Groupies – meet behind the bike shed, Tim Dawson (2010)

First published in The Sunday Times on 30 May 2010

There have long been rock stars who are cycling fanatics — Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Beyoncé and Madonna are all A-list pedal pushers. But cyclists playing to 1,000-seat venues is a rather newer phenomenon.

Mark Beaumont — the Scotsman who cycled round the world in record time and more recently pedalled the length of the Americas — is just home after a 38-date tour of venues throughout Britain. He might not be appearing from a cloud of dry ice and bellowing “Hello London, are you ready to ride?”, but he has been filling auditoriums from Aberdeen to Eastbourne.

His stage act is hardly pyrotechnic: the format of slides and commentary has for decades been delighting (and quite often boring rigid) cycle club members during the winter months. Beaumont has a good tale to tell, though, and an appealing, understated manner. The real revelation of the shows, however, is the number of people who are willing to pay good money to see him. Nearly 500 joined me in the audience in the modest seaside town of Felixstowe, Suffolk, on a Saturday night — elsewhere he attracted even larger crowds.

And he isn’t alone. The comedian Dave Gorman traversed Britain last year on a bicycle. After cycling 50-80 miles during the day, each evening he performed his show Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up, taking to the stage on a bicycle, and ended each performance with an appeal for cyclists in the audience to join him on the following day’s ride, to his next venue.

With his pre-existing live reputation, Gorman pulled in crowds of two or three times those that Beaumont managed — and covered 1,600 miles on two wheels.

Meanwhile, Paul Heaton, the former Housemartins and Beautiful South frontman, has been on a Pedals and Beer Pumps tour, playing live at hostelries from Lancashire to Surrey and back — without a tour bus in sight. He put in 1,000 miles on two wheels in support of local boozers that double as live music venues.

Okay, so it’s hardly the blockbuster, rock band tour andthere are no reports of groupies gathering beside the bike sheds, but what it surely demonstrates is the extent to which all forms of cycling have moved from left-field to centre stage. Britain’s Olympic and Tour de France success is well documented — but other forms of cycling are also booming. The Cyclists’ Touring Club recently posted its highest membership figures in its 130-year history, and the BBC is promising a summer series on “cycle touring 1950s style”.

Two rival organisations in London now promote cycling in period dress and attract hundreds of hip twentysomethings to rides in tweed jackets and deerstalkers. And sportif and charity rides are turning away cyclists within days of registration opening, such is the rush to join these rides.

Beaumont might need to raise his game a little before he can take the main stage at Glastonbury. But on cycling’s current trajectory anything’s possible.

TD May 10