Celebrating the Tour of Britain 1945 - 2021

As the Tour of Britain continues north to the Aberdeen finish in Scotland this Sunday, time to look back at the early turbulent years which spawned Britain’s premier cycle race. 

We have a bunch of rebels to thank for creating Britain’s tour, the British League of Racing Cyclists (BLRC) in the post-war years. The BLRC were a breakaway group defying the National body, the National Cyclists Union, by promoting road races on public roads. 

Racing was confined to time trials and track, although closed circuit road racing was permitted.

The NCU remained venomously opposed to this form of racing on public roads, which was so popular on the European continent. It would lead to conflict with the authorities, they feared, ignoring the fact that the BLRC had sought and gained police permission.

Nevertheless, the reactionary NCU tried all the tricks in the book to stop road racing until brought to heel by the international cycling union, the UCI who backed the rebels. In the beginning, the first Tour was the Brighton to Glasgow in 1945 - named the “Victory Marathon”, to celebrate the end of the War.

In the following years the Tour was sponsored by the Sporting Record, then most famously by the Daily Express. In 1954 it was the Quaker Oats tour. In 1958, it became the Milk Race, the longest running sponsorship in UK cycling history, lasting until 1993. 

All of this can directly be attributed to the BLRC, who handed the Milk Race on a plate to the British Cycling Federation formed in 1959, when the warring factions of the BLRC and NCU were forced to amalgamate to bring stability to the sport. 

During the final years of the Milk Race it overlapped with the new week long Kellogg’s pro tour (1987-94); this became the Prutour 1998-99. 

After a five-year break the Tour bounced back again in 2004, organised by Sweetspot, the current organisers. It began as a five-day and is now run in an eight-day format. 

Here are some of the famous home names who carried off victory. Scotsman Ian Steele won in 1951. 

He was followed by Ken Russell (1952), Gordon Thomas (1953) and Tony Hewson (1955). Party pooper who interrupted the party was France’s Eugene Tamburlini who won in 1954. As the Milk Race Bill Bradley won it twice, 1959 and 1960; Bill Holmes won it in 1961; Peter Chisman in 1963; Arthur Metcalfe in 1964; Les West in 1965 and ’67; Bill Nickson in 1976; Joey McLoughlin in 1986; Malcolm Elliott in 1987; Chris Walker in 1991; and Chris Lillywhite the final Milk Race in 1993.

 (Thanks to John Oxnard for the above details, provided for the Milk Race Reunion he organised in 2005). 

The Dutch won the Milk Race five times between 1969 and 1974, their Fedor Den Hertog winning twice. He made life a misery for the rest by setting such a high tempo whenever he hogged the front the acceleration killed off any conversation.

The Soviet Union became equally as dominant, and Poland and Czechoslovakia also took the laurels. The Milk Race was the big showcase race for the home riders. As well as the GB team fielding the best, there would be Wales, Scotland, while the Regions fielded the second best, giving youngsters a taste of the big time. In the mid-1960s very few police were involved and those who were had limited powers – there was no formal road closure order available back then. 

It took a death to prompt a police safety review of cycle road racing. The poor soul who died was Czech Zdenek Kramolis who was killed when he hit a lorry head on in the 1969 Milk Race. 

In the early days of the Milk Race there was no national escort group, and each police region the race past through provided only a few police to shepherd the race. Usually two of them. They had very little understanding of how fast a road race moves. Just as they were getting the hang of it, they’d reach the border of their region and hand over to new guys – who very often were new to this game, too. 

Riders could never sure if oncoming traffic would slow down, still less, stop for the race, and riders were instructed to keep to the left side of the carriageway, as per the Highway Code. There were static police at junctions to make the sure the race sped on its way. In theory! 

But one such officer, noting the race organiser’s car approaching from the slip road, put up his hand to hold the race while he cleared on-coming traffic from the main route! Phil Liggett, the race organiser driving the lead car, had a breakaway group up his bumper doing 35mph. He wasn’t about to stop. “Don’t stop me, Officer. Stop the traffic,” Ligs voice commanded over the PA. “I’m coming through.”

 And to the astonishment of the officer, Lig drove straight past him, followed seconds later by a breakaway group going full gas! At the stage finish a little later, Milk Race Controller Bill Squance tore a strip of the police inspector in charge of that section. It wouldn’t happen again, he was assured. 

