the bike show

One of the advantages of being off air for a while is more time to get out and about, for instance, a quick trip sous la Manche to watch the 2008 Paris-Roubaix, the Queen of the Classics. Just shy of 260 kilometers, with around 55 kilometers over the brutal pavé (cobblestone farm tracks) of northern [...]

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To: Matthew Parris, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1XY
Dear Matthew Parris,
I am writing in response to your article “What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?” (The Times, 27 December 2007).
Whatever it is you’ve got against people who ride bicycles, to suggest that they deserve decapitation with piano wire is to step far over [...]

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The vulgar spectacle and regressive tax on the poor and the hopeless that is the UK’s National Lottery, is giving away £50 million of its ill-gotten loot to one of four ‘worthy causes’, to be decided by a popular vote in which everyone in the UK can take part. The poll closes on 10 December. [...]

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After a long late summer and autumn break, The Bike Show returns to the airwaves on 19 November at 6.30pm. It’s good to be back. Read about the upcoming season after the jump.

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The sport of polo originated some two thousand years ago on the plains of Persia and it is today the preserve of the Royal family, Saudi princes, trust fund layabouts and the international jet set.

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The first Catford Cycling Club ‘Hill Climb’ was held at Westerham Hill on August 20th 1887. The 112th edition will take place on Yorks Hill in Kent, on Sunday 21st October at 11am. The race is run as a time trial with riders starting at one minute intervals to race just 707 yards, which in [...]

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Earlier today the American Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Floyd Landis’s positive doping test and awarded a two year ban, which will mean Landis will be able to compete again in 2009. Spain’s Oscar Pereiro was declared the winner of the 2006 Tour de France. “You never want to win a competition like that [...]

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Having spent the summer moving microphones, mixing desks, transmitters and an antenna to new and improved studios, Resonance is back live on the air from noon on Sunday 23 September. (The Bike Show will return a little later in the year.)
Resonance FM is having an “open day” from 4pm to 6.30pm on Sunday 23 September. [...]

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In a feature on why radio turns us on, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams listed The Bike Show alongside five other ‘gems on the airwaves’, including the legendary Hancock’s Half Hour and the Sony-award winning The Verb. Ms Williams is a certified London cyclist, so let’s hope it’s only a matter of time before she’s agrees [...]

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Resonance FM is moving to new and better studios! This is great news, but it means the station is suspending all live broadcasts until the move is complete (sometime in August). Instead it will be broadcasting repeats from the past five years of art radio.
The Bike Show will return in due course, later in [...]

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Join us for Tour de France festivities in sunny Waterloo on Friday and Saturday of Le Grand Départ in London. The Bike Show is teaming up with Scooterworks for a two-day bonanza of bicycles, music and fun.

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Have you ever dreamt of playing in a symphony? Have you heard of the early-20th-century-futurists favoring the street over the canvas or the stage? Maybe Godfried-Willem Raes’s 2nd Symphony could be your chance. And, it isn’t even very difficult: join the symphony with your bicycle. We carefully prepare and tune your instrument; you and bicycle [...]

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Alongside articles on bikes at Burning Man, Cherokee spoke cards and a penny farthing race, the summer edition of the excellent Momentum Magazine features an interview with Jack Thurston, presenter of the Bike Show. Momentum (the magazine for self-propelled people) comes out of Vancouver in Canada but is read around the world. It is free [...]

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Bike Show presenter Jack Thurston is a founding member of the Tweed Cycling Club. Several members of the Club feature in a photo story in the summer edition of The Chap magazine, out on June 8th.

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After a refreshing break, the Bike Show will soon be taking back the airwaves. The new season starts on Monday 14 May at the usual time of 6.30pm: just after the Artrocker boys & girls have extracted their final sweat-splattered disc from the player before emerging, unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed, into the summer evening [...]

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The Bike Show is organising a performance of Godfried Willem-Raes’s second symphony for ’singing bicycles’. It will take place in the morning of Saturday 7 July, starting outside Scooterworks Cafe, 132 Lower Marsh, SE1 This is the day of the Prologue Time Trial of the Tour De France, in Central London, so it will [...]

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I’ve been enjoying some time not making The Bike Show. This short and potentially humiliating film gives a flavour as to what I’ve been up to. Filmed on Easter Monday in the hills of Taragona, Catalunya. That’s me on the bike and my friend Ferran with the goatee. Fifi on hidden camera…

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I have to confess that I’m amazed and delighted at the success of The Bike Show’s podcast edition. Most listeners will be aware that The Bike Show is made for broadcast on Resonance FM, an experimental art radio station in London. However, thanks to podcasting, it is reaching a much wider audience, right around the [...]

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Thanks to all those Bike Show listeners who’ve donated to the Save Resonance fund. The ten free copies of Rouleur Magazine have now all been claimed by John Paul, Denis, Henning, Wesley, Julian, Marc, Mark, Grant, Matt, Jesse and Tom. Copies will be on their way as soon as we have confirmed your postal addresses.
But [...]

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Today’s Excess Baggage on BBC Radio 4 features reportage by Kieron Yates, the Bike Show’s very own intrepid stateside adventurer and long distance audax freak.
His epic ride down the Mississippi from North Dakota all the way to New Orleans caught the eye of the BBC’s Saturday morning travel show (or should that be ear?). [...]

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Just a quick post to say that contrary to rumours, the Bike Show is not going fortnightly. The observant among you will have noticed that recent service has been interrupted, and this due to:
1. A near-catastrophic flood at the Resonance fm studio which pulled
everthing off the air for a few days (hence no new [...]

