Author Rob Penn traces the history of the bicycle while he assembles custom made parts for his new bike

Heard this was good and missed it first time round on BBC4.

yeah it's a keeper on my Sky+, worth watching.

Yeh pretty good 🙂

Pretty, good. Just finished the accompanying book, much better, loads more detail, if that's your thing.

APF

Thanks for the heads up.

A little late for me, hope it's on iplayer!

got the book on order from the guardian with a discount if anyones interested
http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781846142628

It's on YouTube in 6 parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj4iu8w5Dys

He wrote a book?

Kin hell. He bought a load of stuff, he didn't make it! Consumer culture at its worst.

I'm going to write a book about all the stuff I buy from Aldi tonight, and how I'm curating it in my fridge / box of sports kit.

TJ, Elfin, Junkyard, please get together and sort out a Communist revolution. Much as I like my freedom, I don't think I can stand any more of this horseshit. 🙄

i didn't like it. it may have made a decent book, i havent read it. but the TV show was pants; turning up at a lot of factories and not getting let in!! the chris king lunch room was good though 🙄

should have focussed more on the places that did let him in; frame builders / brooks etc.

I agree. I'd rather he got into less iconic places than visiting the gates or lunch rooms of the ones he did. I was more interested about what goes into them than a list of what he bought and why he rides bikes personally. Great idea, missed opportunity (but that said, I did watch it and half of a repeat of it)

tang,
the books only £10 at amazon!

Amazon

It looked like he had a lovely set of Royce Hubs, shame he couldn't have featured them, being UK based an all.

blaggers- cheers canceled order! 9.98 at bookdepository.
so could be a bit shit then…..ive heard the guy is a bit of a bore from a friend and the book is better. still its bikes and i love um.

thing is tron, for my idea of what a revolution should look like(and i'm guessing your's too) you'd need/want sweet bicycles anyway, so it is kind of a catch 22. A state bicycle company would be great! we privatise all this stuff to make a quick buck but the unmentioned deal is that the state pays for the infastructure that provides the sold-off services/goods and is constantly bailing out the companies that were supposed to be making the state smaller and more efficient. the process needs to be reversed! the tories and big business are just a merciless little bunch of cronies. there are 5 times more millionaires in the cabinet than women! i though democracy was about representation!? unfortunatley new labour's ideas of having it both ways totally back fired, i think wyclef jean should come and run OUR country! why not both haiti and britain? where he fails is he doesn't think big enough! 😉

sorry don't know where that semi-ironic rant came from……

I enjoyed the programme. Nice to see a programme about bikes!

He was enthusiastic too, which came across well. I thought the final bike was a bit of a mess though. Given that it was his dream bike you'd think he would allocate some time on how it looked.

The paintjob was questionable, the forks weren't painted, the rims were silver and even his stem had mismatching spacers! Tut tut

I'd happily ride about on a Flying Pigeon to stop this torrent of shite 😆

I put it on DVD – but I can't legally lend it to anyone 😉

TJ, Elfin, Junkyard, please get together and sort out a Communist revolution. Much as I like my freedom, I don't think I can stand any more of this horseshit.

😀

See, you know it's for the best. Not Communism; Elfinism!!!!

A state bicycle company would be great!

I shall put this in the Elfinfesto. Tom84 shall be Minister For Bicycle Production.

"Democracy is the path to Elfinism" – Karl Marx

"Elfinismo puede llagar solo en bicicleta" (Elfinism can only arrive by bicycle) – Jose Antonio Viera Gallo

The book is a much better read (some really interesting stuff about the history of cycling – if that is your thing) than the TV programme. He's no egotist and generally an interesting character, which didn't come over well on the TV either.

Basically going around a factory isn't that interesting TV unless you can see whats going on in a "How its made" way.