Fannying about

From Cyril's memoirs dated 4 April 2008

'BSA enters sex toy industry' is not a headline you’re likely to have seen, but only because fate dealt the project an early conclusion, to the relief of women everywhere, I should imagine.

In late 1963 BSA was pretty healthy, but the smarter people high up knew that the future held stiff challenges. To that end, a scheme was set up for workers to put forward ideas, which could be as wide-ranging as their imaginations (which, given mid-1960s Birmingham, led to a pretty conservative haul). However, among the two-stroke shopping trolleys and automated dog bathers was a racy suggestion for a, well… a motorised phallus. BSA had a reputation in some circles for being a stuffy firm, but there must have been something in the tea that week because a development engineer was put straight onto it, so to speak. Although phallic pleasuring devices are as old as mankind itself, the first battery-powered ‘widow’s comforter’ was still a few years away, so there was certainly a hole in the market, and BSA intended to fill it.

A lad was sent up to Soho and returned, still blushing, with a duffle bag full of samples ranging from the ludicrous to the frankly unfeasible. The development team disappeared into the workshop and after a few months of intense beavering a fully functional prototype was ready.

Development manager Terry Sheldon presented the creation to a special assembly of the board and managers, but initial impressions weren’t good. Many were surprised by the sheer bulk of the thing, made clear when Sheldon yelped on trapping his finger beneath it when heaving it onto the boardroom table. The ‘business end’ looked normal enough, complete with convincing veins and ridges, but the alloy casing beneath, equipped with steel grab handles sporting fat, anti-vibe grips, made the thing look like a two-horsepower AC generator – with a knob on it – an image only enhanced when, to everyone's horror, Sheldon turned a petcock, grasped a pull cord and yanked the beast into life.

After the initial shock, someone shouted above the din that the banshee wail of a 25cc two-stroke engine running on pre-mix would take some explaining to the neighbours, and by the time the 'Beeza Buzza' had vibed its way across the polished boardroom table, leaving an unsightly gouge, most people had left the haze-filled room
in dismay.

In late April 1964 we were summoned once again and this time Terry Sheldon placed a much more compact contraption on the table. He explained how he’d worked closely with the chaps at Joseph Lucas to come up with a battery-powered alternative, the 'Beeza Teeza'. But initial enthusiasm began to sour when Sheldon produced a battery pack the size of a large loaf. He strapped this to his waist then, using cables and clamps akin to jump leads, he connected it to the 'spinster's companion' which sprang into life with a fizz of blue sparks. Sheldon gripped the thing with grim determination while maintaining a bravado grin, despite quite clearly having his teeth rattled.

Now, I’m no expert on these matters, but I have to say that the movement created by the various cams and cranks would have been sufficient to mix a small batch of concrete and the thought of it going anywhere near a person’s more delicate regions was quite disturbing. Very quickly, the room began to fill with a smell familiar to generations of youngsters, that of burning-out Scalextric cars, and we watched in bafflement as Sheldon, his vision now blurred beyond use, grappled with the beast in an effort to switch it off. Thankfully, the Small Heath fire brigade swiftly brought the resulting blaze
under control.

Unbelievably, Sheldon was given one last crack at it and in early August he brought us together one last time in the refurbished board room. This, it was clear from the start, showed far more promise. Very compact for the day, weighing just four pounds, it gained nods of approval as it was passed around the various members. Then, with not a little showmanship, Sheldon produced an ‘adapted’ honeydew melon, inserted the device, turned a Bakelite knob and off it went, thrumming away happily as Sheldon slid it in and out with some skill. However, batteries weren’t then what they are now, and within about a minute the 'Beez-o-Gasm' was struggling in its death throes like a giant drowning slug.

It was quickly decided that 60 seconds with a floundering gastropod would not be sufficient to pleasure even the most desperate of ladies and that far more fun could be had in a couple of miles on the pillion of any of the wildly vibratory BSA range. Sheldon was suspended on full pay pending enquiries.

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.

