This was the question I debated on ITV's Alan Titchmarsh Show – and got booed by the studio audience for my efforts
I've been bested by that transport policy titan, Christopher Biggins. You can watch me wilt on Friday afternoon, on ITV's Alan Titchmarsh Show. It was me v Biggins in the show's Daily Ding Dong. The question du jour was: "Should all HGVs be banned from the roads?"
Only kidding, that would be far too radical for an afternoon light entertainment show. The question, of course, was "Should all cyclists be banned from the roads?" There was no gasp of horror from the studio audience. I was there to sell cycling but I don't think many people were there to buy.
I went into this eyes-open, I knew I was being set up as the baddie. But I wasn't quite prepared for the booing from the audience, or the larger-than-life steamrollering from one of England's best-loved panto dames. The Daily Ding Dong is a faux presidential debate, with opponents facing each other on little podiums. Biggins addressed the audience. I didn't dare, I kept my eyes on either Biggins or Titchmarsh. The nation's favourite gardener gave me a hard time, pushing the audiences' buttons. Red light running. Lycra. Riding two abreast. Pavement riding. The only thing missing was "road tax": shame, that's my specialist subject.
I knew I was to be the fall guy because those piloting the Alan Titchmarsh Show social media vehicles had tweeted a link to Facebook that started: "Cyclists – do you find them as annoying as a wasp at a picnic and think they should all be banned?" This was quickly pulled and replaced with a softer lead-in but, clearly, I was to be the wasp at the Titchmarsh picnic.
Wasps sting. I didn't. I didn't see much point in getting aggressive. In the end, I smiled sweetly and put the case for cycling as best as I could.
I'm used to being grilled by uppity news anchors and give as good as I get but being intellectually mauled by the 2010 winner of I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here threw me. Biggins launched into the five-minute debate with a chat-show style anecdote, supposedly a very fresh experience of being run down on the pavement by a scofflaw cyclist and, hey, why do all cyclists run red lights? Instead of countering with stats that show this isn't the pandemic many think it is, I weakly mumbled that motorists run red lights too. I was booed by the studio audience. That doesn't happen on BBC News 24.
I was being cowed by an audience of (mainly) grannies bussed in from Southend. Do they not have grandchildren who cycle to work? Why is middle England – if an ITV studio audience at four in the afternoon can be described as such – so anti-cycling?
And then Wayne Sleep came to my rescue. (Yes, it was a surreal afternoon.) Sleep was one of the other guests on the show. He piped up from the other end of the studio, saying his husband rides a bike daily. Sleep added he was going to join him and get a folding bike.
At last, I had an ally. I felt the audience warming to the pro-bicycle message. I nudged Titchmarsh and stopped the brilliant Biggins in his tracks: he's one of us, I said, he rides a bicycle.
"Tricycle, actually," countered Biggins. "It's got a basket on the front." I'd successfully used a pre-show Google search to push the argument my way. Biggins wasn't such an anti-cyclist after all.
But then came the Lycra gambit, a favourite of shock-jocks and terrible journalists the world over. I could have countered with a line about the irony of a pantomime dame complaining about cyclists wearing zany clothing but decided to deflect instead, pointing to my cycling outfit for the day: pressed shirt and smart trousers.
I also said I got to the TV studio in super-quick time because I rode instead of taking an ITV car and that I got across London, safely, without breaking a sweat.
Cycling was normal, I said. Just look at the Netherlands, where grannies (I laboured that point), children, bank managers, all cycle, and in ordinary clothes, too. I didn't get a chance to wax lyrical on Dutch infrastructure or the lameness of the UK government's cycling policy; it was time for a commercial break, debate over.
Biggins, Sleep, myself and Coleen Nolan, the show's agony aunt, were ushered to the on-air "green table", the parking area for those not then being interviewed by Titchmarsh. Biggins whispered that in the debate I'd held my own. He pushed me a caramel slice (this is not a euphemism). On the table were two ping-pong paddles, one yellow, the other blue.
For the closing credits, Titchmarsh came across and asked the studio audience to vote on the question du jour. Given that I had been booed, I wasn't terribly confident cycling would win the day. I was expecting a pasting. The audience held up their coloured paddles. It wasn't a sea of yellow, it was a mix. 50% of the audience wanted all cyclists to be banned from roads, but 50% didn't. Nevertheless Titchmarsh started to say those in favour of a ban were in the majority. I joked that I demanded a recount and this prompted him to conclude that, actually, cyclists and motorists should share the roads.
Job done. But why was this mock debate framed in such a disparaging and leading way? The audience's reaction to the red light issue was instructive: for all the talk of a bike boom, cyclists are still an out-group and, on light entertainment shows, it's deemed perfectly OK to seek a ban for legitimate road users.
Lots of cyclists want to Go Dutch. If much of the country is as anti-cycling as this audience suggests it is we've a long way to go yet. We're not 40 years behind the Netherlands, we're 100 years behind. In the Netherlands, cycling is "normal for nippers and nannas." How long before an audience of British nannas will cheer for transport cycling?
• Carlton Reid will be in Christopher Biggins' manor on 2 October giving a history talk at the AGM of Hackney Cycling Campaign
via Environment: Bike blog | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/sep/26/should-cyclists-be-banned