Some of the police were more helpful than others. But then there was the Wrexham Kid in, er Wrexham!  His idea of control was to place his motorbike hard up alongside the peloton, making sure their wheels stayed on the left-side of the white line in the centre of the road! 

Policing improved dramatically in the 1980s, when Traffic Inspector Andy Relf of West Sussex was appointed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to improve police planning for the national cycle racing scene. Relf cut his teeth on cycle race policing at the 1982 World Road Race championships at Goodwood, in Sussex. 

And in 1994, he ran the police security for the Tour de France’s two day visit to Southern England. But even with vastly improved police control of the modern Tour, there are still risks. 

In 1998 there was the tragic death of PC Dave Hopkins when escorting the Prutour of Britain. How terrible that a man looking after the safety of others should lose his life doing so. Hopkins was a member of the 35-strong Police National Escort Group which brings oncoming traffic to a halt to allow the race through using both sides of the road. He received fatal injuries when in collision with a car 35 miles into stage five from Birmingham to Cardiff. An experienced motorcycle escort rider, he worked on cycling events and royal visits. The stage was cancelled. 

 As we can see, today’s Tour of Britain merits a huge police motorcycle and national (civilian) escort group operating a rolling road closure. 

 The one niggling doubt I had about safety when I was reporting the Tour of Britain a decade ago concerned the absence of static marshals at many of the side roads. Major and some minor junctions were usually covered but small roads often left exposed. 

I felt static marshals were essential, especially as the race uses the full width of the carriageway, often on the “wrong” side. The race back then relied almost totally on the police and national escort group rolling road closure to halt traffic. Is this the case today? 

I’ve been following the Television coverage and where the cameras have picked up side roads or car parks I have yet to spot a marshal. Am I being alarmist? Some roads were coned off. 

During my years covering the Tour de France I cannot recall seeing one side road without a marshal to hold traffic. And Le Tour is run on totally closed roads, not a rolling road closure. The possible consequences of leaving junctions unguarded doesn’t bare thinking about, with riders going flat out around blind bends! 

High profile winners of the Tour this past decade include Briton’s Bradley Wiggin (2013) and Steve Cummings (2016). Recent Continental stars to win include Mathieu van der Poel (2019) and the current world road race champion Julian Alaphilippe (2018), bidding for to win again this year.

The Irish comics in the Milk Race

After watching the live TV coverage of the opening stage of the Tour of Britain today, won by Belgium star Wout van Aert, I was delighted to see Irishman Rory Townsend take fifth.

For this provided me with the perfect cue for another Irish story in this second retro sketch of the former Tour of Britain Milk Race, the precursor of today's modern Tour. This time it’s a look at the less serious side of competition, interviewing a bunch of comics riding for Ireland, led by Sean Lally. Lally was one of the funniest Irish racing cyclists you could ever meet. Interviewing him and the Irish team during the 1978 Tour of Britain Milk Race was just one long belly laugh. Few riders could match Lally for laughs. Lally was the main culprit among the Irish; his face was seemed permanently creased with laughter lines. He had this reporter scribbling frantically to get down all he said. Also in the team were Billy Kerr, Tony Lally, John Shortt, Jim Maloney and Oliver McQuaid. Impossible to recall the facts of it, but it made a page in the mag… “Laughing all the way”. Fools? No. For they were also among the fastest finishers in the business. In the 50mph downhill Stoke on Trent finish that day, Shortt was fourth, McQuaid sixth, Sean Lally 10th. Tony Lally was the current Irish road champion, past winner of the Tour of Ireland and the Woolmark GP in England. Kerr won the Tour of the North at Easter and the Irish “25”. They coined the phrase, “Seriously funny”. For the lovely thing about the Irish is they will poke good natured fun at anyone and mostly at themselves. They won’t spare anyone, even the Americans when they first sent a team to the Milk Race. It was a big deal for the Americans. Nice guys, and very serious about everything, calling out to each other during the stage – “We’re on the climb now Michael. Are you OK?” The Irish boys were cracking up. And soon started imitating them…. Are youse still thar Patrick, you hang on a bit longer Patrick; we’re nearly over the railway bridge…. But don’t mock the USA. They were on a steep learning curve and got better every year, until their Matt Eaton won the 1983 Milk Race. Lally said his team has a great plan for the next stage. Did we want to hear it? Go on. “WE go like f… and hang on.” Cue for more raucous laughter. I daresay there must be a few comedians riding the 2021 Tour of Britain today. For example, race organiser Mick Bennett has some good lines. And did you know, he’s got racing form? He’s ridden a few Milk Races during an illustrious career which included two Olympic bronze medals in the team pursuit (1972 and 1976 Games), plus a Commonwealth Games gold. A look through the archives reveals a Milk Race best overall placing of 17th in 1978 – the year of my Irish team interview - with best daily placings of fourth in the prologue and 8th and 10th on stages. I recall a Bennett funny during the Scottish Milk Race. (The Scottish Milk Marketing Board was a separate entity to the other one which is why Scots had their own stage race). Anyway, Bennett was riding like fury in a bid to regain the leaders after a mechanical. It was quite a ride along winding lanes and he was going full gas. As soon as he regained the group, he turned his head to the following press car, raised his arm and gave us the thumbs up. He had some good quips. Just before a stage start riders and officials were all milling by the food wagon. Bennett was helping himself to a banana and whatever else would fit into his jersey pockets for the stage when he noticed that I’d spotted a big box of tea bags. “I never take those,” he said. Playing the straight man, I said. Why ever not? “Because they never hand up hot water,” came his deadpan reply.

