Precious, moaning and tetchy - cyclists are the new women

I’ve always maintained the fashion industry is dangerous. After the Calvin Klein show in New York on Thursday, ‘attendee’ Nicole Kidman was knocked over by a cyclist who was using the pavement.

You wonder he managed to hit her, to be honest, given she’s a Size 6 (I once did a cover shoot with her, and she surreptitiously placed chicken fillets in her bra).

But it was an accident waiting to happen: there is nothing a cyclist likes less than a woman in heels.



Accident: Nicole Kidman regains her composure after she was struck by a cyclist outside her New York hotel

My London home is almost adjacent to Clerkenwell Road, which cabbies have dubbed ‘suicide alley’. It connects Hackney and Shoreditch with Holborn and the West End.

Every morning, until about 10am, this road is a sea of fluorescent Lycra, four, five, six abreast. As I teeter on the pavement on the brink of a zebra crossing, wondering how much the new anti-slip studs at the edge cost the taxpayer, I now know why the nickname has stuck.

It’s not that the cyclists are intent on death. It’s the pedestrian and the car driver who are in danger – assaulted by the sort of people who practise yoga (yeast infected), or meditation (lazy).

I once nosed my car into a traffic jam on this road, only to have a male cyclist hammer on my bonnet, which almost made me put my eye out with my mascara wand.

It’s the smugness, the superiority of the fluoro fanatics I can’t stand. Cyclists purport to be healthy, but surely all that rage in the bloodstream, and pollution, is equivalent to smoking 20 full-strength Capstan a day.

They don’t take a driving test, or pay road tax, or a congestion charge, or parking fees. Tourists wobble around on Boris bikes without the foggiest idea where they are going, often eating, and sometimes holding hands.

There was an article in a newspaper on Friday explaining that cyclists often jump red lights in order to be safe, which really doesn’t wash (actually, cyclists often don’t wash once they arrive at their place of work, preferring to emit steam all day, like kettles).

When a motorist explains to two uniformed officers that the reason they are on the phone is because the jam in Trafalgar Square has meant they are late for a medi-spa appointment, they are given an on-the-spot fine, whereas almost nothing will get a cyclist fined.



Why, too, are they allowed to chain their bikes to lampposts on narrow pavements, which means I invariably snag my cardi? And don’t even get me started on mountain bikers in the Yorkshire Dales. Isn’t it cheating if you cycle up a hill in top gear, legs a blur?

This nugget dropped into my inbox, sent by a scientist in despair at the badger cull and at how the BBC have reported the flawed findings of the Irish government.

The email says that in some areas of Ireland, culling has contributed to an increase in bovine TB.

Meanwhile, in the country as a whole ‘the numbers of bTB reactors dropped by 55 individual cows from 2011, with culling costs of over €3million; the benefit last year may have cost €45,000 per animal.’

Shall I repeat? €45,000 per cow!

The Tour de France (surely a misnomer) comes to North Yorkshire next summer, and already my local town, Reeth, is abuzz with advance bookings, and bulk orders of Lucozade, and Camelbak water carriers.



Why would you want to watch men with over-developed calves and under-developed brains whizz past in a whirr?

I understand cycling is dangerous, and we should look out for them when driving. I used to cycle to work, from Brixton to Soho. But having been knocked off my bike by a driver turning left into Downing Street, I decided the price of cycling is too high.

But the fact they feel vulnerable on the road is no excuse for the abuse they give pedestrians and drivers alike.

As my taxi driver, taking me to the first London Fashion Week show on Friday morning, remarked (as several cyclists cursed him loudly with added hand gestures, for pulling over, which he did carefully): ‘Cyclists are the new women.

‘Never pay for stuff, always moaning, and get really upset if you pull out quickly.’

Further to my story about the plight of dogs in Romania: I’ve heard that, because stray dogs have been accused of killing a four-year-old child, a cull of all street dogs is about to take place.



WSPA, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, has condemned the move, but the news has been ignored here. Could someone point out to Romania’s government that it will be breaking the Lisbon Treaty?



BTW, the dogs I rescued, Hilda and Spot, are thriving – and Hilda likes to sleep on my shoulder, like a parrot. I so wish I’d been able to catch and rescue that golden retriever as well...