I wasn't planning to revisit the vexed question of "Does the Trade Need an Annual Show?" so soon after, well so soon after the last one. But a number of events conspired to push it to the forefront of what loosely passes for my consciousness, and I'm going to thrust it towards yours.
Firstly, I have to say that I found this year's NEC shindig somehow flatter and less stimulating than the 2001 version, and I'm not just talking about the (barely) spandex-clad promo-bints strutting around in their high-heel bootees. In fact if anything, they were generally of a slightly more pulchritudinous bearing than of yore, as if it matters. However, when the numbers came up, I wasn't surprised that attendance was down on last year and that could've been due to any manner of matters such as crappy weather and a notable dearth of spanking new machinery. There's also the irrefutable fact that, as a breed, motorcyclists are getting older, grumpier and therefore less inclined to traipse up the motorway and pay good money to visit several giant sheds filled with gaudy motorbikes.
I was certainly hacked-off waiting five minutes in the rain at a remote car park with a couple of hundred other punters who were sardined into a bus by an officious lady driver which then crawled round the NEC complex for ages before disgorging us into the correct venue: (So much so that I made my return journey on foot, in the rain, and thanks to a total lack of signage, got horribly lost). And then there were the jams on the M42 going home, but I can't blame anyone for that... unfortunately.
Certainly, younger, thrusting bikers mightn't mind such a shambles, but we have to accept the fact that not enough of 'em are coming into the game to replace those that are falling off the other end... hopefully not literally.
But a week later at another midlands motorcycle show, the story was rather different. Dirt Rider Expo 2002 (with "Plus Supermoto" tacked on as a hasty, if commercially astute, afterthought) was held at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry. Unlike its neighbour, it enjoyed year-on-year attendance figures that were higher by almost 20%. First things first, this being a rather smaller event, there were fewer promo-bints handing out leaflets you don't want and, it has to be said, the cellulite factor was noticeably higher.
Paradoxically however, the number and quality of coquettish cuties wandering around the Stoneleigh event on the arms of their lanky boyfriends was impressive, many of them looking as though they'd bunked off school for the day. Clearly this is a reflection of the fact that motocross, enduro and trials are attracting teenage devotees in greater numbers than road riding does, from which a vital lesson should be learned. And in a notable bid for sexual equality, at what other motorbicycle show could you see young men in their underpants trying on fetish-wear, albeit masquerading as custom-fitted knee-protectors, in full public gaze? No wonder all those teenage adorables were smiling.
And compared to the NEC, I'm absolutely certain there were far fewer beer-gutted men with lank hair and halitosis dragging round sullen and invariably podgy girlfriends who clearly wanted to be somewhere else. Moreover, I didn't see one poor sod in a wheelchair, which is always bad PR at a motorcycle event.
Certainly the Dirt Rider Expo followed the now familiar plot of live demos (an indoor trials arena, the Purple Helmets stunters and an outdoor supermoto track all excellent, gosh-gee entertainment), personality appearances, and sub-Pan's People dance routines rendered faintly ludicrous by dancers wearing the ungainly motorcycle clobber they were vaguely supposed to be flogging.
The organisers also had the good sense to keep the merchants out of the temple with a dedicated retail marketplace linked by a wide corridor to the main hall. This alone meant the affair was what it should be, namely a real showcase for the machines and aftermarket baubles essential and peculiar to the sport, although I'll spare the embarrassment of two importers whose staff couldn't answer even the most rudimentary of technical queries. Clearly they'd have been more at home talking-up roadbikes at the NEC, and indeed they probably were. And whilst I'm carping, CCM's absence from the Expo seemed commercially barmy, given that they're Britain's only big manufacturer of off-road and supermoto bikes.
However, it is entirely arguable that some of the dealers in the souk were selling unlicensed clothing at cruel discounts and go-faster kit that was at best borderline legal, a criticism stridently made by Kevin Ash in his MCN column immediately post-NEC. Ash's indignant bluster correctly pointed out that this does the bike show and the trade in general no good whatsoever, but at least most of the aftermarket hop-ups on sale at Dirt Rider Expo were destined for bikes that weren't actually built for road use.
So if the industry is to continue devoting so much of its money and effort into its annual NEC showcase, perhaps it could learn a lot from Dirt Rider Expo. Not least by ghettoising the retail element and making it more user-friendly to the yoof: hell, they could start by letting schoolgirls in for free.