had a real thing for tyres. I discovered this by accident after spending an increasingly desperate afternoon in the garden trying to seat the bead on a Dunlop Gold Seal. It was a hot day and eventually I returned to the house, defeated, and flopped down on a kitchen chair like a wet rag doll. Teresa brought me over a cold tin of Double Diamond and the next thing I knew her hot-pants were hanging from the cooker hood and she was riding me like a Maico 250 over the Hawkstone Park whoops – fine with adequate damping and a fat knobbly, but I was merely a passenger holding on for dear life.

Then there was that time in Germany in 1994. A few of us were at a trade show in Berlin and one evening, after a few beers in the bar at the show, a chap called Terry Fletcher, the sales manager for an aftermarket spares firm that must remain nameless, decided it would be great fun to steal one of those huge Michelin Man costumes from behind one of the stands. He somehow sneaked it out via the goods entrance and we met him around the back. This costume was so cumbersome that Terry had to be helped into it and once in, couldn’t get out again on his own. After ten minutes of messing about, the taxi arrived to take us into town for the evening. We’d all had a bit to drink so we jumped into the cab and sped off laughing, leaving Terry lumbering around the deserted carpark.

About five minutes later we saw sense and turned back to get him, but we couldn’t find Terry anywhere. Only one of us had a mobile phone back then, so there was no way of contacting him and eventually we gave up and went into the city, assuming he’d gone off on his own. What we didn’t realise was that as we stuffed our faces with smoked sausage washed down with weissbier, Terry was stumbling around like an obese albino freak in the thick rubber suit, vision severely restricted, and eventually tumbled down a steep grass bank at the back of the main hall, becoming wedged between the spars of a stout wooden fence. He was there for five days and was in a bit of a state when they rescued him. I’ve since seen him attack a cuddly Michelin Man toy with the ferocity of a drugged and taunted pit bull. The scars are deep.

Finally, when riding hard I always bear in mind the advice given to me by Pietro Ficabagnata, chief tester at Pirelli in the late Eighties. ‘Cyril,’ he told me, ‘the tyre is a fickle mistress, with a full, rounded body and a powerful grip. Treat her with respect and she will bring you untold joy, but ignore her warnings and she will tear off your manhood and throw it over the hedge of uncertainty for the wild boar of skidding to feast upon.’ Wise words indeed.

Genius? Or insanity?

From Cyril's memoirs dated 3 May 2007

We are constantly surrounded by – and sometimes perched upon – stunning examples of modern engineering. But the people behind these creations are often anonymous. Well, I have to say that’s probably a good thing. I'm not saying that all engineers are strange, merely that their ranks appear to harbour a large proportion of what most people would call eccentrics.

Takatoshi Takahashi was one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met, little known outside the industry in Japan, but seen as a demi-god by those within it. In mid 1996 he was given special access to a prototype of what would become the Yamaha YZF-R1, then known only by the codename of “Warm Turbot” (I believe it was meant to be “Hot Tuna”, but something was lost in translation). The idea was that he’d tune it to run in the following year’s Suzuka 8-Hour, campaigned beneath anonymous bodywork, then feed back his findings to Yamaha HQ. Well, that was the plan, and I’m afraid I feel partly responsible for what followed.

In summer 1997, I went to Japan from Yamaha UK to see Takatoshi while he prepared the bike at his clinical workshop in an industrial suburb of Iwata on the central eastern coast. Over the years, I’ve dabbled with various workshop machinery, rarely happier than when getting to grips with a mighty tool, and thanks in part to his excellent English, Takatoshi and I got on well. I was flattered when, a month before the race, he asked if I’d polish a set of conrods. I set to with the powerful bench polisher and all was going fine until there was an almighty clang and the conrod pinged out of my hands, across the workshop and struck Takatoshi squarely on the back of the head. He fell like a sack of water chestnuts.

The hospital released him later that day, claiming no lasting ill effects. However, he was a changed man. He no longer wanted me in his workshop (understandable), but neither did he want anyone else there, becoming ever more reclusive over the following weeks. Yamaha executives were rather taken aback by the armed stand-off with which they were greeted and no one predicted Takatoshi’s dramatic exit, aboard the now chopped “Warm Turbot”, the rider dressed in colourful ceremonial robes.

The bike was never seen again, but later that year a scientific expedition to the Ogasawara islands, south east of the mainland, stumbled upon an isolated encampment. There they found a small group of people involved in some sort of primitive cult, and though the hurriedly-taken photos are a little blurry, its leader is unmistakably Takatoshi Takahashi. More worrying was the object of the group’s fervent worship, a freakish, four-legged creature made of motorcycle components and animal hides. Worst of all, its monstrous head, fashioned from hunks and flaps of dried meat, bore a spine-chilling resemblance to yours truly. I had become a deity.

Another slightly unhinged engineer was Harry Teischman, who worked with me at BSA in the early Sixties, where he’d spend board meetings harvesting earwax and the nasal equivalent. We've all picked our nose or delved into our ears, but Harry could produce a prodigious haul. He would carefully roll his booty into balls before flattening them into discs. Then, as I watched from the other side of the table, he’d use his fingernail to work away at each disc in turn, but I could never see what he was doing.

One afternoon, the fire alarm sounded and after some grumbling we hurried from the room (since the time Edward Turner set fire to his trousers while doing the splits over a scented candle – it was some sort of a bet with Bert Hopwood – we'd taken fire alarms seriously). I was last out and, passing Harry's place, took my chance for a closer look. There were four discs in all, alternately of earwax and snot, and each displayed the initials of one of the people present at the meeting. The third disc (earwax) bore the initials CG. Voodoo? I would never have thought it except that a few weeks later Harry was found dead in his Solihull garden, slumped over a BSA Starfire wearing nothing but a goose-feather head-dress, his scrawny, pallid body daubed with strange runes rendered in green Hermetite. This upsetting scene was within a pentangle marked out on the lawn in empty two-pint Castrol tins. I mean, how shocking – a fragile 250cc single, of all things! It’s assumed he died of a heart attack attempting to start the heap of junk.