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Thanks to the lovely promotions people at the Cycle Show 2006, we’re pleased to be giving away 5 free tickets to the UK’s biggest cycle trade fair, on this weekend 6-8 October at the ExCel Centre in Docklands. Plenty of Bike Show friends will be there, including Rapha and Condor who will be putting on [...]

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To celebrate 2 years (almost) of the Bike Show on Resonance FM, we’ll be having a party on 30 June, just after Critical Mass, and on the eve of this year’s Tour De France. What better excuse to raise a glass to the transcendental pleasures of the bicycle?!
DJ Jean-Marie (Continental Drift), DJ Helen [...]

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Thanks to everyone who’s visited the blog, listened to the shows and posted comments. Your interest and feedback is always appreciated.
And should you wish to take the step from being a Bike Show listener to a Bike Show programme-maker, the door is wide open. We’ll be back on air from 12 June!
Resonance FM (the award-winning [...]

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The ultimate night ride is back for its 14th year on Saturday 8 July 2006, from 9pm to dawn on the Sunday morning.
The 120 mile route is from London Fields to Dunwich Beach, Suffolk. I have put the route online via the very cool Gmap-Pedometer site here (based on Patrick Field’s notes).
For more info [...]

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After winning the Best Media category of the 2005 London Cycling Awards, the Bike Show’s Jack Thurston was featured in the ‘My Bike and I’ column of London Cyclist, the magazine of the London Cycling Campaign.
You can read it here.

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Stand back and hold tight! London’s best bike messenger band, the Deadley Treadleys, will be doing a a live session on the show on Monday 20 March 2006 at 6.30pm. Red lights will be banned from the studio for the duration and we’re arranging a nice tail wind too…

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Resonance fm likes to keep its schedules fresh and so the Bike Show is taking a break for a few weeks, and should be returning to the airwaves mid-February 2006.
Look out for the new season which will feature:
- A London poetry ride
- Alfred Jarry as performed by Peter Blegvad
- Brevet dreams
- Bikes on trains
…and [...]

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The Bike Show has won the award for ‘Best Media Initiative’ at the London Cycling Campaign’s annual awards.
Emily Thornberry, MP for Islington South and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, presented the award to Jack Thurston and Kieron Yates at the London Cycling Campaign’s AGM on Wednesday 2 November.
The Bike Show was described [...]

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In an exciting development, the Bike Show has been syndicated by CKDU in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and will be broadcast in glorious FM across the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
Currently scheduled in the sought-after ‘graveyard’ slot of Tuesdays at 4.30am, sandwiched between ‘Radio Goethe’ and ‘The Lost Discs Radio Show’, the Bike Show [...]

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Like many hundreds of London cyclists I went along to critical mass last Friday night. I’d heard about the possible crackdown by the Metropolitan Police under the Government’s new public order legislation and I wanted to express my right to ride. I’ve been riding in Critical Mass rides in London, Oxford and San Francisco for [...]

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After interminable waiting and technical fiddling, the Bike Show is now listed in the iTunes podcast directory.
The iTunes ID number is 85585749.
And the direct link is here.
A big thank you goes to Joshua Jeremiah who rode in on a big white horse and saved the day when all was darkness and despondency.

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The Bike Show is featured in City Cycling, a new online cycling magazine edited by Anthony Robson. Issue 4 also has an article on how to build your own recumbent for less than €500 plus some photos of ridiculously dangerous-looking mountain bike aerial action.

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Bonjour, mes tres bons rouleurs,
I am in the process of migrating the BIke Show podcast files to a new home in Sunny San Francisco, courtesy of the nice people at Radio 4 All. This may take some time, so please be patient.
In the meantime, point your podcasting software at the following feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBikeShow
Eventually all the [...]

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Unexpectedly high demand for the Podcast syndication of the Bike Show has caused me to massively overshoot the bandwidth limits on my web server.
As a result I have had to suspend the Podcast syndication facility. However, I will be looking for a way around this. In the meantime, I will continue to provide the Bike [...]

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There was an special, extended 90 minute Bike Show broadcast on Resonance FM on Monday 13th June from 12 noon to 1.30pm.
The show features footage from Sunday’s Bike Fest in Trafalgar Square, preview of other Bike Week events and a look back at the past 6 months of the Bike Show.
Guest in the studio is [...]

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If you want to access the Bike Show via podcasting, simply copy the following link into your podcast application:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBikeShow
To find out more about podcasting, click here.
Some popular podcasts applications:
(Mac and Windows)
(Mac only)
(Windows only)

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Walking out of the bikeshop with that brand new machine… Gears all silver and shiny. Flawless paintwork sparkling in the sun….
Every bike was once a new bike. Think of this as you consider the fate of the SAD BIKES, as documented in photos on flickr

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A few listeners have emailed me asking for playlists for shows.
In future I will put up a post after each show, with the playlist.
For past shows, here is a complete list:
6 December 2004
A Bicyclette - Bourvil
Back in Black - AC/DC (Back in Black LP)
Rockin’ Bicycle - Fats Domino
13 December 2004
Bike - Pink Floyd
Wasn’t Born To [...]

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Some interesting figures on who’s listening to the Bike Show on the web via www.unstablesound.net/bike.html
More than 2500 hits so far:
Country | Hits
Unresolved/Unknown | 1010
US | 795
United Kingdom | 576
Network | 262
France | 95
Italy | 59
Belgium | 19
Lithuania | 7
Seychelles | 4
Netherlands | 2
Norway | 2
Poland | 1

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Here is where you’ll find information on shows, guests, playlists, news, links and an audio archive of past shows.
Jack

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