Marrying for money
People do it all the time and sometimes it pays off. Martyn Moore meets four gold-diggers who tied the knot for cash
Their eyes met across a crowded room then his went straight for her obvious assets: a Cartier watch, Prada handbag, Gucci shoes.
Leonard, then 24, now admits he didn't even fancy 38-year-old Vanessa. But enough small talk to establish the size of her inheritance (to within £500K or so) certainly aroused his passions.
He literally charmed the pants off her and went on to live a life of abject misery for four years in the vain hope that money could buy him happiness. Hard lines, Len.
Divorce courts and Relate offices the length and breadth of the land are littered with files full of similar stories.
Like the cleaner who graduated from the Chief Executive's office suite to his eight-bedroom country house in less than a month. After seven years of marriage, she was living in the country house and he was temporarily residing at the office suite, trying to remember which mirror he broke.
For some people, though, it can work out. So I found four marriage mercenaries, two men, two women, who linked for lolly and asked them why; what it really cost and what advice would they give any of us who fancy our chances.
Annette pulled more than his pint
Annette was a barmaid aged 27 when she met Gregory, a 41-year-old stockbroker. He frequently popped into the pub on his way to the railway station.
"I could tell he was kind and he had a nice face," says Annette. "I knew he was single and that he liked me so I thought 'Why not?' "We went out a couple of times before he took me back to his house in Surrey. Well, when I saw the pool and the size of the rooms I thought 'I could get used to this'. And I have.
"I genuinely like Greg, even though I always went for more athletic-looking blokes. He treats me nice and I have everything a girl could ever want."
Annette's advice for making it last: "Always have sex with the light off."
Jeff gave her the special treatment
Jeff worked at a local filling station and knew Lisa as a regular who signed for petrol on her father's account. Jeff operated the pump for her and made a point of checking the tyres and cleaning the windscreen of her Range Rover.
"She was used to having people running around after her so she didn't really notice me at first. And I was only looking for a tip," says Jeff. "Then during my holidays another lad served her and didn't do all the stuff. He told me she asked where I was.
"Next time I saw her I said I'd only do the business on the car if she agreed to have dinner with me. I bought her roses, the works. Then I offered to teach her how to ride my motorbike if she taught me to ride horses. We had a brilliant summer."
Jeff's advice for making it last: "Carry on making her feel special. We were attracted to each other from the start but I work hard at keeping her happy."
Tom took out an advertisement
Tom had always been a confirmed bachelor. His fast food business went to the wall in 1985 so, aware that he was attractive to women, he placed a personal advertisement in a very upmarket magazine offering his services as a male escort.
Juliette had been married twice before, her second marriage ended before she made her money as a partner in a sports and leisure club. She had no time for dating and so she responded to Tom's ad. "After that first night she became a very regular client," recalls Tom. "In the end I think she decided it would be cheaper to marry and keep me. I didn't sign a pre-nuptial agreement and I wouldn't have if she'd asked me."
Tom's advice for making it last: "Find yourself a hobby that requires you to travel a lot, if you get my drift."
Claire went for the Lottery winner
Claire had been spurning Roger's advances for about three years when he won £1.8 million on the Lottery.
"I used to think he was childish and that his laid-back ways would mean he would never amount to much. I'm an accountant and I'm afraid I'm one of the ones who bear out the stereotype.
"I liked Roger enough but his attitude used to annoy the hell out of me. It still does sometimes. Then when he won the money I thought 'So what, if he never gets a responsible job'.
"Now his opposite temperament to mine means I have a lot of fun.
"Fancy him? Who wouldn't fancy £1.8 million?"
Claire's advice for making it last: "Concentrate on all the other things [apart from the dosh] that you like about him. Spend lots of time doing the things you both enjoy."
Other ways to marry for money
How to protect yourself if you have a quid or two
How the West was Two
Fonda and Hopper, Box Car Willy or the Marlboro Man? Martyn Moore saddles up his Harley and rides off into a cliché to find the real Wild West
WE HAD TO STOOP entering the gloomy bar and several Stetsoned men turned as our boots scraped across the wood floor.
A sad old Indian sat motionless at the end of the counter. We ordered drinks to the sound of a pianola drifting in from the music hall next door.
Bad paintings of naked women gazed down from the walls and tattered 'Wanted' posters adorned the back of the bar.
"It doesn't come much more authentic than this," said my partner with an incongruous northern English accent.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I realised the old Indian was a dummy. The bartender reached down and there was a click; the tinkling of the pianola was lost to the din of Duran Duran.
Ooo, oh, calling Planet Earth...
I took another swig from my Bud.
"Sure Doug."
IT'S EASY TO take the piss now I'm home, 6000 miles away where the Wild West means John Wayne, Bonanza and the Milky Bar Kid. White America doesn't have a lot in the way of history - not in the European sense, anyway - so what it has it clings to with fierce pride and nostalgic affection, even if the Southwest in the 19th century was Hell on Earth.
I had gone to act out my own fantasy: to ride an iron horse across the desert, drop my jaw in the dirt at the splendour of wild landscapes, wonder at the hardship endured by those brave folk who crossed this hostile terrain. And discover what was left of the days when men would move mountains, literally, to find gold and make their point with the subtlety of a Smith and Wesson.
Like a good editor I kept a diary of my time on the road, but an account of my sleeping, eating, riding and drinking habits is not what you want. And it's not how I remember it. I see a series of snapshots: faces and places, each with an emotion attached and a few good stories. The quotes come from that famous cowboy philosopher Texas Bix Bender.
The cowboy who exaggerates too much soon finds that everyone else has left the campfire.
SILVER CITY is a small mining town in New Mexico. The only disturbance in the tidy main street is the boom-boom of the bass tubes in hot rods belonging to young Hispanics.
Just across the range is the ghost town of Shakespeare where Billy the Kid lived.
Running down the middle of that range is the Continental Divide. If it's raining and you park a Harley facing west across this imaginary line, the drops that fall on the front wheel will eventually join the Pacific Ocean. Water running down the rear fender has just started its long journey east to the Atlantic.
And boy, can it rain. Storms at the beginning of this century washed Silver City into a ditch.
Despite the state's claim to be the sunniest in the US, on a 250 mile ride north to Gallup I got soaked to the skin and baked dry again four times. Huge black clouds leaked across the sky and day turned to night. When lightning struck either side of the road I feared for my life. Wind bent the stunted shrubs of the near-desert one way going in to the storm and flat the other way coming out. The storms lasted two days.
Then it was back to day-long baking heat and 1/250sec, f8 photo exposures (ISO50). Shooting in Utah's Monument Valley, like many a Hollywood hero, at 6pm the temperature was 110 degrees, yet the chill in the shadow of Mexican Hat, twelve hours later, had me reaching in the saddlebag for my pullie. The intense sun quickly warms the desert mornings and good quality shades are essential to protect your eyes from the UV.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
THE ROADS GO on forever. Big skies, usually that deep blue you never believe in photographs. Long days in the saddle with the scenery moving oh so slowly gives you plenty of time to think, and recall long-forgotten Eagles lyrics.
Round Rock, Arizona starts as a dark spot on the horizon. It grows painfully slowly and takes shape. At ten miles you can see it all, at five there's texture. By the time your repertoire brings you back around to Take it easy you're craning your neck to see the top. And suddenly you forget your singing, swerving to stay on the road as it makes its only deviation to go around the bottom of the rock.
Watching the monoliths shrink just as slowly in the mirrors of the Low Rider always gave me a twinge of sadness... You know we may never come this way again...
But it's okay Eagles, there's still Ship Rock, Mexican Hat and the fist and finger mesa of Monument Valley to come; ancient volcanic plugs, standing tall against the eroding winds and rain.
Some of the spectacle goes downwards. Canyon de Chelly is in many ways as spectacular as the Grand Canyon up the road. (Well, a couple of days up the road maybe.) Canyon de Chelly has scale, human scale with the Navajo Indians farming the canyon floor 1000ft below. That piddling little river can't make this! Give it a couple of million years, mate.
I was surprised how much of the desert isn't. Clusters of homes, sheds and shacks litter the landscape. How do these people live?
And even when the highway cuts through the rugged mountains, where only the insane live, there is the evidence of the hand of man. And it's not always nice.
The morning sun caught the glass of a hundred thousand bottles on the roadside down into Montezuma Creek. All around, a hundred oil pumps sucked at the earth, huge weights at the end of rocking bars pecking the ground like black mutoid metal birds - not pretty, but impressive.
I could smell the refinery five miles away. The big modern school at Montezuma Creek with its fabulous sports facility goes some way towards making the people feel better about the pungent aroma. Although I suppose they don't notice it and wouldn't be there in the first place if it wasn't for the oil.
And everybody waved. Farmers in battered pick-ups, truckers in amazing rigs, train drivers on the Santa Fe line and a tasty blonde stepping down from a school bus - all strangers who waved and smiled like they'd known me for years.
The road between Quemado and Glenwood winds through the Gila National Forest providing a marked contrast to the arid land north and south. The sweet smell of pine bears little resemblance to the fragrance we associate with bath salts. It would be a lot of fun on a FireBlade if you could afford the on-the-spot speeding fines.
A few miles north of Glenwood there's an Old West settlement, Mogollon, high in the mountains. It's not a true ghost town with people living there despite its inaccessibility in winter. The old opera house is now a gift/junk shop run by a woman whose version of English I was not familiar with.
There's a local paper called the Elkhorn Trader. It's four pages big and readers pay 10 cents a word to have their news and opinions printed. My copy carried an announcement that the government had procured a rocket booster dropping zone not too far away. Missiles are launched from a testing base in Utah and land at another hundreds of miles away at White Sands, New Mexico, development site for the atomic bomb. The dropping zone is where redundant bits of rocket are supposed to fall. I kept one eye on the sky as I headed back towards Silver City.
PHILLIP ACCOSTED ME outside the Plaza Diner on historic Route 66, Gallup. Gallup is the pissed Indian capital of New Mexico and Phillip had come into town from the alcohol-free reservation to destroy his body. I refused his plea for change but he shook my hand and blessed me anyway.
Stan is a retired flight engineer from Connecticut. He rides a V-Max and we both checked into the Valley of the Gods motel, Mexican Hat. His job had taken him all over the world but like me, he was lost for words to describe the beauty of Arizona and Utah.
I met a real, live deputy in Shakespeare and he wasn't writing me a citation. William P Cavaliere works out of the sheriff's department at Lordsburg, a town serving the miles-long freight trains heading east and west on the Southern Pacific railroad. Bill is lucky to be a real, live deputy. The previous day he had been shot at whilst trying to apprehend a felon. He's not the tallest policeman I've ever seen and this saved his life as the bullet whizzed just over his head.
If you're gonna take the measure of a man, take the full measure.
Despite all the attractions, a man and his hog start to miss female companionship on the trail. Two stunning girls hanging out of a convertible, with little regard for the 55mph speed limit, didn't help. They kept waving as the car condensed to a white dot on the horizon.
Things started to look up at a bar on 'Old 66'. Debbie had just finished her shift at the Dog House bar down the road. She was pretty. Hearing my accent, she started up warm conversation which resulted in her spoon-feeding me Boston cream pie.
I started to feel sorry for her when she told me how her son's girlfriend would be royalty if she moved to England. Apparently her regal descendancy would entitle her to live in a palace. Instead, the girl's love for Debbie's son keeps her in a dust-blown trailer park and working at the world's biggest truck stop, waiting on tables. She was talking complete nonsense.
Debbie gave me her number and I promised to call her on the return leg of my trip. Sorry Debbie.
The biggest liar you'll ever have to deal with probably watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.
MY HOST IN New Mexico was Doug Lees, formerly of Bikers Gearbox in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire. Doug has always had a passion for the old West and the new business is his dream come true. "I'm not doing this to get rich," he says. "It's just an opportunity to live an idyllic life in America. Nobody else was offering this kind of holiday so I decided to set it up myself.
"When you walk down the street in England dressed like this," he holds out his arms as you check out the big hat, western shirt, Levis and snakeskin boots, "everybody thinks you're a twat." And he's right, they do.
He's clearly in his element over here, with his passion for guns and knowledge of pioneer history. He'll talk for hours and show you his big knife, acting cool and mysterious as the mood takes him. Like so many other ex-patriates he indulges in a fair amount of Britain-bashing, which can be a little wearing. But then again, you want to be told how wonderful this all is when you're paying money to see it.
Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.
Doug thinks the holidays are cheap, but I'll let you be the judge of that. The cost is $2000 (£1320) a fortnight (the minimum period) so two of you sharing a bike will pay $1000 each and for that you'll be picked up at Tucson airport and driven the 200 miles to Silver City.
In order to see the main attractions you'll have to pick your bike - a choice of Harley Low Riders or Yamaha's 750 Virago - and hit the road. Complimentary route maps and guide books will help you along, together with Doug's extensive knowledge of the area, but food, accommodation and fuel are additional costs once you leave Silver City.
As a chili con carne connoisseur I was disappointed to discover it is not a Mexican dish, it's Texan. One place in Silver City served me a triple C and I had the shits for 48 hours.
Don't squat with your spurs on.
Real Mex restaurants like Mi Casita serve wonderful enchiladas, burritos and tortillas. Made from essentially the same ingredients: beef or chicken with beans, vegetables and peppers, the exotic names have more to do with the style of dough and the presentation.
