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It's been five years since I visited a Bike Show except, that is for
an assemblage of a few rather forlorn so-called classics (a CB500T is a classic, for
heaven's sake?) and secondhand machines displayed at the local town hall for no obvious
reason other than to make their owners proud, but then such is the dull rhythm of rural
life. But the NEC wing-ding has always been a rather different, willfully prestigious
affair and after half-a-decade's personal absence I found myself feeling excited at the
prospect of visiting it again. But what a let down. It began badly with the train fare: thirty-three quid for a day return from Euston is a bit steep, but I suppose that's my own fault for not travelling to the NEC by bike. (But how could I attend a Bike Show without getting beered up, and thus proving a menace to society as I wobbled home down the M1?). And once disembarked from Mr Branson's cattle-truck, one then had to walk to the Show itself, which seemed to take half an hour and engendered a terrific thirst. I soon realised that the NEC complex had expanded since I was last there, but this epic trek could surely have been alleviated by more than just two short 'moving pavements', or perhaps a bar at the halfway stage? No matter, when I finally made it to Hall19 after a few brisk words with the Organisers about a suspect Press Pass, I was suitably impressed by what I saw. And apart from the awesome blare of bad disco music, colour, light and glinting, uhm, glinty stuff, the first thing that impressed me was the pneumatic figure handing out leaflets on the Italjet stand. Not to be coy about this, she had a staggeringly large and pert pair of norks (although as any available cleavage was hidden beneath a black t-shirt, I guess they could've been falsies). And within minutes, i.e. the time it took me to reach the T.W.O. Magazine stand where a couple of unconvincingly wigged 'models' were decked out to resemble their 'raunchy' cartoon heroines Kitty and Delia, it became clear that {he motif for my visit was going to be silicone implants or, more snappily, big boobs. Of course girls getting their tits out have featured at motorbicycle shindigs for decades, but usually the mammary-fest was confined to Press Days, and the last time I witnessed any such gratuitous displays of near nudity it was before cosmetic surgery was rife. And since most exhibitors couldn't afford Page 3 cuties and had to settle instead for young slappers on the make, the results were consequently rather on the floppy side. Now, however, big boobs are for mass consumption and the cost of silicone implants has diminished to the point where any hairdresser with her sights on the glamorous world of third division footballers can afford to upgrade from M to DD. And nothing wrong with this, indeed quite the contrary if you ask a dirty old sod like me, but I did laugh at the lengths to which Bike Show exhibitors now have to go in order to attract attention. Mere motorcycles, and pretty alarming motorcycles at that, were obviously not enough to draw punters to the Streetfighters/BSH stand, and I must admit that the improbably buxom if somewhat weary looking pair of bints dancing about and stroking each other in the skimpiest of thongs every hour or so certainly got my tongue hanging out. (But not enough for me to buy a magazine, however). I also thought it rather curious that in between their onstage strutting, these statuesque strumpets were being paid to pose with slightly embarrassed show-goers so that their mates (or in some even more peculiar cases, wives), could snap 'em with their Instamatics. Indeed I soon observed that this pose-with-underdressed-bimbo strategy was somewhat epidemic throughout the show, which kind of makes you wonder what, if anything, these people get up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms. |
It also, rather sadly, reflects the current male obsession with big titted bints that accounts for the
rise of the lads mags like FHM and Loaded and which bike mags are now taking to their, er,
bosom as a means of boosting circulation. And whilst this may be currently working for
them, I should point out that after half a decade of success, the lads' mags, which
they're aping, are now haemorrhaging circulation and if undue reliance on big boobed babes
continues, where Maxim goes Motor Cycle News et al could soon follow. But as my personal assistant Cruella de Spank will attest, I ain't no prude and the acres of taught'n'tanned female flesh were jolly welcome to my rheumy old mincers. (Although the sight of some utterly bored young miss with a bit of a gut on her consuming her coffee and a sarnie whilst astride a repli-racer on one stand did actually turn me off). However odd though it now seems, I'd originally gone to the Bike Show to see bikes, and yessiree there were lots of them. There were also lots of stands flogging cut-rate(ish) clothing, accessories and the like and it was faintly amusing to watch Darren from Macclesfield being chaperoned by his bossy girlfriend into a set of Frank Thomases in full view of the seething masses. Pity he didn't have a decent set of baps on him. But Inside Line readers will know how we frown on the merchants setting up stalls in the temple, so I'll swiftly move onto the more interesting stuff, i.e. the hotsie-totsie new launches. Except that there really weren't any. Virtually everything the suppliers claimed as being fresh and fabby had been well trailed in the same bike press that increasingly uses tits to attract readers. (From which you may draw your own cynical conclusions - I know I have). Aprilia's Blue Marlin and Ducati's Multistrada were both in this category, and were also merely concept bikes and so although tantalising, particularly the Aprilia to a lapsed café racer like moi, they didn't really count. BMW's F650 CS was, however a proper production machine and rather spiffy at that, but please Bavaria, spare us the pissy little tank-top bag. Equally daft, but rather more comprehensively, was Harley-D's 883R Dirt Track Replica in which Milwaukee have used the imagery of their fastest, most visceral machine ever to plug the sales of their slowest most ineffectual one. Barmy. And as for the VRSCA V-Rod, well sorry guys, but I'd rather have a V-Max and have done with it. From the Big Four Japanese manufacturers and their brave wannabes up in Hinckley, there was nothing here that I hadn't heard or read about, and apart from Suzuki's V-Strom (whassamatter, can't they spell S-T-O-R-M ?), what I saw in the metal failed to excite me. And the Bonneville America frankly came all over mutton- dressed-as-lamb, and I gather performs as such, too. No wonder I seem to be seeing more W650S than born-again Bonnies these days, and if Kawasaki can outwit the emission Nazis, why can't Triumph ? Funnily enough, with the possible exception of the F650 CS, the sexiest looking new bike I saw at the show was on the unnervingly quiet Sachs stand (no boobstresses here, see), namely the Roadster 800. Though I wistfully recalled the days when Sachs produced some snarling enduro machine powered by their own peaky little strokers (and I do know about peaky little strokers, missus) as I scanned their latest, if rather outmoded Jap-driven range, I was heartened by the big Roadster. This may be - no is - a regurgitated version of the VX800 using Suzuki's own mechanicals, but it was beautifully detailed, suitably modish and not outrageously priced at £5695. Pipe dream stuff perhaps, but probably more accessible to an ancient twerpie biker than some dumb silicone siren wearing high heels, a snitty attitude and not much else. Which, as I trudged back to the station (almost as far as Euston itself by my reckoning), I mused is perhaps as it should be... |