My excitement at seeing my first big bike race - the 1963 Milk Race

The 2021 Tour of Britain is due to start next week.(recent edition pictured below). It’s not coming my way this year, so I’ll get my fix by recalling my excitement at seeing my first Tour of Britain – the amatuer Milk Race - way back in 1963.

“From Me To You” by the Beatles topped the charts that year. Just one of the many chart toppers to set our feet tapping and pedals turning. We played this Beatles hit on the juke box at the Poplar Café while awaiting for the amateur Tour of Britain Milk Race to come by on the Warrington to Macclesfield road. It was the first stage of the 1963 Tour, from Blackpool to Nottingham. The first Tour of Britain was sponsored by the Daily Express in 1951, and was a huge draw, pulling tens of thousands of spectators. It was proof of the power of press sponsorship. The Milk Marketing Board took up sponsorship in 1958, after professional Dave Orford first put the idea to them. It was to become the longest running cycle racing sponsorship in the history of the British cycling. It came to an end in 1993 when the government killed off the MMB monopoly. Today, over 60 years later, the new-look Tour of Britain is the reincarnation of the Milk Race. It is promoted by marketing company Sweetspot and fields some of the best elite pros in the game, reflecting Britain’s new international standing at the top of world cycling. But in this story I go back six decades to when this novice club rider and his friends first saw the Tour – then called the Milk Race. This was in 1963. The sight of this international road race gave us hope for the sport. In those days, the general public didn’t know much about racing. The Poplar café was an essential watering hole for truck drivers and cyclists, the latter heading for the Derbyshire Peak District. Pint mug of tea, full breakfast and two slice, juke box offering a wide selection of the current hits, including Tamla Motown, the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers. No lingering there on Milk Race day, mind. We finished up and went outside, took up position with a good view across the huge gyratory under construction there, with slip roads down to the new M6 motorway taking shape, carving a wide brown scar across farmland. The race was quite a spectacle for my young friends and me. All the race vehicles – Fords - were milk white, decked out with roof racks and boards carrying the legend, Milk Race. Team buses came through first. They were a far cry from today’s huge team buses. In fact, they were small vans full of team baggage. Some 20 minutes later the announcer’s car came through, telling us that Great Britain’s Peter Chisman was alone in the lead. Pulses quickened. There was a magic about place-to-place racing, anticipation of the approaching hustle and bussle of athletic action which would, for a moment, make the highway its own. A police car headed the cavalcade, followed by official race vehicles all in white, then the lead car, headlights blazing, red lights on the roof flashing and a big head board announcing “Cycle Race”. Then, there he was. Pete Chisman, a big guy, must have been over six feet tall. Neatly cropped fair hair, muscled legs. Powering into view, sweeping around the roundabout, past in a flash, commissaire’s car at his back wheel, then a service car, a few press cars. Gone, leaving papers dancing in the slipstream. There goes Chisman, with his escort clearing the way. To be waved through traffic lights, waved across roundabouts. Nothing must be allowed to impede his progress. Mind you, oncoming traffic could be a problem in those days. Several long minutes passed before the main field sped through accompanied by the hum of tubular tyres on tarmac, the blaze of colour, a sea of exotic foreign faces and sun tanned limbs – the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch, the Irish – not so suntanned - the home men in GB colours or riding for the Regions. They had been held up for several minutes at the swing bridge on the Manchester Ship Canal which explained Chisman’s big lead. But that win was no fluke. He had finished 4th overall previously. In the 1963 edition he won a total of five stages, wearing the yellow jersey of race leader throughout. After they race had whizzed by we returned to the Poplar’s, for more tea, and to discuss what we had seen. What was it that had so raised our spirits? Was it because cyclists were considered second class citizens to other road users? That was it. Afterall, cycling was in decline in the Sixties, as more and more people aspired to owning cars. If you were on a bike it was because you couldn’t afford a car, was the general consensus. Cycling enthusiasts barely registered on ordinary people’s radar back then. Oh, big races like this would always impress. The casual bystander, the crowds at the finish showed that if put on a big race they soon cottoned on. But otherwise cycle racing hardly made the news. Except when the annual Milk Race made the road its own. Well, almost its own, they still had to contend with oncoming traffic which didn’t always stop. But generally, other road users gave way, for once. That’s what we young cyclists liked. For a few brief moments, respect for two wheels.