The biggest chunk of cow I ate was at Pinnacle Peaks in Tucson where overdressed diners have their ties cut off and pinned to the wall by a pretty waitress.
Motel chains like Motel 6 and Super 8 provide room only for £20 to £35 and petrol is less than a pound a gallon. Third party motor insurance cover is included in the price of the holiday but personal medical cover must be arranged and this should permit motorcycling. Doug's UK representative, Travel with Perfection (0889 882242) will advise.
Consider the distances before you go. California with its Death Valley, Yosemite National Park and spectacular Highway One down the Pacific coast from San Francisco is feasible with three or four high-mileage days. It doesn't look far on a map but to take in these further flung areas you won't be able to stop for much and the Harley pillion will hurt like hell.
I could sit here and write you a wonderful itinerary, but that would only be my wonderful itinerary. And besides, its freedom from constraint is part of this holiday's appeal. This is a real adventure in the true spirit of the old Wild West. And remember, always drink upstream of the herd.
Guns and gunmen
HOLLYWOOD HAS glamourised the West, in reality it was probably even more violent. Despot sheriffs and corrupt judges interpreted the 'law' in their own way and men were lynched simply for being a nuisance.
Never take to sawin' on the branch that's supportin' you, unless your bein' hung from it.
The last two men to be hung in Shakespeare were strung from the roof beams of the old staging post. When the early stagecoach came in from El Paso, the swinging corpses had to be lowered in front of the passengers before breakfast could be laid on the tables below.
One of the men was an immigrant, Russian Bill, executed for fiddling a mining claim and stealing a horse. His family back home wrote to enquire of his well-being and a reply from the town informed them that he had died of "throat trouble".
In 1992 a fairly close relative of Russian Bill visited Shakespeare and only then learned from Manny Hill, the town's custodian and guide, the truth of Bill's demise. She didn't share the joke.
Billy the Kid is worshipped. So many hotels around Silver City claim he washed dishes in their kitchens it's amazing he found time to shoot anyone. But he did, 21 men in his 21 years. Real name Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney, his killing spree led to incarceration in Silver City jail. But his weedy build enabled him to escape through the jail's chimney and he was pursued and finally gunned down by his one-time friend sheriff Pat Garrett.
In the hills to the east of Silver City is the small town of Pinos Altos, the setting for my opening scene in the bar. Judge Roy Bean ruled the area with a ruthlessness that bordered on insanity. Justice done his way earned him the reputation "the only law west of the Pecos".
Tombstone is a thriving community near Tucson, Arizona. It thrives on the tale of how Wyatt Earp and his lawmen shot it out with the Clanton boys at the OK Corral in 1881. The Corral is perfectly preserved as is the saloon once owned by card sharp Doc Holliday's bird, Big Nosed Kate. Entry into Boothill graveyard requires a small donation towards its upkeep. In 1881 the admission price was much higher.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
Caught in the Web
A page on the Internet makes a great showcase for your images. But beware, it's addictive
They are all signs of an illicit affair: sliding under the duvet at 3am, trying not to wake your partner; lying about what time you came to bed and dreading the treachery of the itemised phone bill.
It started innocently enough… ha, isn't that what they all say?
I was given a digital camera to test and with it came some simple software for creating web pages. I took a peep. The interface looked friendly enough. "I'll create a really simple page with my CV on it," I told myself. Five hours later I'd created a home page, a biography page and a page of my favourite published articles. It had been stupidly easy and I thought they looked smart.
Adobe PageMill works like a word processor. To create links you simply highlight an item or section of text, drag a 'link' icon to the selection, let go and then type the target of the link into a dialog box. The target was usually another page on my site but links to other pages on the Internet and a return e-mail link also featured in those early pages. I filled a notebook with things to try each time the house fell silent.
I chose about 20 of my favourite slides and scanned them. I also went out and bought a microphone. Hey, it's just a bit of harmless fun… honest.
An entire Friday night was devoted to a page of small pictures, each linked to a page with a single, bigger version of the image on it. I also put a return link to the 'gallery' on each single image page - got to help the visitors get around, you see.
The photography pages brought my first problem. PageMill can measure the download time of a page. Anyone using a 28Kb/s modem would have to wait four minutes to see all the images in the gallery - too long for click-happy surfers.
I lost a weekend in Photoshop balancing on-screen size, resolution and JPEG compression. There is no point using a resolution greater than 72dpi for on screen display. Files were reduced to between 15K and 40K to get page download under a minute.
My site still only existed on my own computer. Now I needed an Internet provider offering free web space. Two things mattered: the amount of space on offer and the coolness of the URL (web site address) I would be assigned - <http://nerds.anorak.net/marts.member/sad.htm> was out of the question. Virgin offered 10Mb of web space and a choice of domain names including "business", "graffiti" and the ultra-hip "vzone". I signed up to Virgin Net and within minutes I was ready to launch <http://vzone.virgin.net/martyn.moore/> I can't describe the excitement I felt. Then I looked at Virgin's smart white home page and tasteful grey type and decided to redesign all my pages there and then. I'd used too many lairy colours.
My second problem arose when I uploaded the pages to Virgin's server - a simple procedure, clearly described on the Virgin site and requiring a small programme called WS_FTP95 downloaded from a Virgin-recommended source, <http://tucows.cableinet.net/>. When I went to view my pages, no pictures appeared.
While manipulating the images I'd worked from different folders and moved files around. Then I'd uploaded the pictures from wherever they sat.
This was no good, said the man at Virgin support, place all the pictures in one folder on your machine and remake the pages using images from their new location. The file and folder structure on the server has to mirror the one on the machine that creates the pages.
It worked! The whole world could now see me and my work. I danced around the house, failing to notice the suitcases by the door.
For a week I raided graphics web sites for logos, buttons, animations (no flames, they're not cool) and backgrounds. After 15 years as a print journalist, I had to get lots of whirling things in there - because I could. Animated GIFs are placed on the page like anything else - don't ask me how they work… I don't care.
I worked out how to create a logo in Photoshop and preserve the transparent background by exporting it as a GIF file. I inserted sounds that play when visitors click on things and I decided my five-year-old daughter needed a web site - although I hadn't seen her for a couple of days.
I hadn't had to unravel the mysteries of HTML code - the language that creates web pages - PageMill creates this in the background. But I discovered that if I wanted to recreate an effect from another web site, I could select View Source, copy the appropriate line of HTML code and then paste it into the HTML view of my page in PageMill. That's how I got my own Yahoo! search facility.
I became obsessed with compatibility of browsers. I discovered that playing background sound on both Netscape and Microsoft browsers requires two different lines of HTML code. I also discovered that the fridge was empty and my family had gone to Scotland.
But I needed hits man. After three weeks my visitor counter read a paltry 86, and 78 of those were me.
I sent my details to as many of the search engines as I could find. Search engines are electronic directories which find web sites when users type in relevant words. You can register your site with them but it doesn't guarantee a quick listing. As I write, my details are stored on Yahoo!, UK Plus and HotBot and I've e-mailed all my friends.
The only way to get visitors to come back to a site a second time is to change things regularly. I'm working on it but first I need some sleep... I'll just have a quick look to see if Dateline has a web site.
What do you want with a web site, then?
Where do you get the stuff you need?
Girls, girls, girls
From brush on canvas to computer porn, women have always dominated the image business. And the world's greatest photographers became great photographing women. So, if you're going to do it, do it right.
FOREWORD TO A PHOTO ANSWERS GLAMOUR FEATURE BY MARTYN MOORE
IF YOU THINK the admiration of an attractive female is degrading, you won't like my photographs and you won't like this.
There's a lot of bullsh*t written about pictures of women in photography magazines. 'Glamour' used to be the photo mags' stock-in-trade. No issue was complete without the gratuitous tit shot. Glamour supplements were tossed together and given away free to put a bit of spunk into sales figures.
Then came this frustrating era of political correctness. Women became stronger, more assertive and free. Free to get their kit off if they damned well pleased. And men were made to feel ashamed if they were caught appreciating it.
Photography magazines were virtually consigned to the top shelf with the rest of the w*nk mags.Meanwhile, art photography magazines plastered rumpo all over the place, Kylie and Madonna bared all and Liz Hurley and the "supermodels" caused an epidemic of premature emasculation among men caught looking too long. It's a funny old world.
As a photo technique magazine it is our mission in life to improve your photography. Photograph women because good pictures of women are beautiful. I'd even go so far as to hint at the hidden agenda: if you make a beautiful picture of a woman you'll achieve more in 1/125sec than a week of wining, dining and "fancy a Gold Blend?".
As for my own advice, I'd volunteer this: photograph a woman to make her look beautiful. If you can't make her look beautiful with her clothes on, you haven't a hope in hell with them off.
Deep pan alley
Martyn Moore in Brum with Britain's most picked-on bikers
WE THINK WE get a rough deal. As bikers we think people have it in for us. If they're not pulling out of junctions into our paths then they're trying to legislate us off the road.
But compared to one small group of specialist motorcyclists, we don't know we're born. Victimisation? We hardly know the meaning of the word. Hostility? We can't imagine the scale of it.
I've seen riders swerved at and run off the road by jeering yobs in cars. They ride underpowered, unstable machines against the clock into some of the toughest neighbourhoods in Britain. They were ridiculed by those I spoke to when planning this article. They ride for low pay in all weathers wearing flappy oilskins and trainers. They deliver pizzas, and garlic bread.
Orders are coming in faster than usual for six o'clock on a Thursday evening. Perfect Pizza, Cotteridge, south Birmingham is getting busy and both cars are out delivering when I turn up. Paul Cooper is the manager. He looks young for a boss but he's been with the company six years. His gap-tooth smile makes him look like a cross between Arnie Swarzenegger and David Mellor. "I didn't think we'd need the bike much tonight but it looks like you'll be busy," he tells me. "Lee! Get your kit on!"
Lee Jackson has blond hair which parts in the middle and flops sideways like a footie player or some indie pop star from Madchester. His 'kit' is a bright yellow waterproof jacket and trousers; it goes on over a jacket claiming Emporio Armani and covers his button badge of Chubby Brown with the phrase "You girls have the pussy". He jams a red polycarbonate helmet on and lifts the opaque visor to see where he's walking. The gloves are damp and only part leather; Lee holds them up between his thumb and forefinger like they're manky. "I asked the boss for some new gloves 'cos one of the other blokes eats 'em. He gave me a tenner," he says. "It's all the fancy toppings, yer see. If we have four pizzas on the bike and the bottom one has lots of extra toppings, by the time we get to the house they've all shaken to one side and we have to spread them back on again... No, I'm only kidding!" But he wasn't.
A Honda C90 Cub is wheeled round to the front of the shop, its aspect dominated by the enormous box behind the single seat. Before I can scribble any more the meal is in the box, the bike starts first kick and Lee flies off down the pavement. Members of the bus queue look on approvingly as the CBR600 and I filter towards the roundabout in a civilised manner. Lee is just disappearing down the hill over the second roundabout.
He flies down the dual carriageway, his yellow sou'wester flapping like Captain Bird's Eye in a storm. Giving chase I'm surprised to see him indicate his lane changes and sit in queues at junctions. It's the only way I can catch him.
We sit at a pelican crossing beside a park. Street and festive lights pour their glow over a wall and nearby shouting attracts our attention. A group of seven or eight youths are in turn kicking someone on the ground and whooping around like Red Indians. The lights change and we charge up the hill, turn onto an estate and ride straight to the first drop.
I ask Lee what was happening in the park. "They was givin' somebody a right kickin', that Christmas tree looked pretty," and just a comma separates the two statements.
Drizzle falls and three more boxes are sitting on the counter when we arrive back at the shop. Paul looks angry as we stand outside the shop for a minute and I take out my pen. "You've got 12 minutes to do these three," he glowers.
Deliver each pizza within 30 minutes of the phone call or you get it a quid cheaper, that's the deal and the kind of pressure the riders are under. Perfect Pizza doesn't give away many pounds but customers examine their watches carefully at the door - disappointed they haven't caught us out.
The night is soon a blur of council estates, tower blocks and posher residential areas. I long to savour that warmth greedily held behind abruptly slammed front doors and, gazing into cosy living rooms, wonder what homely sitcom makes those screens flicker.
I give up on my note-taking at the shop and trust a tape recorder to capture the surreal snippets of conversation in the fag room between runs.
"Some of the lads think they're Barry Sheene. They make all the noises and everything," says Paul. "They're not bad bikes really; they're work horses. A mechanic comes in twice a week to do tyres and stuff. We go through gearboxes like nobody's business and the clutches go."
Lee starts to get excited. "When you come to an island in third and you're givin' it a bit of stick, like, and you got to get round and you see a car coming... if you flick it back into second you get a bit of power don't you? It's like a little turbo cuts in. I think its great!"
Paul tries to moderate Lee's enthusiasm. "There is a knack to riding and getting the best out of them."
Apparently the gearboxes need fixing every couple of months. Michelin gave them tyres for a while as some kind of test and about three years ago Honda came and took a bike away to see what had broken.
Then I'm desperately trying to keep up with Lee again, my CBR sliding on leaf-coated streets, his C90 (no taillight or L-plate, though he hasn't passed any kind of bike test) swinging left or right, two or three junctions ahead.
