1960s: 'Old moon eyes' was racing hero

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SUNDAYS may have been a day of rest for most of my old school friends who had taken apprenticeships with companies like Rolls-Royce and the Carriage & Wagon Works, but, for a telegram lad, it meant work and a little additional money to the basic £4 11s 6d (£4 57.5p) I had started on.

Done on a rota system, it also involved delivering telegrams in rural areas which, on a nice sunny day, was very enjoyable. Just imagine, a ride up Matlock way on a motorbike and being paid for it! But, when the weather was bad, boy did we suffer.

The uniform of the day was made from a quite thick, blue serge material and it didn’t seem to matter whether you wore your supposedly waterproof leggings and macintosh, or not, because, after any heavy rain, once you got home and stripped off, your legs were always a lovely blue colour where the dye had run.

The cold was naturally the worst element that we had to combat, highlighted by one classic occasion that I will always remember – due, I am convinced, to it being Christmas Day and it snowing! The year is not clear but has to be 1964 or ’65. Telegram delivery on Christmas Day ceased soon after.

The furthest point I had to deliver to was Doveridge. By the time I had reached Etwall, I had already had enough. It wasn’t so much the cold or the light flurries of snow that bothered me but that no-one was asking me in for a warm by their fire!

I was so determined that the good, kind people in Doveridge would offer the necessary festive spirit, that, shortly before arriving at the address, I stopped to smother fresh snow all over my upper body clothing and knocked on the door with the gloomiest of faces and a contrived shiver.

It worked a treat. I warmed my hands and was given a mince pie while they struggled with the concept of a young man out delivering telegrams on Christmas Day.

There was also fog to contend with and there were several occasions when the bikes were taken off the road for safety reasons. I recall, on one occasion, that the fog was so bad that even the corporation buses were also taken out of service.

By 1965, I think I was a pretty competent motorcyclist, albeit on bikes that would only do about 50mph, although 5877 (each Bantam had a GPO service number) would, at a push, do about 60mph.

I did ride sensibly most of the time; it was just on those odd occasions, when I tried to emulate my racing heroes, that things sometimes went wrong.

I would quite often arrive home with my blue trousers shredded around the knees where I had fallen off, mainly by cornering too fast.

You’ve probably heard the line: “Who do you think you are sonny – Mike Hailwood?”.

Well, that was actually said to me when an AA patrolman chased and stopped me on the Mackworth estate.

While the obvious answer was “I wish”, he had failed to notice I was actually hanging off the bike in fine style, just like John Cooper!

Although John “Old Moon Eyes” Cooper was a Derby racer I had heard of, it wasn’t until I saw an amazing picture of him, taken at Aberdare Park, that I really began to follow his career.

He was among the first to adopt an all-out, hang-off-the-bike style, with knee almost scraping the tarmac, that is so popular today. I met him recently and told him that I once delivered a telegram to his house – and, as a measure of the man’s influence on me as a young lad, I still remembered his old address, 26 Shropshire Avenue.

It could well have been down to John’s popularity at nearby Mallory Park that led to Trent Buses providing a Sunday service to many of the race meetings and, in particular, the Post-TT and Race of the Year events. The buses were always full to capacity and were a godsend to people like myself who didn’t have transport.

The two race meetings mentioned were a Derby bike fan’s dream in the early 1960s. The Post-TT event, for instance, captured all the TT stars returning home from the Isle of Man and, with them, all the exotic machinery that would normally only be seen (and heard) at Grand Prix events. The Race of the Year offered prize money of 1,000 guineas to the winner and, for that reason alone, again attracted all the stars.

They never bargained for that man called Cooper, though. He wasn’t called the Master of Mallory for nothing and, in 1965, to my great delight, he won the Race of the Year, beating none other than Mike Hailwood in the process. There were smiles aplenty on that bus home to Derby.

It was also in 1965 that I again tried, unsuccessfully, to get my mum and dad to buy me a bike. I suppose, in hindsight, that the one I showed them in the window of Barrie Rodgers’ shop was not the ideal machine for a young man infatuated with racing.

It was a Royal Enfield Continental GT, bright red, with low, clip-on handlebars, a racing seat and looking like it was did 100mph standing still. Dad turned to mum; mum turned to me; dad then turned to me; and both walked back to the car! I had already put a fiver deposit on it, too!

Fortunately, I still had the Bantams to ride, courtesy of the GPO. And, if nothing else, I was at least learning my bike craft in the most enjoyable way I could ever imagine.

Derby was developing, too, and with Birchover Way, Allestree, split into two halves, it was so much easier to do a bit of trials riding through the muddy ground that separated the two building sites, rather than go the long way round.

There was also a short cut we used to take from Chaddesden to Spondon, over what is now Acorn Way, that required a bit of scrambling, too.

There was even flood water to tackle. Again, it was either 1964 or ’65, when a lot of Derby and the outlying areas were flooded. I had to ride the Bantam along the pedestrian footway under the railway bridge on Nottingham Road as the flooded roadway below was far to deep for a bike.

On the flooded A6 at Duffield, I tried, sensibly I thought, to ride through the water on the crown of the road where it wouldn’t be so deep. This was certainly the case. However, high revs and a slipped clutch were not enough to keep the water out of a Bantam’s low-slung exhaust and, eventually, the engine cut out, leaving me stranded in the middle of a huge lake.

I paddled my way through to dry ground, where rider and bike slowly dried out before proceeding.

One of the last telegrams I delivered was to the 1966 German World Cup team who were staying at the Peveril of the Peak Hotel, in Dovedale.

Thus ended a magical two years that I have only covered here from a biker‘s’ viewpoint. There was so much more.

The best years of my working life? You bet.