Time for shunting

I've always been fascinated by railways and canals. Both are featured in the top photo which shows a small dock served by a siding. In the middle picture, running tender first, is a Britannia class loco. In the third picture a small shunter propels coal wagons around the steam shed. Dwarfing the shunter is a big blue loco, named City Hereford, waiting for the right of way to enter the shed.

On the radio

 

It’s good to talk, said the ad.

RADIO communication between riders and their team cars is now commonplace in pro races. Is this a good or a bad thing?  The controversy simmers on. Radios were banned in the Olympic road races.

Surely it’s bad, if the same rule that applies to using a mobile phone while driving also applies to race radios.

Chris Froome fiddling with his radio ear piece, Tour de France, 2017.

The Transport Road Research Laboratory proved years ago that when using a mobile phone the remote voice in your ear distracts you more than fiddling with any other in-car device, rendering your reaction times slower than if drunk.

Following these findings a law was introduced to ban the use hand held mobiles while driving, but not hands free, even though the danger applies equally to hands free as to hand held. Hands free were allowed, I understand, because the police said it would be difficult to detect if a driver was using one.

So are  some of  those bunch crashes caused by riders being distracted by talking or listening to instructions on their radios?

There have always been crashes in bike racing, always will be, but the riders themselves have said they seem to happen with more regularity.

A few ago a few  riders suggested wearing helmets might be leading to crashes because they are making some riders feel invulnerable and they take more risks.

It's difficult to prove, unless the rider himself owns up. I know for a fact that when I rode the latest design Campagnolo brakes I certainly started taking descents and corners far faster than I would normally have done.

No mishaps, mind.

Radios are good, some riders say.  If the team boss and a rider need to speak better they do so by radio. It’s safer than in the old days when the manager had to drive his car inside the peloton to talk to his rider.

Good point.

But critics say riders have become too reliant on the team boss to decide race tactics for them, instead of using their own initiative.

Such as when to start bringing back a breakaway group. The blackboard with written timings and splits provided by the motorbike is apparently no longer good enough.

Now the team manager in the car has the timings between groups and he can instruct his riders when to chase, or indeed, when to fart or stop for a pee break.

So riders can sit back, close their minds and not think too much.

Here’s an imagined transcript obtained by an eves-dropper drone flying over the Tour.

Miguel (Quickstep rider) to Director Sportif (DS): “Boss, what day is it today?”

DS:  “It’s stage 8. You don't need to know what day it is.”

Mig: “Thanks, how many roundabouts and dodgy right angled turns today?”

DS: “ None for 90 kilometres, then 10 roundabouts in the next 100 kilometres, with three of them in the last five. Two dangerous right handers with 4km and 2km to go."

Mig: “Thanks boss, are they big roundabouts or small ones?”

DS: “Don't you read the manual?  Keep your head up and eyes open.”

Mig: “Ok, boss: speed is going up, can I change up a gear yet?”

DS “Yes, just a couple of notches. Then if the speed drops, go down a notch or several.”

AGHHHHHHH NO... Smash, bash, screech of metal on road, dozen riders down.

Commissaire: chute, chute.

Chorus of radio calls to managers from  teammates of the fallen riding ahead: "Should we wait for them? “What should we do now?”