Lee paddles to get going quicker, the Cub wheelies impressively changing from first to second with three family sized on board. The handlebars are loose, the mudguard's cracked and the ohc single smokes like a two-stroke.
Kids in cars pick races and deliberately force him off the road - this I see with my own eyes. They jostle and jeer at lights and hurl cans at him. Kill the pizza boy is becoming a national sport. And it's not as if he needs any help. But he's the fastest guy in town, especially when he's following a fire engine. "If you get one going down your street, you're sorted."
Lee has worked at Perfect Pizza for two and a half years. "You get to be like an A-Z. You get to know the short cuts too. You can sometimes go quietly through people's gardens and that."
Paul looks worried. "You mean walkways, Lee. And paths and that, don't you Lee?"
But Lee is oblivious. "Naaa, gardens! Up Primrose Hill."
"Well, we've had a few brushes with the law riding on the footpath," says Paul, "your sister Lee, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, she was unlucky. Mind, she was doing 45."
"OK," admits Paul, "we do speed, but we don't take the piss."
The shop tries not to use bikes after dark but sometimes it can't be helped. A busy night can mean 30 pizzas go out on a vulnerable motorcycle. The most popular order is the Mexican Heatwave - the kind of pizza that burns twice, the second time up to eight hours later. Typical single orders are worth £10.50 and you can squeeze four pizzas in the box. A sticker claims riders only carry ten pounds cash but Lee doesn't agree.
"It's more than that," he says.
Paul raises his eyes to the ceiling. "Not on bikes Lee," he cautions with a sigh.
But Lee's off again. "Oh yeah we do, sometimes were too busy to drop off the float so we just take it out again with the next one."
"Well no more than thirty pounds on a bike, eh Lee?" Then Paul changes the subject. Kind of. "In Milton Keynes they strung a rope up between two lampposts and knocked a bloke off that way and nicked his float."
Lee's excited now. "I was mugged in Masshouse Lane looking for this house and these two lads jumped on me and started beating me up, kicked the bike on the floor, nicked me money out me pocket, had me pizza out the back of the bike and I give one of them a smack with me helmet. By this time the chap I was delivering the pizza to heard the commotion and came out with his dog. These two lads see this big black geezer and his dog and he chased 'em round the block.
"We make people in tower blocks come down to meet us now. We used to go up ten or 12 floors and while we were in they'd nick the bike and the pizzas. Sometimes you can leave a bike outside a house and lads will come along and push it away. We get calls at the shop from people saying I'm sure there's a bunch of lads pushing one of your bikes down our road. So we went to sort it out and one of the lad's dad tried to do us for GBH! Honest! I tell you, we have some laughs here.
"In Hawkesley, on bonfire night they were firing rockets at me! You could see all these sparks on the top of tower blocks and then these rocks and bricks would be landing in the road. It was like a war zone and you had to ride, like, down a passage through it. It was like Beirut!
"I've had people come up to me with a knife and say Give us your pizza. I just say Here you are, have it mate, I don't get paid enough to die for it."
A pizza man like Lee typically earns £120 for a 40-hour week which includes three evenings until midnight, riding up to 50 miles a night. But there are compensations.
"There's this woman who fancies me and I really fancy her, right?" brags Lee. "She comes to the door, I swear to God, the first couple of times she used to wear pants and that, with a nightie up to her thighs, here. But this last couple of times I've been going you can see her little tuft and I thought 'Great', like, you know. And I love going down there because you get, like, really talkative and sometimes she'll say 'Have you got to rush off?' And you start shaking and go all white and you say 'I'd love to stay', but you can't 'cos you've got a couple of pizzas in the box and they're gonna go cold."
It's Paul's turn to get excited. "I've seen them fighting to deliver to the massage parlours!"
But there's no stopping Lee. "There was one down in Sparkhill when I was at Acock's Green and they used to say Instead of us paying for the pizza would you like a massage? And they don't give you a massage they give you, like, full sex!"
So you've always said No then, Lee?
He hesitates a second too long. "Er... yes, sometimes."
Goodbye Guv'nor
Terence Donovan 1936-1996
INTERVIEW BY MARTYN MOORE
When Terence Donovan met me for lunch, a few weeks before he died, he was as happy and as ebullient as ever. The great fashion photographer chose my food for me, ordered me more beer than I needed and took our interview along his preferred route. There was the occasional detour – ramble even – but they were the thoughts and words of a man still obsessed with creating pictures after more than 30 years of doing it.
Terence Donovan was never ordinary and no conversation with him ever could be. He told me he didn't like the way articles portrayed him as a chirpy Cockney, and then he talked like one for two hours. He asked me not to print his swearing, and then turned the air blue. He told me I have lovely teeth. Three times.
Enough has been written about the big guy, the Guv'nor, since he took his own life in November 1996. This was his last interview and so the rest of the words are his:
"I'm interested in illustrating the upbeat things of life, I'm not riveted by the downbeat. I know a lot about the downbeat but it doesn't intrigue me to record it.
"I like the glisten. I know it's irrelevant but it's hopeful, quite harmless, quite cheerful.
"It's a nice time in my life, actually. I'm enjoying it and I'll tell you why: I'm not grinding away like I used to. I don't want to do that. There's a thing in the film industry called Tamar Productions - Take the Money And Run. You think, I'll do that because that'll pay the rent, but then it sticks to you like napalm. I'm quite careful what I get involved with. As a young man, in my diary you'd see four assignments a day. As I got older I learned that in order to do something well, you've got to really want to do it.
"Advertising is getting lazy. You see it, man, all this endless regeneration of old material, '60s music and old American cars going off into the desert. That's not the answer. I'm not saying you should cold-bloodedly set out to be original, and I'm not saying you don't absorb things osmotically, in the aesthetic sense. What I am saying is that you must engage your own brain and I don't think people do it enough.
"There's a lot of difference between an advertising photographer and a photographer. When I used to work for Elle magazine in France, the art director never told me what to do. You had to work it out for yourself. In Paris and there was Helmut Newton in one studio and Guy Bourdin in the other. They're photographers, man. They weren't nicking anything off of anybody. I watched Guy Bourdin and there's no more way I could take a photograph like Guy than fly.
"When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, 'I did something rather odd... I thought of it!' It seems to be a rather old fashioned thing to do.
"I was speaking to The Association of Photographers and I told them to be careful with these digital images because they have a deadness to them. I was looking at an advertisement for a plate of salmon and I realised that there was about nine images joined up there. Well, I remember taking a picture of a plate of salmon for Aer Lingus on a lake in Connimara in the '60s and we just photographed it. And mine was actually a better shot because the background was slightly out of focus. They'd got everything razor sharp and a non-photographer can sense when something's wrong.
"Serious musicians like to hear their music played on LP as opposed to CD. Whoever's in charge of the show upstairs, he's got a wicked sense of humour because as they give it to you, the progress and new ideas, they take something away. You know what I mean?
"You can't stop technology, you don't want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you're photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you'd better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don't do that, old love, you're snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.
"I saw the prototype of an East German camera at Photokina years ago and I said, Have you tried to use this? Just wind ten films through it and you'll find your fingers bleeding. They changed the design.
"Amateur photographers have got a problem because they've got no reason to take a picture. They're kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm...
"When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I'd get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it's a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they're too busy with the technical side. It's the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You've got to be able to read the images.
"You have to make it look easy when you're photographing people; have a dialogue going. You can't hide behind your camera. When I was 15 I was shy, so I used to make myself go up to people to photograph them. I'd do anything that frightened me. And now I say to young photographers, 'Don't try and sneak pictures on a 100mm lens, get a 35 on and walk up to them.'
"I was taught by hard men, really tough. I was a blockmaker, making printing plates and it taught me the fundamentals of exposure. On any film shoot, in any situation, within reason, I'm never more than a stop out. I can look at anybody's face and say, 1/30 at 2.8. And if I am out, it will be a stop over, which is always the right way to be. And that was all from that training.
"I used to get up at eight o'clock, work in the studio from nine until seven at night, go out and have a bite, come back at nine, develop all the negatives of the day, contact them and go home at 1.30. That's how you learn how to do the job. You know what they say in the SAS, 'Train hard, fight easy'.
"Our society has become soft. You've got to get weaving and not expect society to look after you. I loathed going into the British army but I'm glad I did. There's never been a situation in my life that even got remotely near cracking me. When you've painted half a ton of coal white with a toothbrush and then painted it back black again, you're not too fussed about much.
"Photography is a militaristic operation, you've got to be organised. Most people aren't organised.
"What you've got to understand about Bailey and me is, we were fantastically hard working. Bailey and I never wanted to be successful photographers. That wasn't the plot. We weren't ambitious, ever. We just wanted to do it.
"My first darkroom was a cupboard and I couldn't afford a red light so I used to have a bit of cloth handy and the cloth used to catch fire. But by God I wanted to do it.
"You've got to try hard not to develop the vague notion you might be of some consequence. 'Cos if you manage that, you're free from the tyranny of it. You see that a million times, people that really think they've cracked it and then it comes slamming out of the woodwork at them. Judo teaches you that, some skinny little bloke you think, Oh, he's nothing, and the next thing you're lying on your back. It's much more to do with the philosophy of life than anything to do with photography.
"I've been very interested in religion all my life. I've mixed with the richest people on this planet and I know that real money brings no happiness at all if you're not buzzing.
"Don't do it if you want to be famous. As long as people leave college and they don't want to buy a car out of photography, or don't want to get a flat in Mayfair, if they just want to be photographers... If they have passion and if they have got something to say, they'll make it.
"When you're young, you go on assignment, somebody steams into your pictures and it tears your guts out, you know. And you defend them. I don't defend my work, never again. I hope you like it, I've tried hard. I've tried my best but if you don't like it...
"I've tried to keep my eyes and ears open in my life, be a bit receptive. That's why I go and photograph where all those kids are dancing. It's interesting. Too many people of my age are too locked off. You can look old, but you don't have to be old. Parkinson was 73 but he was not an old man, he was a wild man, sparky.
"Salgado, Irving Penn, Mapplethorpe was a wonderful photographer but probably he was a spectacular marketing job, aided hugely by death, Helmut Newton hasn't lost it.
"It's always been a tough job, Cecil Beaton was a tough old boy, Parkinson was a tough old boy, Eve Arnold's a tough woman. Not a job for somebody light on bottle, I'll tell you, photography. Not when you think of what can go wrong.
"I have the advantage of having a bit of mileage on the clock. You know at the end of the show it comes out fairly alright, otherwise you'd go crackers. If I slashed at my wrists with a razor blade at every image I've had ruined or nicked...
"We're not going to be around for ever and I don't know who will take over from us. I'm sure, as we speak, there is some bloke enrolling at some college in the north-east of England who's going to. Because we'll all go, we'll all be on the great stage in the sky at some point."
Art"Photography, for me, isn't art. It's specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that's not the photograph, that's the content that's emotive.
"Because I paint and take photographs, I think photography is a craft because it doesn't attack you. That's why I don't have many exhibitions. I think exhibitions are quite dull, personally. I don't know why. I like photographs. I like looking at them but how many times have you come out of an exhibition and gone Phew!?
"When old Avedon had that exhibition of stuff, you know, 15 foot high prints, well it was just graphics to me, and the weakness of graphics is it's studied. Whereas if you look at a painting by Lucien Freud, skilled as it is, there's a bit of mad vibrancy about it all. Or Bacon, insanity on the paper, but I love it because I don't know where it came from and it mystifies me."
Commitment"I gave a lecture at a camera club not too long ago and when I'm speaking somewhere at seven o'clock I turn up at six and then disappear. Then I come back at two minutes to seven to start. The place was filled with amateur photographers and I'd never seen a group so enthusiastic. Well, it turned out they'd seen me walk past the hall at six and thought I'd had a look at the place and thought, 'I'm not speaking there' and done a runner. No wonder they were pleased.
"Then few weeks later I was at the Royal College of Art and after I'd studied their work in the morning we had some lunch and then sat down to talk. And then a girl got up and I said, 'Where are you going?' And she said, 'To get coffee.' So I said, 'You've just had lunch.' And then the German next to me said, 'Zis isn't ze military now you know.' And so I said, 'And you can f*ck off as well!'
"But do you see what that illustrates?"
© copyright emap apex publications 1996
No mean city
On the streets of New York the best protection is a two-year-old child
A YOUNG GUY in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt broke from a huddled group and stepped into our path - a tree-lined path through New York's notorious Central Park.
We stopped as he leaned towards our two-year-old daughter in the pushchair. My heart stopped too. "Cute kid, man," he said and handed her some candy.
This was typical of the many surprises New York threw up to contradict its reputation as a city of rude people with little time of day to give. 'Avoid eye contact' is the advice given to nervous tourists. I'd like to see you try it whilst trundling along with a tot and the entire sidewalk going gaga.
Sporty-looking girls turned their rollerblades on a dime to retrieve a dropped teddy; bankers and lawyers smiled as they pulled their briefcases out of the line of fruit-juice fire, and the frantic service in the Grand Central Station Coffee Shop ground to a halt as waitresses told us about their grandchildren in 'Noo Joisey' and brought bananas and milk, "No charge."
