There’s a two-wheeled menace terrorising our already crowded roads – say it with me – ‘the cyclist’.

He, and, yes, it is almost always a he, some balding MAMIL (Middle-aged Man In Lycra) sweating away, holding up traffic, causing accidents and generally being a total liability on the modern highway.

It’s hard to know where to begin when listing all that’s wrong with bikes, cycling and the fact they’re even allowed on a quiet lane let along a busy London road, because there’s so many things, paired with the fact surely anyone with half a brain can see they’re absurd.



But let’s try.


If we set aside, for a moment, the danger they pose both to what roads are for – cars – and what the pavements are for – walkers, there’s first the visuals.

They look ridiculous. Nobody looks good riding a bicycle. There’s a reason James Bond drives an Aston Martin and Knight Rider has KITT while bikes are for the likes of Benny Hill and Granville – they are the transport of clowns, buffoons and Boris Johnson.

Exercising on them leaves you with a Peter Crouch physique – seriously unenviable.

Plus, a bike’s construction is frankly some kind of highly suspicious witchcraft – how do they even stay up at all?

Then there’s the Lycra. The ugly, lurid, Lycra of the man on the train stinking the place out with his bike sweat.

Said man will also inevitably block the train doors with his unroadworthy beast, or at the least stab you with the grimy edge of his clunky fold-up.

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If this Tory tool is at it it’s almost certainly a bad idea (Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA)

As for the idea of getting exercise on the way to work, I like the idea in theory but I’d be arrested if I tried doing Zumba down the A1 and don’t see why bikes should be any different.

Gyms on trains would be a far better idea, but if I pitched that on Dragons’ Den they’d tell me I was out of my sodding mind.

Then there’s the appalling rudeness of so many cyclists.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Sunday cyclists, merrily riding down a windy country lane SIDE BY SIDE in a 60 zone.

It’s almost as if they want to be bumped off.

Then there’s the ‘speed demons’ who don’t think the highway code applies to them, nearly mangling pedestrians who have waited patiently at crossings, with their heads down, pedalling madly through red lights.

Let’s be honest, any claims they may make about saving the environment (smug, smug, smug) are surely negated by the amount of fumes emitted by vehicles queued behind them, desperately trying to overtake safely as they wobble about.



Don’t get me wrong, bikes are all well and good in their place but that place is the mountain bike trail, skate park or spin class.

Get off our roads, two-wheels.

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