Thunderballs

From Cyril's memoirs dated 2 February 2007

It was 1964 and I was a young and, whenever possible, thrusting Global Sales Director at Triumph, but as Triumph was by then controlled by the mighty BSA I was generally aware of what went on at the Small Heath HQ. Back then, the Cold War was at its height, as were James Bond films, with Goldfinger on the screens that year (I saw it in a Soho cinema and was expecting something entirely different). There was another film already in production – Thunderball – and BSA was approached by special effects genius John Stears (who later won an Oscar for his work). He wanted to equip a performance motorcycle with rocket launchers, to be ridden by the SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe (played by the really rather stunning Luciana Paluzzi, who happens to be Francesca’s aunt’s godmother’s niece, but I digress).

All went very well and Stears got a 650 Lightning on which his own people did a lot of modification work. Months later, there was a special private preview of the film at the Birmingham Odeon to which various members of the BSA board were invited, including Harold Armstrong and Edgar Smeer.

Armstrong and Smeer were long-serving board members with solid engineering backgrounds, which makes what follows all the more baffling. They were, as a pair, so taken by the stunts they saw in the film, featuring a pneumatic woman in tight black leather shooting rockets from her Beeza, that they took it upon themselves to develop their own fully-functional version of the bike, no special effects needed. They rightly assumed that they’d never get official approval for the work but convinced themselves that the Ministry of Defence would be thrilled with the machine once presented with it. At the subsequent trial at the Old Bailey they referred to the disastrous events as ‘snags’. The judge, I recall, preferred the term ‘criminal negligence’.

Thanks to BSA’s background as a gun manufacturer, Harry Armstrong had several useful contacts in the arms trade, which was how he managed to get hold of the anti-tank guns which were fitted to the side of an A65 Firebird street scrambler. After various bench tests and many hours with the slide rule, Armstrong and Smeer decided to take the contraption to a disused airfield for secret tests. We should be glad that they decided to film their exploits as the grainy black and white footage provides a valuable document (reputedly available in some obscure corners of the internet, though I've never found it, and even Francesca's deft young fingers fail to raise anything despite intense googling).

The footage, as shown in court that day, begins with Armstrong and Smeer unloading the bike from the back of a Commer van on a bleak and blowy airfield (I forget where). The bike looks proficient enough, with the launchers attached to its flanks. But then, from the back of the van, emerges the bizarre sight of Smeer's secretary, Janet Jones, dressed in a replica of the leather catsuit worn by Fiona Volpe in Thunderball. All very well on a toned Italian siren, not so fetching on a middle-aged mother of three a little too fond of the biscuit barrel. The impression was of an over-stuffed black pudding at bursting point. The men had clearly convinced her to take on this role purely for their own pleasure as her riding skills were not the best, as soon became clear. In fact, one wonders whether the whole venture wasn't focused solely on getting Janet Jones into a leather catsuit, an endeavour that I imagine required a couple of hefty lads and a pint of baby oil.

Anyway, the A65 was fired up and, with Armstrong filming furiously, Janet Jones squeaked onto the saddle with the sound of a hand being dragged over a highly-inflated balloon. The following events happened very quickly indeed and I recall the court re-watched the footage in slow motion many times. It seems Janet released the clutch rather abruptly, the back wheel stepped out, the bike went down on one side and one rocket shot out and destroyed the Commer, seen exploding in the background. Janet, now sprawling on the tarmac, is highly compromised as the catsuit's gusset seam finally gives up and bursts wide open (ah, now I remember, it was Blackbushe airfield in Hampshire) and Smeer flings himself on top of her in what he claimed to be an attempt to 'preserve her modesty', though I've never before heard it called a 'modesty'. It's clear in the footage that she sees things differently and the ensuing fight goes on for almost a minute, the dedicated Armstrong not missing one second with the camera.

It's a shame that the film ran out before the arrival of the police soon after. What they found was a scene of devastation, degradation, broken machinery and a grown man crying – a scene that by the decade's end would be fairly normal at the increasingly troubled BSA.

The TriBSA bonk plot

From Cyril's memoirs dated 14 December 2006

‘Get me Ago’s sperm!’ And with that shout from the boardroom so began one of the strangest and most regrettable chapters in the history of the British motorcycle industry.

