Bike Industry Looks for People

An EXCLUSIVE! by Bertie Simmonds

Artwork: Kevin Ash


The MCIA hopes that people will see other people more famous and important than them on bikes who look like this and want to be like them so much they'll buy a bike too. This is actually a drawing and not a photo, so I don't have to pay a fee to have it on my website. To see the real thing click on the link below and scroll down a bit:

* A celebrity biker last Tuesday *
(and you thought I was making it up)
* The UK’s Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) has announced that it wants to get people who act for a living, or do other things, interested in motorcycles by giving them bikes for nothing. Or cheap if they’re not quite famous enough.

Following the revelation that two men single handedly (er, shouldn’t that be double handedly, if there are two of them? – Kev) caused lots of German motorbikes to be sold to people who saw on TV their tough and lonely rides around the world with their support team of 30 people (make that 32 handedly then - Kev) and two big cars and loads of money (see ‘Men Ride Around the World’, below), the MCIA has appointed a publicity agency to find more people who ride free motorcycles so other people can see them and want to ride them as well, although they probably won't mention that not all motorcycles come with large support teams. Or that the other people will have to pay for them.

It's not yet clear if the MCIA wants the people who are actually on television and stuff or the people who hang about with them, who can then become properly famous later for being a person who the MCIA wants to become famous. Or something. But it’s good news for agencies who trouser lots of wonga to write press releases about people who appear on television sometimes, and for this column.

Somebody said yesterday: ‘This is very good news for the industry. We've got loads of manufacturers simply itching to give away or sell a motorcycle cheap to a person who is or was on television sometimes. People like that man on Emmerdale and that orange girl with the funny nose who hates Jordan and is always pictured wearing very little. I think she went out with Shakey Byrne once. And we're itching to charge an arm and a leg to write about it.’