Tonight ITV 4 Henry Cole gets a peek at the new AJS's

[Group Leader]

I'm puzzled as to why there's so much animosity shown towards Henry Cole. He's a presenter, he owns his own TV company that he uses to talk about and present motorcycling to a wide audience.

If Henry wasn't producing these programs who else is there?

I don't see a rash of TV programs discussing and presenting motorcycling (I'm ignoring the US based programs about building choppers etc.) to the UK public. If there were a dozen similar programs then I could understand people having a preference, but at present it would appear that some would prefer there to be no biking programs on TV rather than watch a presentation by Henry.

Absolutely. Whilst HC is no expert, he has got a lot of riding under his belt and at least has a style and character all of his own and the double act with Sam works very well IMHO.

We're lucky that we actually get some factual programmes on our pet subject and that they are not dumbed down to sub-terrain levels, with ridiculous computer generated animations and endless repetition of the same point (along with factual inaccuracies) that seem deriguour for documentaries and so called factual programmes these days.

Alan Millyard is a genuine mechanical genius although clearly not a TV presenter, as can be seen in his YouTube videos which I'm steadily working my way through although, I have to say, YouTube is becoming much harder to stick with these days due to the proliferation of tedious adverts.

Spriddler said that he "had always imagined him to be a sort of highly skilled Fred Dibnah". I would say that Fred Dibnah was actually a very highly skilled sort of Fred Dibner in his own right .......

Alan

[SPRIDDLER]

Alan Millyard is a genuine mechanical genius .........
Spriddler said that he "had always imagined him to be a sort of highly skilled Fred Dibnah". I would say that Fred Dibnah was actually a very highly skilled sort of Fred Dibner in his own right .......

Alan

Quite so Alan. Poor choice of words. What I should have said was '.....a differently skilled Fred Dibnah' (whose progs are fascinating and his steeplejack work is not only incredible but to me, terrifying!).

[clive]

I agree, its a real pity Matchless carried on with the AJS marque when it went bankrupt back in 1931.....

You're right, Clive, and don't forget Sunbeam either though I suppose the Colliers did try to keep AJS seperate for a little while before resorting to blatant badge engineering. The big shame is that Matchless never did learn from any of them where to put the dynamo so that it could be maintained

Steve

Um I think that was 1952 when they learned and the magneto moved forward making the dynamo accessible on the single. Piece of p... on the twin from the start!

My 48 Matchless has a 50 AJS engine just for the convenience!

[Greybeard]

'Accessible' is a truly relative term, Clive - perhaps 'visible' would be better My twins are a delight to work on, as is my alternator G80 - the 350 (AJS!) trials is a breeze too as there's just a hole where the dynamo should be.

Steve

[56G80S]

I understand the HC comments and it's great to read the various points, from promoting motorcycling to being a knob (I bought some like that very recently). However, I hadn't realised that he was a war photographer and spent time in Eastern Europe doing that while the bullets were flying.

So he must have something about him.

Johnny B