cycling top gear ?

[darkstar]

Some ideas for items each week to make up 6 x 30 min episodes - shown off peak Sat or Sun AM ?

Riding a popular Offroad Family Route - canals, woods, old railways etc

Riding London Superhighways - a different timed run each week

Cycling Holidays/Touring/Expedition stuff ie -
Cycling in the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Ireland, Germany etc

News - Sustrans News/British Waterway News/CTC News - routes open/closed/diverted etc

Sport - Track Reports/Road Race Reports/MTB Race Reports/BMX Race Reports etc

Bike Tests - 3 bikes reviewed together each week (like the gadget show but better) -
Road Bike, Racing Bike, Recumbent, Trike, MTB, Tandem, Folder, BMX

A vintage slot for Roger

Beginers section each week - choosing and riding first bike, also clothing, locks, lights, road safety advice, lorry blindspots etc

Not sure how to avoid geeky presentations though, but this is where the hip presenters come in...

Not much scope for jokes or banter there. Top gear is largely about comedy and action, with the cars as a central theme. That list sound like a cycling magazine put on the TV, with no scope for the epic challenges or competitions. Just showing a family cycling route and people riding a bike for the first time, too serious!

 

[sheddy]

Thats where the personality of the presenter comes in.

Feel free to carry on

 

[irw]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Adam Hart-Davis yet...who could forget his fluorescent pink and yellow cycling gear?!

 

[John the Monkey]

Apparently Jon Snow is passionate about cycling. Not sure how close he'd get to Top Gear style of presenting though.

The last point is the deal breaker.

How keen would Snow be to espouse boorishly hilariously politically incorrect views for money though?

And write a tedious hilarious "Things I Dislike" book every christmas?

Stewart Lee's contention is that the three presenters should have a relationship echoing the three bears - how would Snow fit in to that?

(Edit: To expand on that slightly, Hammond (not a real hamster) is the Baby Bear, May the Father bear, Clarkson the Mother bear).

 

[John the Monkey]

Not sure how to avoid geeky presentations though, but this is where the hip presenters come in...

That's very like Top Gear used to be - a largely sober programme with a silly Clarkson bit in it.

If our cycling show followed that paradigm, it would begin with those features, and end with Victoria Pendleton being hilariously leered over during the "Star on a Reasonably Priced Bike" segment, a "Red Light Jumping is Great, and attempts to fine us are simply revenue generating exercises by fuddy duddies at the local council/police" segment, a "Cool Wall" in which laughably impractical and expensive CRABON bikes are lauded above all else, a feature ending with one presenter "jokingly" telling folk to kick drivers' wing mirrors off (because we all hate them getting in our way, don't we?), and a challenge where they have to row a Bakfiets across the channel, or something.

It would probably be a huge success.

 

[Tim Bennet.]

A cool wall would be good!


All the Trek and Specialised mass produced stuff would be 'un-cool'.


Even less cool would be all the fixed stuff because it was only a craze for London-centric fashion victims and is now really sad and passé.


Colnago would also be 'seriously un-cool' as they try too hard and they are essentially the Porsche 911 of the bike world, which are only ridden by middle aged blokes who can finally afford what their bodies can no longer justify.


But adult BMX would be the fixed reference point for deep frozen, tombed in ice not seen since the Pleistocene type of un-cool.


In contrast, down the 'cool' end would be the better Merida and Raleigh bikes because they're so unfashionable that they perversely become cool.

 

[Piemaster]

Top Gear style 'challenges'.
The 3 presenters each get £50 to spend. One buys a BSO, one hits eBay and ends up on a wrecked Chopper, one later reveals his bike came for £0 from a skip.

They then get sent off for a bit of a downhilling

<insert other challenges here>

 

[Bigsharn]

Other challenges?

The three presenters have to go to some foreign country (I'm thinking Holland) and buy a bike for less than it'd cost to rent it, they then have a fortnight to get to Austria/Switzerland/similar distance.


They have to cross a desert somewhere

They have to cross some snow somewhere

Coast-Coast, in three different places with the same distance to cover


Need any more? I'll be in my trailer.

 

[just jim]

Could do a slot about food and drink..cafes etc.

 

[Arch]

Top Gear style 'challenges'.
The 3 presenters each get £50 to spend. One buys a BSO, one hits eBay and ends up on a wrecked Chopper, one later reveals his bike came for £0 from a skip.

They then get sent off for a bit of a downhilling

<insert other challenges here>

But they also have to modify the bikes. Make them suitable for touring, add electric assist, bling them up in an attempt to ape fakenger style. All on the same old bike. And all done utterly ineptly.

And they'd need a Stig or two. Danny wotsit could do jumping over caravans.

Get them all to ride upright trikes on heavily cambered cobbled streets. Find ways to cheat getting up Ventoux. Build pedal boats out of old bikes and oil drums....

 

[mcshroom]

Give one a Maximus, one a Bakefiet and the last a trailer and set them a set of tasks (Like carrying a tall house plant for example or drag racing with a delecate load in the bikes)

 

[sheddy]

Does the wacky Robert Llewellyn (he of red dwarf and scrapheap challenge) cycle ?

 

[PBancroft]

Does the wacky Robert Llewellyn (he of red dwarf and scrapheap challenge) cycle ?

Ahem.

A bit stalkery that though

 

[sheddy]

Thanks, it looks like he does - http://whocelebstweet.com/twitter/bobbyllew/talksabout/cycling/

 

[sheddy]

OT but caught the tail end of this on the wireless. Weekdays 3:45 - 4pm - 10 episodes, BBC Radio 4

Martin Ellis presents the history of the bicycle in Britain, exploring how it contributes to the national identity, how it has inspired generations of artists, thinkers and politicians, and its pivotal role in bringing an affordable and easy-to-use means of transport for the masses.

In the first episode, the presenter examines 19th-century velocipedes.