The truth is in such a situation the riders who more often than not will decide for themselves, and if the race is not fully on and going for the finish, they will often ease off and wait.  Although the other day on the Vuelta, they did this when only 10km from the finish when almost two thirds of the bunch were held up by a stack up. 

But there will be a lot of radio traffic, you can be sure and I can imagine various team bosses wanting to call the shots...."We're all gonna have a chat and decide whether you should slow down and wait or push on. Stand by for further instructions."

Civvies land is also a wash with too many messages crossing the ether.

We have the daily telephone calls from scammers trying to convince us our broadband is about to be disconnected, or an illegal payment is about to be extracted from a bank account. They presumably go on to ask for bank details – but I never let the caller get that far.

I may recite a children’s nursery rhyme to them, such as this one:

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one

The mouse ran down

Hickory dickory dock.

That usually gets rid of them

Brrrrrrrrrrr. 

The mail tracking system is well-intentioned but do we really need to be kept informed where the package  is every step of the way.

First text: Your package has now left the factory.

Second text: It has now been loaded on to the aircraft.

Third text: your package has now been offloaded from the aircraft by a guy in light blue overalls  who is chewing gum.

Fourth: It is in sorting at the airport.

Fifth: It is now at the local depot for dispatch to you tomorrow………

At 7am next morning text message number six wakes me to say that Royal Mail will deliver a  package between 11.32 and 12.32 this morning. 

An hour later the message is repeated.

Shortly after that a no-reply NHS message informs that the flu season is almost upon us and jabs will be made available.

An hour later Royal Mail repeat their message and 10 minutes after that so do the NHS.

Another text tells me the package is now 100 yards away and closing fast.

Knock on the door.

On the step the package, at 12.05 precisely; postman walking away.

A text message with a photo attached, showing the package at my door, informs me the  package has arrived.

Indeed it has.

And so on. Impressive in a way. But totally unnecessary.

Madness takes many forms. Here’s another version.  The other day I observed a local woman from a nearby shop taking care to, as I thought, dead-head flowers in a flower box on the high street. Local traders take care of the town this way, which shows community spirit.

I watched fascinated as she slowly and methodically cut out every single flower on a bush at the centre of the display, every single one, upwards of 40 perfectly formed white flowers. Chopped from their stems. Dropped into a bucket.

Thankfully she gave the rest of the display only scant attention.

Then she stood back, scissors in gloved hand, to admire the now bare green stems she had robbed of their splendid decoration. 

If that shrub had the power of thought, it would be wondering what the hell it had done to deserve that.

She wouldn't have got away with it with Trifids! Remember them? Scary.

 

 

 

 

 

HOW CYCLING CAN HELP AVERT CLIMATE CHAOS - CYCLING UK

 

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR CYCLISTS, ONCE MORE*

You have to admire Cycling UK’s campaigning team. It’s August 2021 and they are setting out yet again on their never ending quest for decent government funding to make the roads safer for cycling.

But are they wasting their time?  Will they succeed before the end of the world?

Apparently “We have seven years to avert disaster” says the message on photo of the Climate Change Conference venue in Glasgow published in Cycling UK’s magazine.

In the foreground several cyclists are riding past that dire warning sign, all of them sporting big smiles! What?

Is this an echo of the previous blog about all that smiling going in to commercials? Now Cycling UK is at it, on the one hand panicking us with an end of world scenario they want to help avert while on the other, offsetting the doom laden message by portraying smiling cyclists in the foreground. Shouldn’t they be screaming in terror?

Maybe it’s all fiction, like the book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. In  the story  the earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass (or in our case, the £27billion road scheme the government is still insisting on).

Then in the climax, the Earth is happily restored by the Planet Maker (played by Bill Nighy) in the excellent film of this hilarious book.

But seven years, eh. No laughing matter.

Just enough time for one more Olympiad, perhaps two, a World Cup, a few more Grand Tours, to build more roads and airports, you know all the things that matter, such as driving with your bikes on the roof rack to go cycling a few miles down the road instead of riding there.

Surely we can hang on to see if cricket is successful in bidding to become an Olympic sport. Their target is the 2028 Los Angeles Games – unless California has been consumed by then.

But anyway, thank God Cycling UK have faith and still think getting more people out of cars onto bikes can play its part in reducing carbonisation which is at the root of all this evil of our own marking, since the Industrial Revolution.