This year I’ve spent many a happy hour glued to the screen watching lithe youngsters perform while a foaming stubby sits snugly in my hand. MotoGP has been thrilling, but how much more thrilling it would be for us Brits if we had a bunch of riders out there capable of getting on the podium. No disrespect to James Elison, [now James Toseland – Ed] who at least gives us a presence.

In the late Sixties we Brits were beginning to struggle both on the track and in the showrooms. When Mike Hailwood retired at the end of the 1967 season, it left only Phil Read with a real chance of winning a prestige title (which he did admirably, with a 125, two 250 and two 500 crowns between 1968-’74). But it was clear to all that the glory days were coming to an end and something had to be done. There was much talk of racing academies and the like, but nothing has even been divulged of the plot to systematically breed fresh racing stock. It was a dark period in Britain’s proud motorcycling history.

By 1968 the boardroom at BSA-Triumph was being infiltrated by accountants and marketing men with little background in motorcycling. The future looked grim for this once immensely successful industry and they were desperate for a solution. In November of that year, three directors – Tom Wildman, Terry Sheldon and William Atkins – gathered for an informal meeting at the Talbot Inn, Leamington Spa. The discussion that took place over pies and pints today beggars belief. It was agreed that what dealers needed was not only a high-tech product to combat the increasingly popular and sophisticated Japanese motorcycles, but also a highly-talented British racer to put the firm’s name on the podium (imagine how Ducati feel right now, with Capirossi [now Casey Stoner – Ed] doing the business for them). However, BSA-Triumph's methods were questionable to say the least.

It’s said that Atkins first proposed obtaining Phil Read’s sperm with a view to creating a test tube racer, as it were, even offering up his own wife, Glynis, as the carrier. However, although in vitro fertilization was in development, the first success wouldn’t come for another ten years and it was decided that given Triumph’s inability to get a reliable oil feed to rocker spindles, the chances of manipulating Read’s lively semen into the right nook or cranny were minimal.

It was then Sheldon who suggested that surely the thing to do would be to select a young, healthy woman, fully paid for the task, to seduce a racer and fall pregnant, the progeny to then be raised in an environment that would nurture his inbred racing talent. And why not, he suggested, aim for the top? Giacomo Agostini had already won four world titles and showed no signs of slowing.

So, the buxom daughter of a former British racer of some repute (doubling their chances of producing a racer-baby, so they argued) was enrolled for the job and packed off to Italy with the aim of draining Ago dry. The firm lost contact with her after two weeks and after a couple of months had given up hope of ever seeing her again, assuming she’d simply done a runner with the down payment of 400 guineas. But five months later she returned, clearly pregnant. Champagne corks popped in the boardroom.

However, doubt was soon cast over the child’s parentage. Rumour had it that the midwife sprang back in shock when the glistening infant slipped out and emitted an unearthly, guttural howl. He had more of a pelt than skin and by the age of five his Cro-Magnon features and inability to master simple words were giving serious cause for concern. Unfortunately, he was never able to cope with riding even a tricycle, a nasty tumble mercifully knocking out one of the buck teeth from his hideously overcrowded gums and leaving his ginger mop with a slight bald patch. A child of Ago's? Never. He was, however, extremely dexterous and when presented, aged 7, with an 80cc Italjet scrambler he rapidly converted it into a rudimentary two-speed ploughing device.

Aged 11 he escaped into the wild and, now in his thirties, is believed to be living a feral existence in the dense forests of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. Rumours that he’s being stalked by Foggy Petronas trappers, keen to offer him a development engineer position, are completely unsubstantiated.

Testing times

From Cyril's memoires dated 7 November 2006

The Kawasaki ZZR1400, Suzuki Hayabusa, even the ageing and relatively sane Honda Blackbird, we’d all have given a testicle to medical science to have just one day on any one of those bikes back in the spring of 1960. Why? The first stage of the M1 motorway had been opened in December 1959, a 50-odd mile stretch from Watford, Hertfordshire to Crick in Northamptonshire (now junctions five to 18). Mostly three lanes, almost empty of traffic and absolutely no speed limit whatsoever (they didn’t spoil the fun until 1965).