When Charlotte wasn't eating free she was riding free, but she bought her Mum and Dad the freedom of the city. The buses are 'stroller friendly' and there was always someone to lend a hand. Waiting for a downtown bus on Sixth Avenue, my accent led me into a discussion with a native New Yorker about Northern Ireland. On seeing Charlotte, the ill-informed old lady's icy attitude melted to moisture in her eyes. Warm childcare advice replaced chilly politics.
"This city loves my baby," I thought, "I love this city!"
A&S Plaza. Lunch time. Hundreds of sharp-suited executives discussing power deals waited for the express lift to the food hall. The elevator doors hissed apart and the crowd surged forward, only to be held back by the uniformed attendant.
"I see a baby carriage, gentlemen. Please step back, they got priority!" he bellowed.
Irate expressions turned to bemused smiles as Charlotte rolled through, giving them the royal wave.
New York's shops are wide-aisled and roomy - even Mothercare can be a squeeze for prams in Britain - with plenty of ramps and elevators. Barnes and Noble's Manhattan bookshop has a huge kids' reading section where the much-fingered pop-up books must surely be consigned to the rubbish skip at a frightening rate. At FAO Schwarz, the massive toy store, a tired-looking sales assistant took a Barbie doll from me, body in one hand and head in the other. He smiled down at Charlotte with a look of total forgiveness - as well he might, it was me who stood on it.
Charlotte will not remember the day she drew a crowd in a Times Square record shop, bopping wildly to an old Detroit Spinners song. "Man, you are blessed!" the cashier told us. We will not forget the Big sweet Apple.
The following article contains language some people might find offensive
Orbital Outlaws
Night races around the M25 really happen. Martyn Moore talks to the men who play dark, dangerous games
01707 646963.
It's a payphone at South Mimms services, where the A1 meets the M25. We'd been told to ring it at 9pm every night for a week and let it ring 15 times. On Wednesday it was answered on the eighth ring and a man's voice gave another number. We didn't know where that phone was but it was answered immediately by 'Chad'. That's what he said we could call him.
Chad has a Porsche 911 with twin turbos and a radar detector. He also has some very serious friends. They race around the M25 for kicks and the occasional side bet - a couple of hundred at a time, nothing heavy.
Rumours of racing on the 117-mile London orbital have been circulating faster than the traffic since the motorway was finished in 1986 and we've poked around for evidence of the lap record for years.
Our call to Chad was the result of a series of messages passed through an acquaintance of a former Met copper. Friend of a friend of the filth, Chad would say.
He described his work as 'pharmaceuticals distribution' and his friends, including ex-smokey bacon, play various roles in his organisation. 'You don't want to know about my business,' Chad told us. In four clandestine phone calls that's all we got.
Most of the time Chad wanted to talk about cars and high-speed circumnavigation of the capital. He explained how the M25 allowed entrepreneurs like him to extend their manor, or work someone else's, and move around very quickly. 'There are 30 junctions on the M25,' said Chad. 'Each one represents potential customers.'
He really wanted to tell us about the cars. Six cars make up his posse: the 911, a Nissan Skyline, an Escort Cosworth, a Sapphire 4x4, a 5-series BMW and a big old Rover Vitesse. Stealth is important so none of the cars is anything to look at; rasping intakes and exhausts are out.
But each car has a £500 Valentine radar detector, hands-free mobile phone and an ICE install to die for. The ICE plays host to the outlaws' adopted band, Orbital. It's a bit obvious, naff even, the way Chad latched onto the trippy techno music for the name of the band. Now dreamy dance albums like Snivilisation and In Sides are the soundtrack to his antics on the M25.
'We all wear Orbital stuff,' Chad revealed near the end of our first phone call. 'A T-shirt or maybe a small badge. And all the cars have a little Orbital sticker tucked away somewhere.' Hmm.
We spent a week scrutinising Porkers, Cossies, Beemers, Skylines and old Rovers for Orbital logos. We didn't see any.
Second thoughts
Chad said he wanted to talk to Max Power but he also wanted to play games. The South Mimms payphone wasn't answered until Friday on the second week. The anonymous voice gave another London number where Chad kept it short. 'I've had a busy week and one of the lads had a problem with his motor,' he said. 'I like the magazine but I'm not sure if I want to get into this now. Give me a couple of weeks.'
Two weeks later, when we'd decided Chad was a bit of a wanker, he phoned us. 'Let's talk about the racing,' he prompted.
Okay, Chad. Let's. We asked him about his lap record.
'You're having a laugh, mate,' he said. 'If you tried to race all the way round you'd never get off the road. They'd have all the exits sealed tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm. I might be a little bit crazy but I'm not that fuckin' crazy!'
We were pissed off. We'd waited a long time for this conversation and we'd been drawn into Chad's web of intrigue. If he sensed our disappointment he didn't show it and kicked off with an account of their first ever race.
'It all started as a bit of a laugh,' he began. 'When we're moving a lot of gear around we always send a couple of cars ahead to check out the route.
'We keep in touch by phone and we've invented this kind of code language for warning each other about unusual situations - anything dodgy like police and familiar motors. Like rival ice cream vans keep an eye out for each other - avoid confrontations and that - we do the same... and we know a lot about our competition.
'It gets a bit fuckin' edgy sometimes and one night we'd had to get out of Romford fast. The Skyline up on the motorway told us there was a pig snoozing above the shoulder up ahead so we had to stay cool.
'I was bricking it 'cos I was sure we'd been followed so I floored it. Sometimes the cops are the least of our worries and we'd just finished our last delivery so we were clean.
'Anyway, we were making ground on the front look-out and he was staying cool 'cos of the cop. But he knew I'd kick his fuckin' arse if he didn't wind it up a bit and suddenly I was on him. We'd left the cop asleep so my mate in the Skyline pulls ahead and the next thing you know is we've got a 911 and Skyline pushing 140 talking to each other on the blower!
'We laughed like fuck, man. It was all the tension from the drop and that.'
We were shocked by this irresponsible behaviour and no mistake. So does he make a habit of it now, we asked.
'It's a release, a bit of a laugh,' explained Chad. 'And you've got to understand we're on the fuckin' top of our game. We don't miss a fuckin' thing and the cars are sorted - okay, the Rover's a bit rough but it's sound.
'We go out to play every night after work and now it nearly always results in a dice. The bets are just a sideline thing, a couple of the boys try to boost a night's earnings and every now and then we let the Rover win. We're just letting out a bit of pressure, you know, but it's not like some spotty little twats in clapped-out hatches tearing past fuckin' Burger King.'
Steady on Chad, those are our mates you're dissin'. You're making what you do sound acceptable, we suggested.
'It is acceptable,' he maintained. 'The filth wouldn't agree but we've never been pulled.'
Never?
'Never. There was one night we was lucky. The quietest stretch is heading south from the [Dartford] bridge and me and the lad in the 5-series were moving stuff down to Weybridge - he had the gear. The Escort was looking out for us up ahead and the Rover was behind.
'A Volvo patrol car swooped up from Swanley and tucked in in front of the Rover. He was moving fast and would have been on us if I hadn't gunned it. We saw his blue lights come on just too late to make the Farnborough turn-off.
'Man, I was pumped and the twin turbos were really singing, but I stuck behind the Beemer all the way to the Sevenoaks interchange - where it feels like you come off the M25 to stay on it.
'The BM went straight on and down into Sevenoaks, disappearing into town like we'd agreed. I took the pig with me, getting too close for comfort, and made that sharp curve on the slip road on the fuckin' limit, man. The back was well out of shape and I don't mind admittin' I'd broken a sweat.
'Once I was back on the main carriageway I wound it round to 150. Everything snapped sharp: lights, the music, I could feel the road through my arms. Adrenalin's the only fuckin' drug you need and that's rich coming from me, pal.
'There was no sign of the cop so I flew into Clackett Lane Services and sat tight for an hour. My boy in the Beemer was on his way home and the Rover swept right past and back... saw nothing. Somebody slipped up that night or they were never after us in the first place. Who knows?
'But it'll happen, probably with the help of that helicopter. In fact I fancy one of those bastards myself one day.'
Racing on Britain's most famous motorway carries incredible risks. The gang improves its odds with fake plates fixed over the real ones with Velcro strips. Stacked against them is the network of closed-circuit television cameras monitored 24 hours a day by police officers.
Police will deny any knowledge of a bunch of outlaw drivers nightly flouting the speed limit for a modest wager. They're anxious to see that such behaviour isn't glamourised. Too many impressionable young kids out there might think it's clever.
But the same law enforcement agencies are making video footage available to sensational TV shows locked in ratings wars.
The programmes are thinly disguised as warnings with harsh condemnation from a po-faced presenter. Keep watching, and if you ever catch a glimpse of an Orbital sticker on a car or driver in big, big trouble, you'll know he had it coming.
Motorway Madness
* The 117-mile M25 was finished in 1986 at a cost of £1,000,000,000 (thousand million).
* Some sections see 200,000 vehicles a day.
* M25 gritting lorries spread 400 tonnes of salt to rot your motor every winter.
* One old gimmer spent two days circling the M25 looking for his daughter's home. A retired dustman slept in hedges when he too became hopelessly lost.
* Police rescued an elderly woman cycling the wrong way along the outside lane. She was holding her hat on with one hand as oncoming vehicles dodged her.
* A couple spent their wedding night in a coach with honeymoon suite, rocking it from side to side as it whizzed round the M25.
© copyright emap national publications 1998
The hills are alive
Alive with the sound of two-stroke engines. Learn to ride a motorbike – up a Welsh mountain
When learning to ride a motorcycle off-road, Geraint Jones says, complete novices make the best students. Several faces in the group relax.
"But road riders tend to be a bit stiff and don't like the loose surface," adds the ten times British motocross champion. The faces are tense again.
We are gathered at Geraint's farm near Llanidloes, Powys for the Yamaha Off-road Experience. We have put on the bright motocross garb and chosen our bikes for the day – mine is a relatively docile WR200.
All leisure activities involving powered vehicles have to start with a tedious briefing session – the kart marshal with a string of well-rehearsed but naff jokes and a patronising line with women is the worst – but Geraint Jones's briefing is surprisingly short. All too soon we are mounted and heading out of the farmyard, the chickens eyeing us nervously.
We follow a track up a steep hill and Geraint sets an easy, bimbling pace. A few hundred yards beyond the hillside wood we burst out onto a hilltop like something from the Sound of Music, curved mountains slope away at the perfect pitch for Julie Andrews to achieve lift-off. Terrified sheep remind us this is Wales.
With most of Wales below, Geraint starts to teach us the fundamentals of off-road riding: sit forward on the saddle when cornering, elbows up, looking well ahead; stand leaning forward at the waist, legs locked-out straight. We learn throttle control first, then braking and all the time Geraint is getting our measure – he won't ask us to try anything beyond our ability.
But as the day progresses, river beds and forest trails lead inexorably to a quarry racetrack with double jumps, whoops and berms, and we start to think that maybe there isn't anything we can't do.
We discover what we can't do the next morning. Having found entire new muscle groups and pounded them all day, we can't walk.
Career climax
SEX AND BIKES. That's what it's all about really isn't it? But what about sex ON a bike? Now there's a challenge.
One I reckoned I could, er, rise to - bragging to the lads in the pub at least.
Whilst planning my last issue at BIKE, an attempt at the ultimate ride took on an appeal beyond the obvious. It could be my parting shot - going out with a bang, if you like. It was rude and extremely risky, but what a wild way to hand in your notice!
A long-time acquaintance needed several vodkas before she would even consider my proposal but deep down I knew she'd go for it.
Everything finally came together - and it did - at a chilly Bruntingthorpe proving ground in October.
I'd abstained from carnal pursuits for a fortnight because
I thought that might help. The vodka came along too but not for me, I needed to keep a clear mind on two jobs.
The position was worked out, with much fumbling, giggling and the delicate modification of my old Furygans with a Stanley knife, before we attempted a couple of 'dry runs' for the photographer. I decided I could still hold it all together at 60mph.
We wobbled down to the end of the runway and turned as the photographer moved further into the adjacent field and made his final adjustments.
"You're not going to manage it," she tittered. Up the 'box: first... second... "This is silly." Third... "You can't get it... Oooo!"
The pictures weren't as sharp as I'd hoped. The photographer was only using one hand.
People do it all the time and sometimes it pays off. Martyn Moore meets four gold-diggers who tied the knot for cash
Their eyes met across a crowded room then his went straight for her obvious assets: a Cartier watch, Prada handbag, Gucci shoes.
Leonard, then 24, now admits he didn't even fancy 38-year-old Vanessa. But enough small talk to establish the size of her inheritance (to within £500K or so) certainly aroused his passions.
He literally charmed the pants off her and went on to live a life of abject misery for four years in the vain hope that money could buy him happiness. Hard lines, Len.
Divorce courts and Relate offices the length and breadth of the land are littered with files full of similar stories.
Like the cleaner who graduated from the Chief Executive's office suite to his eight-bedroom country house in less than a month. After seven years of marriage, she was living in the country house and he was temporarily residing at the office suite, trying to remember which mirror he broke.
For some people, though, it can work out. So I found four marriage mercenaries, two men, two women, who linked for lolly and asked them why; what it really cost and what advice would they give any of us who fancy our chances.
Annette pulled more than his pint
Annette was a barmaid aged 27 when she met Gregory, a 41-year-old stockbroker. He frequently popped into the pub on his way to the railway station.
