The Bike Show

When Prince sings about the most beautiful girl in the world, we know he’s not telling us she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, rather that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world to him.
In 1994 or thereabouts, when I moved back to London after university, I bought a bike from a second-hand [...]

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Ron Cooper is a legend in frame-building. He started as a fifteen-year-old apprentice with A.S. Gillott, and his frames have come to define the very best of the British lightweight style. He talks about the early days learning from master frame-builders like Jim Collier and Bill Philbrook, his own racing career and his commercial success [...]

 

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More than a few people have raised objections to the way the Mayor of London has, for the relatively modest sum of £5 million a year for 5 years, given Barclays bank the right to paint large swathes of London’s public highway in its corporate shade of blue, have its name emblazoned on street signs [...]

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An extended, hour long edition of the show featuring French writer, poet, cyclist and cultural ambassador Paul Fournel (pictured). We stroll from the French House in Soho to the Rapha Cycle Club in Clerkenwell, to visit an exhibition of a hundred years of racing bicycles. The exhibition runs for two more weeks and is well [...]

 

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On 30 July, 6,000 bicycles will be available for hire on the streets of London. Registration costs £1 a day, £5 a week or £45 a year and the bicycles are free for the first 30 minutes, then a rising scale of £1 for the first hour, £4 for the first 90 minutes, £15 up [...]

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Following on from last week’s show on well-being, we look at the importance of getting a good fit between rider and machine. Scherritt Knoesen of The Bike Whisperer, is a leading London-based bike fitter. We talk geometry, contact points and pedaling action. Read Grant Peterson’sPetersen’s article The Shoes Ruse on the folly of clip-in pedals [...]

 

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This week’s show looks at the chronic lack of bicycle mechanics with the Ninon Asuni of Bicycle Workshop. Ninon founded Bicycle Workshop nearly thirty years ago after deciding she’d had enough of working as a librarian. She’s now among Britain’s most highly regarded bicycle mechanics with a devoted following in London and the rest of [...]

 

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A youthful feel to this season opener with a visit to Lockleaze Primary School in Bristol, one of an number of Sustrans ‘Bike It’ schools acros the country. Plus childhood memories from Paul Fournel, reading from Need for the Bike* in person at the Calder Bookshop. We get the inside scoop on the much-awaited Sturmey [...]

 

 Season Opener: Childhood Daze [28:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I went to the Cycle Show yesterday looking out for the big themes that will help define cycling in 2010. I tend to glaze over in of the forests of identical crabon road bikes and hydraulically-enhanced mountain bikes, so if you want the latest on road and MTB, I’m afraid you’ll need to go elsewhere. [...]

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Today was trade/media day at London’s annual Cycle Show at Earls Court. Among the most talked-about new exhibits was the long-awaited Sturmey Archer three-speed fixed wheel hub, the S3X. In the craze for all things fixed, Sturmey’s ancient ASC, a three-speed fixed hub that went out of production in the mid 1950s, has been selling [...]

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For long-distance cycling they’re a must and they’ll improve the look of any bicycle. Brooks leather saddles date back to the 1870s and are still made in Birmingham where they were first invented. Steve Green of Brooks talks about the history and the craft of the most venerable and most comfortable bicycle saddle there is. [...]

 

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With the UK mired deep in recession, unemployment on the rise, the value of the pound going down and consumer confidence at an all time low, we ask what effect this is having on the cycling business. We hear from the owners of two of London’s new breed of bicycle boutiques (Tour de Ville and [...]

 

 16 February 2009: Cycling and the recession [29:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The latest on moves by the London Assembly to reduce the dangers posed by lorries to cyclists. Plus an extended talk by Andrew Ritchey, inventor of the Brompton, the folding miracle that is the toast of London’s bicycle-train commuters. The talk was given over the summer at the iFest 08 in Barcelona. It tells the [...]

 

 20 October 2008: The invention of the perfect folding bicycle [29:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The concluding episode of a two-part feature on the story of Dr Alex Moulton and the reinvention of the bicycle. We pick up the story with the launch of the Moulton space frame design (pictured left) in the early eighties. Featuring interviews with eaturing interviews with Dr Alex Moulton, Shaun Moulton, Tony Hadland, Michael Woolf, [...]

 

 The Moulton Story (part two) [29:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The first of a two-parter telling the story of Moulton bicycles: the radical reinvention of the bicycle by Dr Alex Moulton that, despite some commercial setbacks along the way, continues to push the boundaries of cutting edge engineering. Moultons have been feted by architects and designers, won races and broken speed records, and are taken [...]

 

 The Moulton Story (part one) [29:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 Grant Peterson on overnight trips and a visit to London's 'anti-bike shop' [31:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Paul Wonnacott has been buying, repairing and selling on used bicycles in the English countryside for almost thirty years. In an extended interview he looks back at the changes he’s observed in the bicycle manufacturing industry (most of them bad) and grapples with a hoarder’s inner demon as he watches his huge stock literally pile [...]

 

 21 January 2008: Hidden Treasure [30:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Back in the Resonance FM studio with Danish bike messenger elf Therese Bjorn to talk Christmas on bicycles. What to buy, what to do… and we take a look at the new London Scorcher bicycle from Velorution and Therese gives a thumbs up to Pac Designs messenger bags.

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 The Christmas edition: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This week’s studio guest is none other than David Thurston, my very own dad. A London cyclist since the 1970s when he lost his driving license, he explored China in the early 1980s on a Bickerton folder and is now discovering that with Parkinson’s Disease, cycling is more fun than walking.
Also featuring an interview with [...]

 

 On a Bickerton in China, the Sideways Bike and cycling with disabilities: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Jack Thurston and Jo Upton in search of the best bicycle gadget at Cycle 2006, the UK’s biggest cycling exhibition and trade fair. Glow in the dark pedals, GPS tools, bike storage, heart rate monitors and lights galore.
We are also granted an exclusive audience with the legendary champion of all cycling champions, Eddy Merckx. Eddy [...]

 

 At Cycle 2006 - Eddy Merckx and a hunt for gadgets: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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