At that time I was Overseas Sales Manager at BSA and for a short while, with the new M1 just a 30-mile hack away from the HQ in Brum, unofficial high-speed testing was frequent and exhaustive. It might have heralded a golden era of test riding at Small Heath, but I’m afraid the whole subject of testing on the M1 came to be seen as something of a curse.

Test riding bikes on the M1 was officially frowned upon by BSA, but despite this, testers would often hammer up and down at full tilt enjoying the relative space and the chance to hold the bike on the stop for sustained periods. Sometimes they’d be spotted by management lackeys and reported, other times news of an unfortunate incident would unavoidably reach HQ. There was the time that Harry Charlton rammed an old Golden Flash test mule beneath a lorry carrying effluent to a sewage works, rupturing the tanker and causing a lethally slippery and nauseatingly pungent slick to spread across the whole carriageway. From then on the bike was known as the Golden Flush and Harry as The Crapped Crusader.

Another incident involved veteran test rider Sid Turnbull, who’d stopped by at a friend’s abattoir near St Albans to collect five gallons of pigs’ offal to feed to his five Red Setters. The offal, in a thick, flexible, black rubber tub, was precariously strapped to the back of an A7 Shooting Star. Just outside Potters Crouch, with about 80mph on the vibrating clock, the bag slipped round, jammed the back wheel solid and the bike went down. Sid ended up in a field, where he lay unconscious for about 20 minutes, meanwhile, the Potters Crouch police, unused as they were to dealing with high-speed traffic accidents, decided that the splat of bloody guts they found on their arrival was the inevitable result of having a speed limit-free motorway. This, they muttered among themselves, was the carnage of which they had warned.

So management got tough and when the next rider was caught on the M1, a youngster by the name of Johnny ‘Fireball’ Jameson (that’s another story), he was summoned by none other than the Chief Executive, the eccentric genius Edward Turner.

Turner was a daunting man. Though nearing retirement he still cut a powerful figure but had always been known for a certain maverick approach. It was around this time that he was putting a lot of effort into designing a scooter to rival the successful Italian models and I suspect the pressure was leading to increasingly erratic behaviour. (Incidentally, left alone in his office one morning, I couldn’t help noticing some scribblings on his desk jotter, possible names for the new scooter. Marilyn, Lana, Betty. No, no. Edna, Ethel. THINK MAN!! Maud, Mary. BOLLOCKS! BOLLOCKS! BOLLOCKS! They eventually settled on ‘Tina’, so to speak.)

Well, young Johnny went into the great man’s office and the door was closed. We’ll never know exactly how the conversation went, but the next thing anyone knew, Johnny emerged with Turner on his back, riding him piggy-back. Johnny was straining to maintain balance and momentum as Turner, a portly man stripped to his vest and pants and sweating profusely, whipped his mount with a clutch cable, shouting, ‘This is how to bloody test ride, you sodding young upstart! I’ll ride you to hell and back, you jive monkey!’

When Johnny finally collapsed just outside the toolmakers’ workshop after an agonising ten-minute gallop, Turner simply strolled back to his office as if nothing had happened and the incident was never spoken of within earshot of management. From that day BSA testers were very cautious about using the M1 for work, lest they too should be subjected to what became known as ‘the Teddy-back ride’.

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.

It's 1965. Rumours of Honda’s impending 750 Four see Cyril sent to Japan for high-level talks in a bid to save the British bike industry

From Cyril's memoirs dated 15 June 2005

Kawasaki and Suzuki, once bitter rivals, now co-operate closely to produce very similar models such as the Mean Streak and Marauder, a situation that benefits them both. This is nothing new of course, and I recall the BSA/Triumph Group extending the hand of friendship to the Honda Motor Company in the mid 1960s. It could have marked a period of greatness for both firms, but I’m afraid the venture descended into a humiliating farce, the details of which I’ve kept hidden until now.