"I could tell he was kind and he had a nice face," says Annette. "I knew he was single and that he liked me so I thought 'Why not?' "We went out a couple of times before he took me back to his house in Surrey. Well, when I saw the pool and the size of the rooms I thought 'I could get used to this'. And I have.
"I genuinely like Greg, even though I always went for more athletic-looking blokes. He treats me nice and I have everything a girl could ever want."
Annette's advice for making it last: "Always have sex with the light off."
Jeff gave her the special treatment
Jeff worked at a local filling station and knew Lisa as a regular who signed for petrol on her father's account. Jeff operated the pump for her and made a point of checking the tyres and cleaning the windscreen of her Range Rover.
"She was used to having people running around after her so she didn't really notice me at first. And I was only looking for a tip," says Jeff. "Then during my holidays another lad served her and didn't do all the stuff. He told me she asked where I was.
"Next time I saw her I said I'd only do the business on the car if she agreed to have dinner with me. I bought her roses, the works. Then I offered to teach her how to ride my motorbike if she taught me to ride horses. We had a brilliant summer."
Jeff's advice for making it last: "Carry on making her feel special. We were attracted to each other from the start but I work hard at keeping her happy."
Tom took out an advertisement
Tom had always been a confirmed bachelor. His fast food business went to the wall in 1985 so, aware that he was attractive to women, he placed a personal advertisement in a very upmarket magazine offering his services as a male escort.
Juliette had been married twice before, her second marriage ended before she made her money as a partner in a sports and leisure club. She had no time for dating and so she responded to Tom's ad. "After that first night she became a very regular client," recalls Tom. "In the end I think she decided it would be cheaper to marry and keep me. I didn't sign a pre-nuptial agreement and I wouldn't have if she'd asked me."
Tom's advice for making it last: "Find yourself a hobby that requires you to travel a lot, if you get my drift."
Claire went for the Lottery winner
Claire had been spurning Roger's advances for about three years when he won £1.8 million on the Lottery.
"I used to think he was childish and that his laid-back ways would mean he would never amount to much. I'm an accountant and I'm afraid I'm one of the ones who bear out the stereotype.
"I liked Roger enough but his attitude used to annoy the hell out of me. It still does sometimes. Then when he won the money I thought 'So what, if he never gets a responsible job'.
"Now his opposite temperament to mine means I have a lot of fun.
"Fancy him? Who wouldn't fancy £1.8 million?"
Claire's advice for making it last: "Concentrate on all the other things [apart from the dosh] that you like about him. Spend lots of time doing the things you both enjoy."
Other ways to marry for money
- Immigration reasons - people who wish to stay in a foreign country may pay for a spouse to acquire legal citizenship. People make a living out of marrying foreign nationals.
- Employment reasons - some jobs are only open to married persons/couples so an applicant may pay a temporary spouse to make them eligible.
- Inheritance reasons - a will may stipulate that the benefactor must be married. If it's a big payout get them to like you so that you can stick around and enjoy it.
- Accommodation reasons - live-in jobs have been know to attract the marriage mercenary. Interesting if it's a one bedroom flat.
- Become a vicar. Priests have always been paid to marry people.
How to protect yourself if you have a quid or two
- It's tragic but if someone much younger/more attractive makes a pass at you, you should smell a rat.
- Lie about how much money you've got. Say you test flash clothes and cars for a magazine (magazine journalists are always poor).
- Insist on going Dutch with everything. Many gold-diggers will know you're on to them, others will retire hurt early in the game.
- Arrange for a local restaurant to pretend your credit card is rejected a couple of times. Pop back and pay next day.
- Always, always, always have a pre-nuptial agreement drawn up. Gold-diggers will object vociferously, then sulk. If they still go through with it, expect them to bugger off after (or during) the four-week honeymoon in Mauritius.
How the West was Two
Fonda and Hopper, Box Car Willy or the Marlboro Man? Martyn Moore saddles up his Harley and rides off into a cliché to find the real Wild West
WE HAD TO STOOP entering the gloomy bar and several Stetsoned men turned as our boots scraped across the wood floor.
A sad old Indian sat motionless at the end of the counter. We ordered drinks to the sound of a pianola drifting in from the music hall next door.
Bad paintings of naked women gazed down from the walls and tattered 'Wanted' posters adorned the back of the bar.
"It doesn't come much more authentic than this," said my partner with an incongruous northern English accent.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I realised the old Indian was a dummy. The bartender reached down and there was a click; the tinkling of the pianola was lost to the din of Duran Duran.
Ooo, oh, calling Planet Earth...
I took another swig from my Bud.
"Sure Doug."
IT'S EASY TO take the piss now I'm home, 6000 miles away where the Wild West means John Wayne, Bonanza and the Milky Bar Kid. White America doesn't have a lot in the way of history - not in the European sense, anyway - so what it has it clings to with fierce pride and nostalgic affection, even if the Southwest in the 19th century was Hell on Earth.
I had gone to act out my own fantasy: to ride an iron horse across the desert, drop my jaw in the dirt at the splendour of wild landscapes, wonder at the hardship endured by those brave folk who crossed this hostile terrain. And discover what was left of the days when men would move mountains, literally, to find gold and make their point with the subtlety of a Smith and Wesson.
Like a good editor I kept a diary of my time on the road, but an account of my sleeping, eating, riding and drinking habits is not what you want. And it's not how I remember it. I see a series of snapshots: faces and places, each with an emotion attached and a few good stories. The quotes come from that famous cowboy philosopher Texas Bix Bender.
The cowboy who exaggerates too much soon finds that everyone else has left the campfire.
SILVER CITY is a small mining town in New Mexico. The only disturbance in the tidy main street is the boom-boom of the bass tubes in hot rods belonging to young Hispanics.
Just across the range is the ghost town of Shakespeare where Billy the Kid lived.
Running down the middle of that range is the Continental Divide. If it's raining and you park a Harley facing west across this imaginary line, the drops that fall on the front wheel will eventually join the Pacific Ocean. Water running down the rear fender has just started its long journey east to the Atlantic.
And boy, can it rain. Storms at the beginning of this century washed Silver City into a ditch.
Despite the state's claim to be the sunniest in the US, on a 250 mile ride north to Gallup I got soaked to the skin and baked dry again four times. Huge black clouds leaked across the sky and day turned to night. When lightning struck either side of the road I feared for my life. Wind bent the stunted shrubs of the near-desert one way going in to the storm and flat the other way coming out. The storms lasted two days.
Then it was back to day-long baking heat and 1/250sec, f8 photo exposures (ISO50). Shooting in Utah's Monument Valley, like many a Hollywood hero, at 6pm the temperature was 110 degrees, yet the chill in the shadow of Mexican Hat, twelve hours later, had me reaching in the saddlebag for my pullie. The intense sun quickly warms the desert mornings and good quality shades are essential to protect your eyes from the UV.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
THE ROADS GO on forever. Big skies, usually that deep blue you never believe in photographs. Long days in the saddle with the scenery moving oh so slowly gives you plenty of time to think, and recall long-forgotten Eagles lyrics.
Round Rock, Arizona starts as a dark spot on the horizon. It grows painfully slowly and takes shape. At ten miles you can see it all, at five there's texture. By the time your repertoire brings you back around to Take it easy you're craning your neck to see the top. And suddenly you forget your singing, swerving to stay on the road as it makes its only deviation to go around the bottom of the rock.
Watching the monoliths shrink just as slowly in the mirrors of the Low Rider always gave me a twinge of sadness... You know we may never come this way again...
But it's okay Eagles, there's still Ship Rock, Mexican Hat and the fist and finger mesa of Monument Valley to come; ancient volcanic plugs, standing tall against the eroding winds and rain.
Some of the spectacle goes downwards. Canyon de Chelly is in many ways as spectacular as the Grand Canyon up the road. (Well, a couple of days up the road maybe.) Canyon de Chelly has scale, human scale with the Navajo Indians farming the canyon floor 1000ft below. That piddling little river can't make this! Give it a couple of million years, mate.
I was surprised how much of the desert isn't. Clusters of homes, sheds and shacks litter the landscape. How do these people live?
And even when the highway cuts through the rugged mountains, where only the insane live, there is the evidence of the hand of man. And it's not always nice.
The morning sun caught the glass of a hundred thousand bottles on the roadside down into Montezuma Creek. All around, a hundred oil pumps sucked at the earth, huge weights at the end of rocking bars pecking the ground like black mutoid metal birds - not pretty, but impressive.
I could smell the refinery five miles away. The big modern school at Montezuma Creek with its fabulous sports facility goes some way towards making the people feel better about the pungent aroma. Although I suppose they don't notice it and wouldn't be there in the first place if it wasn't for the oil.
And everybody waved. Farmers in battered pick-ups, truckers in amazing rigs, train drivers on the Santa Fe line and a tasty blonde stepping down from a school bus - all strangers who waved and smiled like they'd known me for years.
The road between Quemado and Glenwood winds through the Gila National Forest providing a marked contrast to the arid land north and south. The sweet smell of pine bears little resemblance to the fragrance we associate with bath salts. It would be a lot of fun on a FireBlade if you could afford the on-the-spot speeding fines.
A few miles north of Glenwood there's an Old West settlement, Mogollon, high in the mountains. It's not a true ghost town with people living there despite its inaccessibility in winter. The old opera house is now a gift/junk shop run by a woman whose version of English I was not familiar with.
There's a local paper called the Elkhorn Trader. It's four pages big and readers pay 10 cents a word to have their news and opinions printed. My copy carried an announcement that the government had procured a rocket booster dropping zone not too far away. Missiles are launched from a testing base in Utah and land at another hundreds of miles away at White Sands, New Mexico, development site for the atomic bomb. The dropping zone is where redundant bits of rocket are supposed to fall. I kept one eye on the sky as I headed back towards Silver City.
PHILLIP ACCOSTED ME outside the Plaza Diner on historic Route 66, Gallup. Gallup is the pissed Indian capital of New Mexico and Phillip had come into town from the alcohol-free reservation to destroy his body. I refused his plea for change but he shook my hand and blessed me anyway.
Stan is a retired flight engineer from Connecticut. He rides a V-Max and we both checked into the Valley of the Gods motel, Mexican Hat. His job had taken him all over the world but like me, he was lost for words to describe the beauty of Arizona and Utah.
I met a real, live deputy in Shakespeare and he wasn't writing me a citation. William P Cavaliere works out of the sheriff's department at Lordsburg, a town serving the miles-long freight trains heading east and west on the Southern Pacific railroad. Bill is lucky to be a real, live deputy. The previous day he had been shot at whilst trying to apprehend a felon. He's not the tallest policeman I've ever seen and this saved his life as the bullet whizzed just over his head.
If you're gonna take the measure of a man, take the full measure.
Despite all the attractions, a man and his hog start to miss female companionship on the trail. Two stunning girls hanging out of a convertible, with little regard for the 55mph speed limit, didn't help. They kept waving as the car condensed to a white dot on the horizon.
Things started to look up at a bar on 'Old 66'. Debbie had just finished her shift at the Dog House bar down the road. She was pretty. Hearing my accent, she started up warm conversation which resulted in her spoon-feeding me Boston cream pie.
I started to feel sorry for her when she told me how her son's girlfriend would be royalty if she moved to England. Apparently her regal descendancy would entitle her to live in a palace. Instead, the girl's love for Debbie's son keeps her in a dust-blown trailer park and working at the world's biggest truck stop, waiting on tables. She was talking complete nonsense.
Debbie gave me her number and I promised to call her on the return leg of my trip. Sorry Debbie.
The biggest liar you'll ever have to deal with probably watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.
MY HOST IN New Mexico was Doug Lees, formerly of Bikers Gearbox in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire. Doug has always had a passion for the old West and the new business is his dream come true. "I'm not doing this to get rich," he says. "It's just an opportunity to live an idyllic life in America. Nobody else was offering this kind of holiday so I decided to set it up myself.
"When you walk down the street in England dressed like this," he holds out his arms as you check out the big hat, western shirt, Levis and snakeskin boots, "everybody thinks you're a twat." And he's right, they do.
He's clearly in his element over here, with his passion for guns and knowledge of pioneer history. He'll talk for hours and show you his big knife, acting cool and mysterious as the mood takes him. Like so many other ex-patriates he indulges in a fair amount of Britain-bashing, which can be a little wearing. But then again, you want to be told how wonderful this all is when you're paying money to see it.
Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.
Doug thinks the holidays are cheap, but I'll let you be the judge of that. The cost is $2000 (£1320) a fortnight (the minimum period) so two of you sharing a bike will pay $1000 each and for that you'll be picked up at Tucson airport and driven the 200 miles to Silver City.
In order to see the main attractions you'll have to pick your bike - a choice of Harley Low Riders or Yamaha's 750 Virago - and hit the road. Complimentary route maps and guide books will help you along, together with Doug's extensive knowledge of the area, but food, accommodation and fuel are additional costs once you leave Silver City.
As a chili con carne connoisseur I was disappointed to discover it is not a Mexican dish, it's Texan. One place in Silver City served me a triple C and I had the shits for 48 hours.
Don't squat with your spurs on.
Real Mex restaurants like Mi Casita serve wonderful enchiladas, burritos and tortillas. Made from essentially the same ingredients: beef or chicken with beans, vegetables and peppers, the exotic names have more to do with the style of dough and the presentation.
