Front End Chatter #207

Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter, Britain’s physics-bendingiest motorcycling podcast, a vision formed when eccentric inventors Simon Hargreaves and Martin Fitz-Gibbons slipped off a toilet seat and banged their heads on a sink. This is episode #207 which, as always, is powered by the suitcase of stolen plutonium that is Bennetts, the bike insurance specialists, and BikeSocial.co.uk, the first ​place you should point your browser for used-bike buying guides, in-depth product reviews, new-bike technical analysis, the week’s hotted two-wheels deals, plus so much more.

 

And this week, in the absence of much going on in the biking world (other than Simon squeezing Christmas lunch into the panniers of a Triumph Tiger, and Mufga squeezing Christmas lunch into himself several times over), FEC takes a twenty-year trip back in time, back to January 2005, or more specifically the January 2005 issue of Bike magazine. A time when Britain was obsessed with sportsbikes, when Mufga was obsessed with dataloggers, and when Simon was obsessed by Troy Lee decals. How times have changed.

 

Come between the covers with us (ahem) as Simon and Mufga spill the goss on how Britain’s biggest-selling bike magazine was cobbled together 20 years ago, including:

 

•     Yamaha’s MT-01 – what it was, why it was made, whether it was a flop, and why Si had to push one down a hill

•     KTM’s 990 Super Duke – why it came with the rudest promo video ever, and whether it’d take KTM from unknowns to the biggest brand in Europe

•     Yamaha YZF-R6 – why a new set of forks and brakes made Si visit a burger van in the Peak District

•     Ducati Monster S2R – why it made Mufga bar-hop through Monte Carlo, and why a WSB legend flicked the Vs at Chippy Wood, Bike’s own legend

•     Plus the creeping rise of nostalgia in motorcycling; one of the ugliest group tests ever put on paper; the questionably relevance of riding MotoGP bikes; and a plethora of predictions gone horribly wrong.

 

We hope you enjoy our spectacularly self-indulgent trip down memory lane. If you do, let us know which era we should revisit next by emailing [e-mail] – and if you don’t, then instead email us with your thoughts, questions, observations, wonderings, ponderings about all things two-wheeled, modern or historical, for us to waffle about this year.

 

Thank you for listening, and we hope to see you in Scotland on FEC Highland Fling (#1 & #2) in May, and/or the FECstival in October!

 

Follow us on the socials:

 

Bluesky

@sihbikes.bsky.social

@mufga.bsky.social

 

Instagram

@simonhbikes

@mufga