In the summer of 1965 the BSA/Triumph board heard rumours of a big-bore multi-cylinder bike being developed by Honda. So as not to panic the Small Heath workforce, the Honda project was always referred to by the codename ‘Steak and Kidney Pie’. As early as 1963 Bert Hopwood and Doug Hele had drawn up the three-cylinder engine for what would become the 1969 Triumph Trident. Our parallel twins were being pushed beyond their limits resulting in extreme vibration which, while helping lady pillions to a heightened state of readiness, left nerve-shattered riders unable to unfasten their own gloves, let alone complex female undergarments. Everyone was frustrated! However, despite problems with our overstretched engines the Japanese industry was seen by many of those in charge as nothing more than funny little men making quirky little bikes and of no threat whatsoever to the British industry, so for many years in the mid-Sixties the triple was shelved.

The Honda rumour changed all that and we Brits creaked into action, but certain board members saw ‘Steak and Kidney Pie’ as an insurmountable obstacle and that our best chance lay in co-operation with the enemy. It was decided that in my capacity as Global Sales Director I would be flown in secret to Tokyo to meet with the great Soichiro Honda, when I would bring up ‘Steak and Kidney Pie’ and the future of our companies.

In later years, such as during the development of Suzuki’s GSX-R1100 and then Yamaha’s YZF-R1, I travelled extensively throughout Japan and even picked up a little of the lingo. But in September 1965 this was my first long-haul flight and I was a naive 29-year-old from the Midlands. I hold that up as meagre defence for what was to follow.

I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but in those days there was little else to do on a long-haul flight and I’m afraid I began sipping the complimentary spirits as soon as London receded beneath a sheet of grey cloud. I was seated next to a chap who at the time would have been termed a beatnik. I found his slender sunglasses a little disconcerting, but we got along well, taking it in turns to choose the next tipple from the drinks trolley. Several hours in, Bernie, as he insisted I call him, produced a small brown dropper bottle and popped a couple of drips of clear liquid into our Johnnie Walkers. LSD was still perfectly legal, and although I hadn't the slightest idea what it was I decided (helped in my decision by Mr J Walker) that ‘turning on’, as Bernie put it, could do no harm. (Incidentally, ever wondered if habitual use of strong hallucinogens has a lasting effect on the brain? Bernie went on to be a freelance designer in the motorcycle industry and had a hand in such models as the BMW K1, Morbidelli V8 and Honda X-11. I rest my case.)

Thirty minutes after finishing my 'enlivened' whisky, things became a bit chaotic. Perhaps it was because Tokyo had hosted the 1964 Olympics that I seemed fixated by the Greco-Roman wrestling gold medallist Imre Polyak, for apparently it was his name I chanted while climbing over the seat backs in my underpants, smeared in the olive oil supplied with our meal. Air rage is now a common term, but back then I was lucky that grappling with whoever came to hand was seen merely as drunken high spirits. It appears I was pacified for a short while only to return to the fray. Apparently, I spread crushed peanuts up and down the aisle then skidded back and forth on what I clearly considered to be a speedway track. It’s claimed I was doing a passable impression of a methanol-fuelled single and bellowing, in a poor Kiwi accent, ‘I am Barry Briggs, eat my shale!’ Regrettably, I was again stripped to my underpants.

If only it had ended there. I have no recall of the incident for which I was detained by airport police, but I am eternally grateful to the lovely Japanese stewardess for not pressing charges. Neither my socks nor underpants were ever found and apparently upwards of 50 passengers were prepared to testify to the fact that I have a birthmark in the shape of Wales on the underside of my ‘percy’.

The meeting with Soichiro Honda? I’m ashamed to say that it never took place as I was deported after a gruelling five hours' interrogation. In any case, it turned out that the BSA/Triumph management had had a change of heart, having decided to fight the Japanese head on with new designs of our own, and had sent a telegram to my hotel telling me to abort the meeting. So really, it all worked out for the best. Except for the ensuing and catastrophic collapse of our motorcycle industry with the loss of thousands of jobs and many historic marques. But apart from that...

'I’ve blown the arse out of the bollocking budget'

From Cyril's memoirs dated 12 April, 2005

Honda's RC211V MotoGP bike is a wondrous machine and Simon Hargreaves’ report in February's Bike magazine showed how HRC has made a racing weapon feel so like its road cousin. But I had to smile, because more than 40 years ago BSA had great plans for a V5 grand prix racer with road-based spin-off.