The biggest chunk of cow I ate was at Pinnacle Peaks in Tucson where overdressed diners have their ties cut off and pinned to the wall by a pretty waitress.
Motel chains like Motel 6 and Super 8 provide room only for £20 to £35 and petrol is less than a pound a gallon. Third party motor insurance cover is included in the price of the holiday but personal medical cover must be arranged and this should permit motorcycling. Doug's UK representative, Travel with Perfection (0889 882242) will advise.
Consider the distances before you go. California with its Death Valley, Yosemite National Park and spectacular Highway One down the Pacific coast from San Francisco is feasible with three or four high-mileage days. It doesn't look far on a map but to take in these further flung areas you won't be able to stop for much and the Harley pillion will hurt like hell.
I could sit here and write you a wonderful itinerary, but that would only be my wonderful itinerary. And besides, its freedom from constraint is part of this holiday's appeal. This is a real adventure in the true spirit of the old Wild West. And remember, always drink upstream of the herd.
Guns and gunmen
HOLLYWOOD HAS glamourised the West, in reality it was probably even more violent. Despot sheriffs and corrupt judges interpreted the 'law' in their own way and men were lynched simply for being a nuisance.
Never take to sawin' on the branch that's supportin' you, unless your bein' hung from it.
The last two men to be hung in Shakespeare were strung from the roof beams of the old staging post. When the early stagecoach came in from El Paso, the swinging corpses had to be lowered in front of the passengers before breakfast could be laid on the tables below.
One of the men was an immigrant, Russian Bill, executed for fiddling a mining claim and stealing a horse. His family back home wrote to enquire of his well-being and a reply from the town informed them that he had died of "throat trouble".
In 1992 a fairly close relative of Russian Bill visited Shakespeare and only then learned from Manny Hill, the town's custodian and guide, the truth of Bill's demise. She didn't share the joke.
Billy the Kid is worshipped. So many hotels around Silver City claim he washed dishes in their kitchens it's amazing he found time to shoot anyone. But he did, 21 men in his 21 years. Real name Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney, his killing spree led to incarceration in Silver City jail. But his weedy build enabled him to escape through the jail's chimney and he was pursued and finally gunned down by his one-time friend sheriff Pat Garrett.
In the hills to the east of Silver City is the small town of Pinos Altos, the setting for my opening scene in the bar. Judge Roy Bean ruled the area with a ruthlessness that bordered on insanity. Justice done his way earned him the reputation "the only law west of the Pecos".
Tombstone is a thriving community near Tucson, Arizona. It thrives on the tale of how Wyatt Earp and his lawmen shot it out with the Clanton boys at the OK Corral in 1881. The Corral is perfectly preserved as is the saloon once owned by card sharp Doc Holliday's bird, Big Nosed Kate. Entry into Boothill graveyard requires a small donation towards its upkeep. In 1881 the admission price was much higher.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
Caught in the Web
A page on the Internet makes a great showcase for your images. But beware, it's addictive
They are all signs of an illicit affair: sliding under the duvet at 3am, trying not to wake your partner; lying about what time you came to bed and dreading the treachery of the itemised phone bill.
It started innocently enough… ha, isn't that what they all say?
I was given a digital camera to test and with it came some simple software for creating web pages. I took a peep. The interface looked friendly enough. "I'll create a really simple page with my CV on it," I told myself. Five hours later I'd created a home page, a biography page and a page of my favourite published articles. It had been stupidly easy and I thought they looked smart.
Adobe PageMill works like a word processor. To create links you simply highlight an item or section of text, drag a 'link' icon to the selection, let go and then type the target of the link into a dialog box. The target was usually another page on my site but links to other pages on the Internet and a return e-mail link also featured in those early pages. I filled a notebook with things to try each time the house fell silent.
I chose about 20 of my favourite slides and scanned them. I also went out and bought a microphone. Hey, it's just a bit of harmless fun… honest.
An entire Friday night was devoted to a page of small pictures, each linked to a page with a single, bigger version of the image on it. I also put a return link to the 'gallery' on each single image page - got to help the visitors get around, you see.
The photography pages brought my first problem. PageMill can measure the download time of a page. Anyone using a 28Kb/s modem would have to wait four minutes to see all the images in the gallery - too long for click-happy surfers.
I lost a weekend in Photoshop balancing on-screen size, resolution and JPEG compression. There is no point using a resolution greater than 72dpi for on screen display. Files were reduced to between 15K and 40K to get page download under a minute.
My site still only existed on my own computer. Now I needed an Internet provider offering free web space. Two things mattered: the amount of space on offer and the coolness of the URL (web site address) I would be assigned - <http://nerds.anorak.net/marts.member/sad.htm> was out of the question. Virgin offered 10Mb of web space and a choice of domain names including "business", "graffiti" and the ultra-hip "vzone". I signed up to Virgin Net and within minutes I was ready to launch <http://vzone.virgin.net/martyn.moore/> I can't describe the excitement I felt. Then I looked at Virgin's smart white home page and tasteful grey type and decided to redesign all my pages there and then. I'd used too many lairy colours.
My second problem arose when I uploaded the pages to Virgin's server - a simple procedure, clearly described on the Virgin site and requiring a small programme called WS_FTP95 downloaded from a Virgin-recommended source, <http://tucows.cableinet.net/>. When I went to view my pages, no pictures appeared.
While manipulating the images I'd worked from different folders and moved files around. Then I'd uploaded the pictures from wherever they sat.
This was no good, said the man at Virgin support, place all the pictures in one folder on your machine and remake the pages using images from their new location. The file and folder structure on the server has to mirror the one on the machine that creates the pages.
It worked! The whole world could now see me and my work. I danced around the house, failing to notice the suitcases by the door.
For a week I raided graphics web sites for logos, buttons, animations (no flames, they're not cool) and backgrounds. After 15 years as a print journalist, I had to get lots of whirling things in there - because I could. Animated GIFs are placed on the page like anything else - don't ask me how they work… I don't care.
I worked out how to create a logo in Photoshop and preserve the transparent background by exporting it as a GIF file. I inserted sounds that play when visitors click on things and I decided my five-year-old daughter needed a web site - although I hadn't seen her for a couple of days.
I hadn't had to unravel the mysteries of HTML code - the language that creates web pages - PageMill creates this in the background. But I discovered that if I wanted to recreate an effect from another web site, I could select View Source, copy the appropriate line of HTML code and then paste it into the HTML view of my page in PageMill. That's how I got my own Yahoo! search facility.
I became obsessed with compatibility of browsers. I discovered that playing background sound on both Netscape and Microsoft browsers requires two different lines of HTML code. I also discovered that the fridge was empty and my family had gone to Scotland.
But I needed hits man. After three weeks my visitor counter read a paltry 86, and 78 of those were me.
I sent my details to as many of the search engines as I could find. Search engines are electronic directories which find web sites when users type in relevant words. You can register your site with them but it doesn't guarantee a quick listing. As I write, my details are stored on Yahoo!, UK Plus and HotBot and I've e-mailed all my friends.
The only way to get visitors to come back to a site a second time is to change things regularly. I'm working on it but first I need some sleep... I'll just have a quick look to see if Dateline has a web site.
What do you want with a web site, then?
- To show off. I wanted the world to see my work and know that Martyn's got a web site.
- To get work from it.
- Family in Australia can log-on and hear my daughter's voice.
- It's a great place to share ideas and experiences.
- Web sites and digital imaging go hand-in-hand. Only the author's imagination (and download time) limits the look of a web page.
- Enter a worldwide digital photography community. Install a visitor's book (take mine) or a return e-mail link for international feedback.
- It's so easy, everyone should have one.
Where do you get the stuff you need?
- Adobe PageMill 3.0 costs about £100 and does almost everything. Text and pictures wraparound in PageMill so pages can be viewed in any size window and content is reflowed to fit.
- Netscape's Communicator 4.5 contains Composer. Download it free from <http://home.netscape.com>
- The latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has FrontPage Express built in but some features don't work with Netscape browsers. Download it from <http://www.microsoft.com>
- Join an Internet community for free web space, page design software and advice. I have 3Mb sitting dormant at <http://www.tripod.co.uk>
- The web is littered with graphics sites where you can download images and icons for free. Try <http://www.animfactory.com> where you'll find links to places like <http://www.andyart.com>
Girls, girls, girls
From brush on canvas to computer porn, women have always dominated the image business. And the world's greatest photographers became great photographing women. So, if you're going to do it, do it right.
FOREWORD TO A PHOTO ANSWERS GLAMOUR FEATURE BY MARTYN MOORE
IF YOU THINK the admiration of an attractive female is degrading, you won't like my photographs and you won't like this.
There's a lot of bullsh*t written about pictures of women in photography magazines. 'Glamour' used to be the photo mags' stock-in-trade. No issue was complete without the gratuitous tit shot. Glamour supplements were tossed together and given away free to put a bit of spunk into sales figures.
Then came this frustrating era of political correctness. Women became stronger, more assertive and free. Free to get their kit off if they damned well pleased. And men were made to feel ashamed if they were caught appreciating it.
Photography magazines were virtually consigned to the top shelf with the rest of the w*nk mags.Meanwhile, art photography magazines plastered rumpo all over the place, Kylie and Madonna bared all and Liz Hurley and the "supermodels" caused an epidemic of premature emasculation among men caught looking too long. It's a funny old world.
As a photo technique magazine it is our mission in life to improve your photography. Photograph women because good pictures of women are beautiful. I'd even go so far as to hint at the hidden agenda: if you make a beautiful picture of a woman you'll achieve more in 1/125sec than a week of wining, dining and "fancy a Gold Blend?".
As for my own advice, I'd volunteer this: photograph a woman to make her look beautiful. If you can't make her look beautiful with her clothes on, you haven't a hope in hell with them off.
Deep pan alley
Martyn Moore in Brum with Britain's most picked-on bikers
WE THINK WE get a rough deal. As bikers we think people have it in for us. If they're not pulling out of junctions into our paths then they're trying to legislate us off the road.
But compared to one small group of specialist motorcyclists, we don't know we're born. Victimisation? We hardly know the meaning of the word. Hostility? We can't imagine the scale of it.
I've seen riders swerved at and run off the road by jeering yobs in cars. They ride underpowered, unstable machines against the clock into some of the toughest neighbourhoods in Britain. They were ridiculed by those I spoke to when planning this article. They ride for low pay in all weathers wearing flappy oilskins and trainers. They deliver pizzas, and garlic bread.
Orders are coming in faster than usual for six o'clock on a Thursday evening. Perfect Pizza, Cotteridge, south Birmingham is getting busy and both cars are out delivering when I turn up. Paul Cooper is the manager. He looks young for a boss but he's been with the company six years. His gap-tooth smile makes him look like a cross between Arnie Swarzenegger and David Mellor. "I didn't think we'd need the bike much tonight but it looks like you'll be busy," he tells me. "Lee! Get your kit on!"
Lee Jackson has blond hair which parts in the middle and flops sideways like a footie player or some indie pop star from Madchester. His 'kit' is a bright yellow waterproof jacket and trousers; it goes on over a jacket claiming Emporio Armani and covers his button badge of Chubby Brown with the phrase "You girls have the pussy". He jams a red polycarbonate helmet on and lifts the opaque visor to see where he's walking. The gloves are damp and only part leather; Lee holds them up between his thumb and forefinger like they're manky. "I asked the boss for some new gloves 'cos one of the other blokes eats 'em. He gave me a tenner," he says. "It's all the fancy toppings, yer see. If we have four pizzas on the bike and the bottom one has lots of extra toppings, by the time we get to the house they've all shaken to one side and we have to spread them back on again... No, I'm only kidding!" But he wasn't.
A Honda C90 Cub is wheeled round to the front of the shop, its aspect dominated by the enormous box behind the single seat. Before I can scribble any more the meal is in the box, the bike starts first kick and Lee flies off down the pavement. Members of the bus queue look on approvingly as the CBR600 and I filter towards the roundabout in a civilised manner. Lee is just disappearing down the hill over the second roundabout.
He flies down the dual carriageway, his yellow sou'wester flapping like Captain Bird's Eye in a storm. Giving chase I'm surprised to see him indicate his lane changes and sit in queues at junctions. It's the only way I can catch him.
We sit at a pelican crossing beside a park. Street and festive lights pour their glow over a wall and nearby shouting attracts our attention. A group of seven or eight youths are in turn kicking someone on the ground and whooping around like Red Indians. The lights change and we charge up the hill, turn onto an estate and ride straight to the first drop.
I ask Lee what was happening in the park. "They was givin' somebody a right kickin', that Christmas tree looked pretty," and just a comma separates the two statements.
Drizzle falls and three more boxes are sitting on the counter when we arrive back at the shop. Paul looks angry as we stand outside the shop for a minute and I take out my pen. "You've got 12 minutes to do these three," he glowers.
Deliver each pizza within 30 minutes of the phone call or you get it a quid cheaper, that's the deal and the kind of pressure the riders are under. Perfect Pizza doesn't give away many pounds but customers examine their watches carefully at the door - disappointed they haven't caught us out.
The night is soon a blur of council estates, tower blocks and posher residential areas. I long to savour that warmth greedily held behind abruptly slammed front doors and, gazing into cosy living rooms, wonder what homely sitcom makes those screens flicker.