Their task is to make government see it this way!

The problem for cycling is, successive governments – Tory or Labour – is that they have never fulfilled their promise, under funding cycling every time.

Cycling UK has a long history of fighting for cyclists’ rights, begun by their founders in 1878, under the title Bicycle Touring Club, renamed Cyclists’ Touring Club in 1883 until the recent change to Cycling UK.

It is because of the Club’s work we enjoy the many “freedoms” we take for granted today.

Here’s a few of their successes. –

1885: The Royal Parks of London are opened to cyclists as a result of CTC action.

1888: Local Government Act declared cycles to be “carriages” with right to use the roads, as a result of CTC action.

1950: CTC obtained removal of clause in Wolverhampton Corporation Bill which sought power to control cyclists’ use of local roads.

1968: Cyclists win right to cycle on bridleways and long-distance cross-country routes, incorporated in new Countryside Act.

1977: Cycles carried free (with some exceptions) on trains after 99 years of sustained campaigning.

1996: CTC instrumental in creation of National Cycling Strategy (launched by government and rendered pointless because there was no funding!)

2001: Cyclists Defence fund established by CTC, to fund cyclists’ rights in the courts.

2014: Successfully campaigns for strategy for cycling and walking infrastructure and by law government to provide funding to meet it, which they never have.

That last one – the lack of proper funding - has become the current sticking point this latest effort hopes to address.

And they are pursuing this with their usual vigour and passion. It’s as if they’ve forgotten they’ve been here many times before over the last few decades, and government has ducked the issue every time.

But it took 99 years to win free travel for cycles on trains, so that tells you the campaigners understand the long game. But will change come in time?

It is heartening to know that Cycling UK insists on trying to beat sense into government. They are seeking the Holy Grail of cycling, a casket containing several £billion to fund the government’s own Active Travel initiative.  For Active Travel read cycling and walking local trips instead of always driving.

The Active Travel initiative was one of those throw away lines government used to grab the headlines, this one surfacing when climate change combined with the pandemic called for a response from government.   So they allayed people’s fears with a few soundbites.  There was never any real intention to actually do anything beyond funding “pop up cycle lanes” last summer, a number of which have since been pulled out by local authorities running scared of minority groups of vociferous   motorists.

Cycling UK know they have an uphill task.  It is to be hoped their newest campaigner, Keir Gallagher, is up to speed.  Like his predecessors they say he is full of enthusiasm for the task ahead.

Good luck, Keir. Has anyone told you the country is run by a backward looking public school educated bunch of self-serving individuals called the Establishment scared that backing cycling will upset the roads lobby?

I firmly believe that doing anything perceived to be anti-car is seen as a vote loser, which explains government inaction.

This goes back to the late 1950s, early 1960s, when car ownership soared and the government of the day – Conservative – saw a vote winner.  Their mantra became that people should be able to drive where they want when they want.

This helped create the unshakable belief which still exists in the minds of many today that the roads were motor roads and anyone else using them should clear out of their way.

In the late 1990s when Labour’s deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced his integrated transport policy to reduce car dependency it signalled the first major move by any government to address transport problems. But Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately removed transport from Prescott’s brief and his plans were binned.

The car remained king.

Which is why no integrated transport policy including cycling has ever received more than token investment?

Many fine proposals to boost cycling have never been backed by either the cabinet or the treasury.

Their latest gig is to push cycling as a means to help combat climate change.

Doubt was cast recently that our prime minister,  stand-up comic Johnson won’t even be going to the UN Climate Change Conference  in Glasgow in November, in which case, what chance he will back the call for spending big bucks on cycling?

Nevertheless, Cycling UK are not to put off.  Indeed they are encouraged by this year’s spring elections when the focus locally was on climate change and the need to try and do something to combat it.

In his report in Cycle, UK’s bi-monthly magazine, Keir Gallagher says that since the spring elections

 there has been a “steadily building cross-party consensus” across England, Scotland and Wales which recognises cycling has a key role to play in decarbonising transport.

He hopes this signals a move away from the “sometimes contradictory polices adopted by governments UK-wide when it comes to offering the public greener transport options.”

As an example he singles out the Department for Transport’s commitment to spending

 £27billion on road building in England, which would encourage greater use of cars.

He takes encouragement from Wales where new road building schemes were frozen to allow a review, with the stated intention of “redirecting investment”.