In the late Fifties the BSA race shop boasted some fine engineers, not least Peter Cartwright. Peter had a fierce intelligence but an explosive temper, a combination that did his career no favours. I recall one meeting when Peter clashed with chief accountant Bob Crowley about race team investment. Bob should have known not to goad Peter in an afternoon meeting as Peter was ever primed by a liquid lunch in the Pen & Wig pub. Despite a vicious assault Bob recovered quickly, with the aid of an inflatable rubber ring, although the disturbing nature of Peter’s undeniably innovative attack meant chocolate finger biscuits were never again served in meetings.

I digress. In late 1958 Peter was asked to develop a racing engine with a vee formation, something the Japanese factories and indeed Ducati would later adopt with great success. Guzzi’s marvellous V8 had been retired before reaching full potential when the firm withdrew from racing that year and BSA saw the chance to pounce. Although Peter later achieved great things with Suzuki’s grand prix V4 of the Nineties, even in the Fifties he felt that a V5 was the way forward. He fought hard to get his ideas approved – literally at times. He was a small man but I often saw him stripped to the waist (or indeed from the waist, which was far more disconcerting), blue eyes blazing, ‘offering out’ all comers in his broad Brummie twang. Despite these antics he was given the go-ahead in spring of 1959. I’m afraid what followed is a dark chapter in both BSA’s and Peter Cartwright’s history.

Working in overseas sales I had no direct link with the project but was a good friend of Peter’s, perhaps his only friend. One day he called me to his secluded workshop. ‘Cyril,’ he implored, ‘you’ve gotta help me, mate. I’ve blown the arse out of the bollocking budget and I’ve done bugger-all testing.’ By his beery breath I suspected that, by contrast, the Pen & Wig’s budget was looking pretty healthy. He begged me to meet him at the firm’s test track that Sunday. Rather rashly, I agreed.

I arrived at the deserted track on a chilly April morning. The works Austin van was parked at the head of the straight and as I approached I heard what sounded like a very loud electric shaver. I knocked on the rear doors, but there was no reply. Walking round to the far side of the van I was shocked by what I saw. Wedged into the frame of one our road models was a monstrous engine. Yes, it was a vee set transversely like the Guzzi’s, but it was a sprawling mess of fins, tubes and brackets. I stepped closer and bent down. On part of the hideously cobbled-together crankcase was a section of the word ‘Qualcast’ and I could see dried grass cuttings wedged between the fins on the barrels. It was clearly cobbled together from a lawnmower. Perhaps most strangely of all, a pair of stabilizers from a child’s bicycle were attached to the back of the machine.

Then there was a terrible yelping, barking and shouts of panic. The van doors burst open and Peter’s border collie, Hailwood, bounded out. The dog was clean shaven from the tip of its nose to its midriff and the rest of its coat was clipped close and covered in shaving soap. It stopped momentarily on seeing me, then took off into the distance. I found Peter sitting in the van on an upturned beer keg, balding head in hands, electric shears and a razor at his feet. He was wearing nothing but a pair of brogues and his underpants and was covered in lather, dog fur and some nasty nips from Hailwood.

As I dressed his wounds, a sobbing Peter explained all. The development money had long since been ‘pissed up the wall’ on strong ale and a rather accommodating ‘professional lady’ from the Pen & Wig. Peter had then carried out a spate of garden-shed burglaries for the raw material for his racer. With no budget left for track time or riders he’d planned to performance test by guiding the bike using a rudimentary radio control system. For ‘added realism’ – and those were his exact words – he’d intended to strap the shaven Hailwood to the bike dressed in a tightly-fitting woollen bodysuit knitted by his mother. At this point, it must be said, Peter was a very confused man.

And so, many years later, I was extremely happy to see Peter gain the success he deserved as one of the engineers behind Kevin Schwantz’s 1993 World Championship win with Suzuki. However, it can be no coincidence that Schwantz was never once seen at a race meeting with a be-pelted pet of any description. Kevin always did his homework.