I give up on my note-taking at the shop and trust a tape recorder to capture the surreal snippets of conversation in the fag room between runs.
"Some of the lads think they're Barry Sheene. They make all the noises and everything," says Paul. "They're not bad bikes really; they're work horses. A mechanic comes in twice a week to do tyres and stuff. We go through gearboxes like nobody's business and the clutches go."
Lee starts to get excited. "When you come to an island in third and you're givin' it a bit of stick, like, and you got to get round and you see a car coming... if you flick it back into second you get a bit of power don't you? It's like a little turbo cuts in. I think its great!"
Paul tries to moderate Lee's enthusiasm. "There is a knack to riding and getting the best out of them."
Apparently the gearboxes need fixing every couple of months. Michelin gave them tyres for a while as some kind of test and about three years ago Honda came and took a bike away to see what had broken.
Then I'm desperately trying to keep up with Lee again, my CBR sliding on leaf-coated streets, his C90 (no taillight or L-plate, though he hasn't passed any kind of bike test) swinging left or right, two or three junctions ahead.
Lee paddles to get going quicker, the Cub wheelies impressively changing from first to second with three family sized on board. The handlebars are loose, the mudguard's cracked and the ohc single smokes like a two-stroke.
Kids in cars pick races and deliberately force him off the road - this I see with my own eyes. They jostle and jeer at lights and hurl cans at him. Kill the pizza boy is becoming a national sport. And it's not as if he needs any help. But he's the fastest guy in town, especially when he's following a fire engine. "If you get one going down your street, you're sorted."
Lee has worked at Perfect Pizza for two and a half years. "You get to be like an A-Z. You get to know the short cuts too. You can sometimes go quietly through people's gardens and that."
Paul looks worried. "You mean walkways, Lee. And paths and that, don't you Lee?"
But Lee is oblivious. "Naaa, gardens! Up Primrose Hill."
"Well, we've had a few brushes with the law riding on the footpath," says Paul, "your sister Lee, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, she was unlucky. Mind, she was doing 45."
"OK," admits Paul, "we do speed, but we don't take the piss."
The shop tries not to use bikes after dark but sometimes it can't be helped. A busy night can mean 30 pizzas go out on a vulnerable motorcycle. The most popular order is the Mexican Heatwave - the kind of pizza that burns twice, the second time up to eight hours later. Typical single orders are worth £10.50 and you can squeeze four pizzas in the box. A sticker claims riders only carry ten pounds cash but Lee doesn't agree.
"It's more than that," he says.
Paul raises his eyes to the ceiling. "Not on bikes Lee," he cautions with a sigh.
But Lee's off again. "Oh yeah we do, sometimes were too busy to drop off the float so we just take it out again with the next one."
"Well no more than thirty pounds on a bike, eh Lee?" Then Paul changes the subject. Kind of. "In Milton Keynes they strung a rope up between two lampposts and knocked a bloke off that way and nicked his float."
Lee's excited now. "I was mugged in Masshouse Lane looking for this house and these two lads jumped on me and started beating me up, kicked the bike on the floor, nicked me money out me pocket, had me pizza out the back of the bike and I give one of them a smack with me helmet. By this time the chap I was delivering the pizza to heard the commotion and came out with his dog. These two lads see this big black geezer and his dog and he chased 'em round the block.
"We make people in tower blocks come down to meet us now. We used to go up ten or 12 floors and while we were in they'd nick the bike and the pizzas. Sometimes you can leave a bike outside a house and lads will come along and push it away. We get calls at the shop from people saying I'm sure there's a bunch of lads pushing one of your bikes down our road. So we went to sort it out and one of the lad's dad tried to do us for GBH! Honest! I tell you, we have some laughs here.
"In Hawkesley, on bonfire night they were firing rockets at me! You could see all these sparks on the top of tower blocks and then these rocks and bricks would be landing in the road. It was like a war zone and you had to ride, like, down a passage through it. It was like Beirut!
"I've had people come up to me with a knife and say Give us your pizza. I just say Here you are, have it mate, I don't get paid enough to die for it."
A pizza man like Lee typically earns £120 for a 40-hour week which includes three evenings until midnight, riding up to 50 miles a night. But there are compensations.
"There's this woman who fancies me and I really fancy her, right?" brags Lee. "She comes to the door, I swear to God, the first couple of times she used to wear pants and that, with a nightie up to her thighs, here. But this last couple of times I've been going you can see her little tuft and I thought 'Great', like, you know. And I love going down there because you get, like, really talkative and sometimes she'll say 'Have you got to rush off?' And you start shaking and go all white and you say 'I'd love to stay', but you can't 'cos you've got a couple of pizzas in the box and they're gonna go cold."
It's Paul's turn to get excited. "I've seen them fighting to deliver to the massage parlours!"
But there's no stopping Lee. "There was one down in Sparkhill when I was at Acock's Green and they used to say Instead of us paying for the pizza would you like a massage? And they don't give you a massage they give you, like, full sex!"
So you've always said No then, Lee?
He hesitates a second too long. "Er... yes, sometimes."
Goodbye Guv'nor
Terence Donovan 1936-1996
INTERVIEW BY MARTYN MOORE
When Terence Donovan met me for lunch, a few weeks before he died, he was as happy and as ebullient as ever. The great fashion photographer chose my food for me, ordered me more beer than I needed and took our interview along his preferred route. There was the occasional detour – ramble even – but they were the thoughts and words of a man still obsessed with creating pictures after more than 30 years of doing it.
Terence Donovan was never ordinary and no conversation with him ever could be. He told me he didn't like the way articles portrayed him as a chirpy Cockney, and then he talked like one for two hours. He asked me not to print his swearing, and then turned the air blue. He told me I have lovely teeth. Three times.
Enough has been written about the big guy, the Guv'nor, since he took his own life in November 1996. This was his last interview and so the rest of the words are his:
"I'm interested in illustrating the upbeat things of life, I'm not riveted by the downbeat. I know a lot about the downbeat but it doesn't intrigue me to record it.
"I like the glisten. I know it's irrelevant but it's hopeful, quite harmless, quite cheerful.
"It's a nice time in my life, actually. I'm enjoying it and I'll tell you why: I'm not grinding away like I used to. I don't want to do that. There's a thing in the film industry called Tamar Productions - Take the Money And Run. You think, I'll do that because that'll pay the rent, but then it sticks to you like napalm. I'm quite careful what I get involved with. As a young man, in my diary you'd see four assignments a day. As I got older I learned that in order to do something well, you've got to really want to do it.
"Advertising is getting lazy. You see it, man, all this endless regeneration of old material, '60s music and old American cars going off into the desert. That's not the answer. I'm not saying you should cold-bloodedly set out to be original, and I'm not saying you don't absorb things osmotically, in the aesthetic sense. What I am saying is that you must engage your own brain and I don't think people do it enough.
"There's a lot of difference between an advertising photographer and a photographer. When I used to work for Elle magazine in France, the art director never told me what to do. You had to work it out for yourself. In Paris and there was Helmut Newton in one studio and Guy Bourdin in the other. They're photographers, man. They weren't nicking anything off of anybody. I watched Guy Bourdin and there's no more way I could take a photograph like Guy than fly.
"When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, 'I did something rather odd... I thought of it!' It seems to be a rather old fashioned thing to do.
"I was speaking to The Association of Photographers and I told them to be careful with these digital images because they have a deadness to them. I was looking at an advertisement for a plate of salmon and I realised that there was about nine images joined up there. Well, I remember taking a picture of a plate of salmon for Aer Lingus on a lake in Connimara in the '60s and we just photographed it. And mine was actually a better shot because the background was slightly out of focus. They'd got everything razor sharp and a non-photographer can sense when something's wrong.
"Serious musicians like to hear their music played on LP as opposed to CD. Whoever's in charge of the show upstairs, he's got a wicked sense of humour because as they give it to you, the progress and new ideas, they take something away. You know what I mean?
"You can't stop technology, you don't want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you're photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you'd better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don't do that, old love, you're snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.
"I saw the prototype of an East German camera at Photokina years ago and I said, Have you tried to use this? Just wind ten films through it and you'll find your fingers bleeding. They changed the design.
"Amateur photographers have got a problem because they've got no reason to take a picture. They're kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm...
"When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I'd get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it's a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they're too busy with the technical side. It's the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You've got to be able to read the images.
"You have to make it look easy when you're photographing people; have a dialogue going. You can't hide behind your camera. When I was 15 I was shy, so I used to make myself go up to people to photograph them. I'd do anything that frightened me. And now I say to young photographers, 'Don't try and sneak pictures on a 100mm lens, get a 35 on and walk up to them.'
"I was taught by hard men, really tough. I was a blockmaker, making printing plates and it taught me the fundamentals of exposure. On any film shoot, in any situation, within reason, I'm never more than a stop out. I can look at anybody's face and say, 1/30 at 2.8. And if I am out, it will be a stop over, which is always the right way to be. And that was all from that training.
"I used to get up at eight o'clock, work in the studio from nine until seven at night, go out and have a bite, come back at nine, develop all the negatives of the day, contact them and go home at 1.30. That's how you learn how to do the job. You know what they say in the SAS, 'Train hard, fight easy'.
"Our society has become soft. You've got to get weaving and not expect society to look after you. I loathed going into the British army but I'm glad I did. There's never been a situation in my life that even got remotely near cracking me. When you've painted half a ton of coal white with a toothbrush and then painted it back black again, you're not too fussed about much.
"Photography is a militaristic operation, you've got to be organised. Most people aren't organised.
"What you've got to understand about Bailey and me is, we were fantastically hard working. Bailey and I never wanted to be successful photographers. That wasn't the plot. We weren't ambitious, ever. We just wanted to do it.
"My first darkroom was a cupboard and I couldn't afford a red light so I used to have a bit of cloth handy and the cloth used to catch fire. But by God I wanted to do it.
"You've got to try hard not to develop the vague notion you might be of some consequence. 'Cos if you manage that, you're free from the tyranny of it. You see that a million times, people that really think they've cracked it and then it comes slamming out of the woodwork at them. Judo teaches you that, some skinny little bloke you think, Oh, he's nothing, and the next thing you're lying on your back. It's much more to do with the philosophy of life than anything to do with photography.
"I've been very interested in religion all my life. I've mixed with the richest people on this planet and I know that real money brings no happiness at all if you're not buzzing.
"Don't do it if you want to be famous. As long as people leave college and they don't want to buy a car out of photography, or don't want to get a flat in Mayfair, if they just want to be photographers... If they have passion and if they have got something to say, they'll make it.
"When you're young, you go on assignment, somebody steams into your pictures and it tears your guts out, you know. And you defend them. I don't defend my work, never again. I hope you like it, I've tried hard. I've tried my best but if you don't like it...
"I've tried to keep my eyes and ears open in my life, be a bit receptive. That's why I go and photograph where all those kids are dancing. It's interesting. Too many people of my age are too locked off. You can look old, but you don't have to be old. Parkinson was 73 but he was not an old man, he was a wild man, sparky.
"Salgado, Irving Penn, Mapplethorpe was a wonderful photographer but probably he was a spectacular marketing job, aided hugely by death, Helmut Newton hasn't lost it.
"It's always been a tough job, Cecil Beaton was a tough old boy, Parkinson was a tough old boy, Eve Arnold's a tough woman. Not a job for somebody light on bottle, I'll tell you, photography. Not when you think of what can go wrong.
"I have the advantage of having a bit of mileage on the clock. You know at the end of the show it comes out fairly alright, otherwise you'd go crackers. If I slashed at my wrists with a razor blade at every image I've had ruined or nicked...
"We're not going to be around for ever and I don't know who will take over from us. I'm sure, as we speak, there is some bloke enrolling at some college in the north-east of England who's going to. Because we'll all go, we'll all be on the great stage in the sky at some point."
Art"Photography, for me, isn't art. It's specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that's not the photograph, that's the content that's emotive.
"Because I paint and take photographs, I think photography is a craft because it doesn't attack you. That's why I don't have many exhibitions. I think exhibitions are quite dull, personally. I don't know why. I like photographs. I like looking at them but how many times have you come out of an exhibition and gone Phew!?
"When old Avedon had that exhibition of stuff, you know, 15 foot high prints, well it was just graphics to me, and the weakness of graphics is it's studied. Whereas if you look at a painting by Lucien Freud, skilled as it is, there's a bit of mad vibrancy about it all. Or Bacon, insanity on the paper, but I love it because I don't know where it came from and it mystifies me."
Commitment"I gave a lecture at a camera club not too long ago and when I'm speaking somewhere at seven o'clock I turn up at six and then disappear. Then I come back at two minutes to seven to start. The place was filled with amateur photographers and I'd never seen a group so enthusiastic. Well, it turned out they'd seen me walk past the hall at six and thought I'd had a look at the place and thought, 'I'm not speaking there' and done a runner. No wonder they were pleased.
"Then few weeks later I was at the Royal College of Art and after I'd studied their work in the morning we had some lunch and then sat down to talk. And then a girl got up and I said, 'Where are you going?' And she said, 'To get coffee.' So I said, 'You've just had lunch.' And then the German next to me said, 'Zis isn't ze military now you know.' And so I said, 'And you can f*ck off as well!'