Good luck Keir Gallagher, the latest in a long line of Cycling UK campaigners to pick up the baton.

You must hope the Department for Transport will follow Wales’s example and give a chunk of that £27b to the Active Travel policy.

I’m not holding my breath.

*Apologies to William Shakespeare’s King Henry

 

 

 

THEY CAPTURE OUR SOULS WITH A SMILE

 

There are TV commercials I like and those that I don’t.

Ads can be good. They can promote good ideas which bring benefit.

At their basic, they are providing information.

But the ads also get their claws into you  the moment you buy anything on the internet, clocking your purchase and then every time you switch on, interrupting you to entice you with more stuff.

They bend our will; try to coerce us into buying something we may not need. And then sell it to us with a smile.

Advertising - tall stories sold with a smile

Take the cure-all pills for indigestion, for example –swallowed and hey presto, big smile, off you go clubbing, or to meetings, ailments cleared up. Er, not always, and certainly not as fast as that.

Mostly I try to avoid the commercial breaks.

Especially on ITV4 during their cycling programs.

I record these to watch later, when I can fast forward through their very long tedious commercials, so long I forget what I was watching.

There is an interesting trend these days in that the content of the ad you are watching, the story they have concocted to grab your attention, has nothing to do with what they are selling.

The scene being played out is simply to hook you until the name of the product is thrust upon you.

Advertising, especially ads promoting life style are re shaping our behaviour, even our posture.

Great example of this is the mobile phone, by turn a brilliant and evil device. 

We are evolving into a species which walks head bent staring at the thing resting in the palm of our hand.

I once observed a woman with two children in tow, all in single file, all of them heads bowed in thrall to the small screen, unaware that they were about to step under a bus.

Holding conversations with a remote voice as we walk not looking we are going.  Unaware of our surroundings; in .dream land, absent from the world, no longer in the present.

There is a side benefit from this trend. It means you can talk aloud to yourself on the street without raising passer-by’s eyebrows. Unless they, too, are on their pesky phone!

One ad I hated to begin but which now amuses me is the one with the fat opera singer guy belting out “Go Compare”.

I presume this is a website offering to find you competitive prices for goods and services.

The story line has developed over time, which is another way of hooking you.

Betting ads. I hate them. Tempting people to get into debt. How can that be allowed.

 As for the Peloton promotion these ads may be a sign that cycle sport is now accepted as a main stream activity.  So, good in a way.

 I first noticed them during the pandemic, showing how you can train and get fit at home.  Of course, you will need to spend a small fortune on the bike/computer screen kit. 

The ads annoy the hell of out me.

Probably because they are aimed at the well-heeled.

The pedalling scene appears to be set  a large swell apartment, perhaps a converted warehouse costing a £million, and the peddlers are all smiling.

Everyone in every ad is smiling, grinning from ear to ear.

Smiling is nice; you do so in reaction to seeing or hearing something. But we don’t go around with fixed smiles as we carry our day to day tasks. But they do in ads.

Woe betide you do not smile in an ad! All the ads are full of annoying beaming people, one ad after another. I’m all for a good smile, but one after another; it’s just too much when there is nothing, absolutely nothing to smile about in this world! Well, there is cycle sport on the tele, the Tour, the Olympics. These events make me smile. But that’s fantasy land compared to fall out over Brexit, the pandemic scaring us shitless, climate chaos kicking in, con merchants like Johnson running governments.

I imagine that the ad world is following government dictate – to put a smile on people’s faces and distract them from what’s going on in the real world  

So, back to the ads: In ad world a smile registers as positive – sells the product, even in impossible situations.

Such as in the Peloton ads where they are all grinning while busting a gut riding along on their state of the art stationary trainer linked to computer and or zoom, urged on by a coach!

Like they are out for a stroll on the prom instead of the more likely tense expression when pumping iron with lactic acid burning the hell out of legs, heart thumping, and sweat running – put a towel over the handlebars! And they are always smiling!

What are they on?

Then the coach on the screen - she’s grinning like a maniac too - calls out. “There you are. All done and dusted.”

In one of these takes someone will collapse and when they do, they should show it.

I hope that when people buy into this scene they are given good advice on how to build up the miles / hours, slowly and regularly. Because on home trainers it is so easy to overdo it. Gone are the natural restraints met in the real world – hills, wind, road surface, and the view from the saddle- all of which can act to temper athletic aggression more easily than when on a stationary trainer.