"But do you see what that illustrates?"
© copyright emap apex publications 1996
No mean city
On the streets of New York the best protection is a two-year-old child
A YOUNG GUY in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt broke from a huddled group and stepped into our path - a tree-lined path through New York's notorious Central Park.
We stopped as he leaned towards our two-year-old daughter in the pushchair. My heart stopped too. "Cute kid, man," he said and handed her some candy.
This was typical of the many surprises New York threw up to contradict its reputation as a city of rude people with little time of day to give. 'Avoid eye contact' is the advice given to nervous tourists. I'd like to see you try it whilst trundling along with a tot and the entire sidewalk going gaga.
Sporty-looking girls turned their rollerblades on a dime to retrieve a dropped teddy; bankers and lawyers smiled as they pulled their briefcases out of the line of fruit-juice fire, and the frantic service in the Grand Central Station Coffee Shop ground to a halt as waitresses told us about their grandchildren in 'Noo Joisey' and brought bananas and milk, "No charge."
When Charlotte wasn't eating free she was riding free, but she bought her Mum and Dad the freedom of the city. The buses are 'stroller friendly' and there was always someone to lend a hand. Waiting for a downtown bus on Sixth Avenue, my accent led me into a discussion with a native New Yorker about Northern Ireland. On seeing Charlotte, the ill-informed old lady's icy attitude melted to moisture in her eyes. Warm childcare advice replaced chilly politics.
"This city loves my baby," I thought, "I love this city!"
A&S Plaza. Lunch time. Hundreds of sharp-suited executives discussing power deals waited for the express lift to the food hall. The elevator doors hissed apart and the crowd surged forward, only to be held back by the uniformed attendant.
"I see a baby carriage, gentlemen. Please step back, they got priority!" he bellowed.
Irate expressions turned to bemused smiles as Charlotte rolled through, giving them the royal wave.
New York's shops are wide-aisled and roomy - even Mothercare can be a squeeze for prams in Britain - with plenty of ramps and elevators. Barnes and Noble's Manhattan bookshop has a huge kids' reading section where the much-fingered pop-up books must surely be consigned to the rubbish skip at a frightening rate. At FAO Schwarz, the massive toy store, a tired-looking sales assistant took a Barbie doll from me, body in one hand and head in the other. He smiled down at Charlotte with a look of total forgiveness - as well he might, it was me who stood on it.
Charlotte will not remember the day she drew a crowd in a Times Square record shop, bopping wildly to an old Detroit Spinners song. "Man, you are blessed!" the cashier told us. We will not forget the Big sweet Apple.
The following article contains language some people might find offensive
Orbital Outlaws
Night races around the M25 really happen. Martyn Moore talks to the men who play dark, dangerous games
01707 646963.
It's a payphone at South Mimms services, where the A1 meets the M25. We'd been told to ring it at 9pm every night for a week and let it ring 15 times. On Wednesday it was answered on the eighth ring and a man's voice gave another number. We didn't know where that phone was but it was answered immediately by 'Chad'. That's what he said we could call him.
Chad has a Porsche 911 with twin turbos and a radar detector. He also has some very serious friends. They race around the M25 for kicks and the occasional side bet - a couple of hundred at a time, nothing heavy.
Rumours of racing on the 117-mile London orbital have been circulating faster than the traffic since the motorway was finished in 1986 and we've poked around for evidence of the lap record for years.
Our call to Chad was the result of a series of messages passed through an acquaintance of a former Met copper. Friend of a friend of the filth, Chad would say.
He described his work as 'pharmaceuticals distribution' and his friends, including ex-smokey bacon, play various roles in his organisation. 'You don't want to know about my business,' Chad told us. In four clandestine phone calls that's all we got.
Most of the time Chad wanted to talk about cars and high-speed circumnavigation of the capital. He explained how the M25 allowed entrepreneurs like him to extend their manor, or work someone else's, and move around very quickly. 'There are 30 junctions on the M25,' said Chad. 'Each one represents potential customers.'
He really wanted to tell us about the cars. Six cars make up his posse: the 911, a Nissan Skyline, an Escort Cosworth, a Sapphire 4x4, a 5-series BMW and a big old Rover Vitesse. Stealth is important so none of the cars is anything to look at; rasping intakes and exhausts are out.
But each car has a £500 Valentine radar detector, hands-free mobile phone and an ICE install to die for. The ICE plays host to the outlaws' adopted band, Orbital. It's a bit obvious, naff even, the way Chad latched onto the trippy techno music for the name of the band. Now dreamy dance albums like Snivilisation and In Sides are the soundtrack to his antics on the M25.
'We all wear Orbital stuff,' Chad revealed near the end of our first phone call. 'A T-shirt or maybe a small badge. And all the cars have a little Orbital sticker tucked away somewhere.' Hmm.
We spent a week scrutinising Porkers, Cossies, Beemers, Skylines and old Rovers for Orbital logos. We didn't see any.
Second thoughts
Chad said he wanted to talk to Max Power but he also wanted to play games. The South Mimms payphone wasn't answered until Friday on the second week. The anonymous voice gave another London number where Chad kept it short. 'I've had a busy week and one of the lads had a problem with his motor,' he said. 'I like the magazine but I'm not sure if I want to get into this now. Give me a couple of weeks.'
Two weeks later, when we'd decided Chad was a bit of a wanker, he phoned us. 'Let's talk about the racing,' he prompted.
Okay, Chad. Let's. We asked him about his lap record.
'You're having a laugh, mate,' he said. 'If you tried to race all the way round you'd never get off the road. They'd have all the exits sealed tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm. I might be a little bit crazy but I'm not that fuckin' crazy!'
We were pissed off. We'd waited a long time for this conversation and we'd been drawn into Chad's web of intrigue. If he sensed our disappointment he didn't show it and kicked off with an account of their first ever race.
'It all started as a bit of a laugh,' he began. 'When we're moving a lot of gear around we always send a couple of cars ahead to check out the route.
'We keep in touch by phone and we've invented this kind of code language for warning each other about unusual situations - anything dodgy like police and familiar motors. Like rival ice cream vans keep an eye out for each other - avoid confrontations and that - we do the same... and we know a lot about our competition.
'It gets a bit fuckin' edgy sometimes and one night we'd had to get out of Romford fast. The Skyline up on the motorway told us there was a pig snoozing above the shoulder up ahead so we had to stay cool.
'I was bricking it 'cos I was sure we'd been followed so I floored it. Sometimes the cops are the least of our worries and we'd just finished our last delivery so we were clean.
'Anyway, we were making ground on the front look-out and he was staying cool 'cos of the cop. But he knew I'd kick his fuckin' arse if he didn't wind it up a bit and suddenly I was on him. We'd left the cop asleep so my mate in the Skyline pulls ahead and the next thing you know is we've got a 911 and Skyline pushing 140 talking to each other on the blower!
'We laughed like fuck, man. It was all the tension from the drop and that.'
We were shocked by this irresponsible behaviour and no mistake. So does he make a habit of it now, we asked.
'It's a release, a bit of a laugh,' explained Chad. 'And you've got to understand we're on the fuckin' top of our game. We don't miss a fuckin' thing and the cars are sorted - okay, the Rover's a bit rough but it's sound.
'We go out to play every night after work and now it nearly always results in a dice. The bets are just a sideline thing, a couple of the boys try to boost a night's earnings and every now and then we let the Rover win. We're just letting out a bit of pressure, you know, but it's not like some spotty little twats in clapped-out hatches tearing past fuckin' Burger King.'
Steady on Chad, those are our mates you're dissin'. You're making what you do sound acceptable, we suggested.
'It is acceptable,' he maintained. 'The filth wouldn't agree but we've never been pulled.'
Never?
'Never. There was one night we was lucky. The quietest stretch is heading south from the [Dartford] bridge and me and the lad in the 5-series were moving stuff down to Weybridge - he had the gear. The Escort was looking out for us up ahead and the Rover was behind.
'A Volvo patrol car swooped up from Swanley and tucked in in front of the Rover. He was moving fast and would have been on us if I hadn't gunned it. We saw his blue lights come on just too late to make the Farnborough turn-off.
'Man, I was pumped and the twin turbos were really singing, but I stuck behind the Beemer all the way to the Sevenoaks interchange - where it feels like you come off the M25 to stay on it.
'The BM went straight on and down into Sevenoaks, disappearing into town like we'd agreed. I took the pig with me, getting too close for comfort, and made that sharp curve on the slip road on the fuckin' limit, man. The back was well out of shape and I don't mind admittin' I'd broken a sweat.
'Once I was back on the main carriageway I wound it round to 150. Everything snapped sharp: lights, the music, I could feel the road through my arms. Adrenalin's the only fuckin' drug you need and that's rich coming from me, pal.
'There was no sign of the cop so I flew into Clackett Lane Services and sat tight for an hour. My boy in the Beemer was on his way home and the Rover swept right past and back... saw nothing. Somebody slipped up that night or they were never after us in the first place. Who knows?
'But it'll happen, probably with the help of that helicopter. In fact I fancy one of those bastards myself one day.'
Racing on Britain's most famous motorway carries incredible risks. The gang improves its odds with fake plates fixed over the real ones with Velcro strips. Stacked against them is the network of closed-circuit television cameras monitored 24 hours a day by police officers.
Police will deny any knowledge of a bunch of outlaw drivers nightly flouting the speed limit for a modest wager. They're anxious to see that such behaviour isn't glamourised. Too many impressionable young kids out there might think it's clever.
But the same law enforcement agencies are making video footage available to sensational TV shows locked in ratings wars.
The programmes are thinly disguised as warnings with harsh condemnation from a po-faced presenter. Keep watching, and if you ever catch a glimpse of an Orbital sticker on a car or driver in big, big trouble, you'll know he had it coming.
Motorway Madness
* The 117-mile M25 was finished in 1986 at a cost of £1,000,000,000 (thousand million).
* Some sections see 200,000 vehicles a day.
* M25 gritting lorries spread 400 tonnes of salt to rot your motor every winter.
* One old gimmer spent two days circling the M25 looking for his daughter's home. A retired dustman slept in hedges when he too became hopelessly lost.
* Police rescued an elderly woman cycling the wrong way along the outside lane. She was holding her hat on with one hand as oncoming vehicles dodged her.
* A couple spent their wedding night in a coach with honeymoon suite, rocking it from side to side as it whizzed round the M25.
© copyright emap national publications 1998
The hills are alive
Alive with the sound of two-stroke engines. Learn to ride a motorbike – up a Welsh mountain
When learning to ride a motorcycle off-road, Geraint Jones says, complete novices make the best students. Several faces in the group relax.
"But road riders tend to be a bit stiff and don't like the loose surface," adds the ten times British motocross champion. The faces are tense again.
We are gathered at Geraint's farm near Llanidloes, Powys for the Yamaha Off-road Experience. We have put on the bright motocross garb and chosen our bikes for the day – mine is a relatively docile WR200.
All leisure activities involving powered vehicles have to start with a tedious briefing session – the kart marshal with a string of well-rehearsed but naff jokes and a patronising line with women is the worst – but Geraint Jones's briefing is surprisingly short. All too soon we are mounted and heading out of the farmyard, the chickens eyeing us nervously.
We follow a track up a steep hill and Geraint sets an easy, bimbling pace. A few hundred yards beyond the hillside wood we burst out onto a hilltop like something from the Sound of Music, curved mountains slope away at the perfect pitch for Julie Andrews to achieve lift-off. Terrified sheep remind us this is Wales.
With most of Wales below, Geraint starts to teach us the fundamentals of off-road riding: sit forward on the saddle when cornering, elbows up, looking well ahead; stand leaning forward at the waist, legs locked-out straight. We learn throttle control first, then braking and all the time Geraint is getting our measure – he won't ask us to try anything beyond our ability.
But as the day progresses, river beds and forest trails lead inexorably to a quarry racetrack with double jumps, whoops and berms, and we start to think that maybe there isn't anything we can't do.
We discover what we can't do the next morning. Having found entire new muscle groups and pounded them all day, we can't walk.
Career climax
SEX AND BIKES. That's what it's all about really isn't it? But what about sex ON a bike? Now there's a challenge.
One I reckoned I could, er, rise to - bragging to the lads in the pub at least.
Whilst planning my last issue at BIKE, an attempt at the ultimate ride took on an appeal beyond the obvious. It could be my parting shot - going out with a bang, if you like. It was rude and extremely risky, but what a wild way to hand in your notice!
A long-time acquaintance needed several vodkas before she would even consider my proposal but deep down I knew she'd go for it.
Everything finally came together - and it did - at a chilly Bruntingthorpe proving ground in October.
I'd abstained from carnal pursuits for a fortnight because
I thought that might help. The vodka came along too but not for me, I needed to keep a clear mind on two jobs.
The position was worked out, with much fumbling, giggling and the delicate modification of my old Furygans with a Stanley knife, before we attempted a couple of 'dry runs' for the photographer. I decided I could still hold it all together at 60mph.
We wobbled down to the end of the runway and turned as the photographer moved further into the adjacent field and made his final adjustments.
"You're not going to manage it," she tittered. Up the 'box: first... second... "This is silly." Third... "You can't get it... Oooo!"
The pictures weren't as sharp as I'd hoped. The photographer was only using one hand.