This is especially important for those who have led a sedentary lifestyle.  To suddenly go from that to training very hard could do them a mischief.

In my day I learned you needed 1500 to 2000 miles of steady riding before the season started and you got down to serious race training!

You can tell a fit athlete by the prominent veins, a condition known as vascularity, when the surrounding skin looks thin, enhancing visual appeal and this is partially due to low levels of subcutaneous fat which helps achieve defined veins and muscles.

You don’t reach that condition overnight!

You need to develop muscle mass, lose body fat and get your blood pumping.

But you can’t rush it.

The impression I get from these ads is that anyone can get in the saddle and go flat out immediately, which at the least might result in strained muscles, at the worst, a heart attack.

Not something to smile about.

But hey, never mind that.

Just in case why not book your cremation in advance.

Funerals are the latest to feature in TV commercials.

Yes, the marketing wallahs are pushing bargain price cremations at

competitive prices, undercutting undertakers

Why not organise the deal now, get some peace of mind, and with te money left over for your family and friends to give you a good send off.

The death business must be the last remaining bastion of the human condition to be taken hostage by the ad men.

At least they’ve made death sound so wonderful a great many people now have a death wish.

Buy one get one free.  Organise your cremation with a …wait for it…with a smile. Done to a crisp.

Money back if not satisfied.

An ad typically features a big family gathering, a party, cupcakes, tea, maybe  wine.

Perhaps it’s a barbeque (Don’t ask!). It’s a wake in advance and they are all smiling at the soon to be deceased who has a got a deal to die for. And he/she is smiling broadly back at them.

These ads have surely done a lot to take the fear out of dying.

They’re all jolly japes, as if instead of booking in with your maker, you’ve won the Lottery, or a luxury holiday for one, but with a one way a ticket.

Then there are the ads for the more earthly matter of mopping the floor with a magic formula. I don’t wear a smug grin when mopping floor.

I don’t smile beautifully at the taps when I turn on in the shower. I don’t smile at the grill when cooking chicken. OK, there will probably be a hint of smile at the aroma of the gravy.

Then there are the car ads of one sort or another. One of them features that grinning Phillip Schofield stroking a cat, or parachuting in to a car salesroom.

Finally, an ad which did put a smile on my face.

It was a poster ad for Guinness, recalled g from the 1960s. This was on a huge poster site near St George’s Hall in Liverpool, which my bus would crawl by every morning.

My fellow passengers and I couldn’t avoid this huge advertising site. It was concealing a big project to build what would become the ugliest shopping centre in town.

Over the weeks, the advert would subtly change to keep us entertained, or hooked.

The message – or unique selling proposition – consisted of a picture of a pint glass of the black stuff with creamy head, and the wording writ large, 6,000,000 Guinness drank every day.

 A week or so later, a new poster would go up: gone were the bottle and the large Guinness logo. The message was the same, 6,000,000 drank every day, except all those noughts were Guinness bottle tops. Very funny.

The final design served to prove how the ad men insert messages into our minds.

The new and final ad simply stated: 6,000,000 drank every day.

No name. No image of the product.

Just a meaningless message!

Except we all knew the message by then. It made me smile!

 Clever bastards.

But not that clever that I bought  their product.

I used to work in small ad. Agencies at that time, hence my interest.  

I read “Confessions of an advertising man” by David Ogilivy of a leading ad agency, Oglivy Benson and Mather. It was a fun read in which Oglivy alludes to the dodgy image of his profession – in general, of creating a need where none existed before, of bending the will of the customer.

Oh, so you work in advertising, do you? Says the woman to Oglivy, clearly alluding to advertising being a shady profession, like being an MP.

“Yes,” he admits, catching her drift,   adding. “But don’t tell my mother. She thinks I play piano in a brothel.”

Finally, Oglivy tells of the fussy client who wants too much say in the creation of their advertising campaign.

When pitching for one big account worth £millions, the company stipulated the conditions each agency must comply with at their presentation.

Each had 10 minutes to present their case.

When the 10 minutes was up a bell on the desk would be rung and the agency people would then leave.

Oglivy suspected this client  may be too demanding.

So he turned the tables on them at the presentation.  When he entered the room he said, before we begin I have one question for you.

How many of you will be involved in approving our ideas should we win your account?

Six, they replied. 

“Ring the bell,” said Oglivy and walked out.