If you do, you'll recall the strip with fondness-if you never came across it, you missed a great series.
The Q Bikes first appeared in the Beano in 1963 and further series followed until the sixth and last one in 1971. Apart from The Iron Fish and Red Rory of the Eagles they were probably the best thing about the Beano.
If you have a question about the Q Bikes I'll pick up my quill and try to give the quintessence or the essential quality of the team, but you will need to join the queue before I can quell or indeed quench your query, but please don't quibble, because I'll be as quick as I can to prevent you from quizzing me further about their adventures or quest to fight crime by pursuing their quarry, on high quality bikes, not through quantity as there were only six of them, Q1 Jonny Masters; Q2 Billy Brown; Q3 Alfie Thomson; Q4 Tom Steptoe; Q5 Judy Best, I suppose the queen amongst them; and Q6 Buzz Taylor, they had radio headsets and were armed with high powered water rifles which could quelch criminals with a quart of water, and although not qualified, yet without a quaver and no questions asked, they picked a quarrel with some queer individuals in the quaint county lanes of Wrexton, Cornwall, and would not quit until they'd reached their quota for the day and on that note I'd better go quietly, having given you a flavour of their quixotic (good one to finish on!) adventures!
Interesting, post-Olympics and regular news features about encouraging children to take more exercise, how powerful an influence characters such as the Q-Bikes were in encouraging kids to cycle. At Oxgangs we had our own team on Raleigh Choppers: RC1 Les Ramage; RC2 Derek Ramage; RC3 Ali Douglas; and RC4 Iain Hoffmann, but that's your quota I'm afraid, you'll need to wait for more in a future episode.
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| 'Purr-fect' Iain Hoffmann and his Chopper and Simon the Cat (Photograph, Peter Hoffmann circa 1971) |
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| Les Ramage revving up his Chopper; Mark Robertson 4/2 and John Duffy 6/8 The Stair look on approvingly (Photograph, Peter Hoffmann circa 1971) |
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| 'The Headless Rider' performing a wheelie on Iain Hoffmann's Chopper (Photograph, Iain Hoffmann circa 1971) |
2 comments:
It reminds me of childhood memories , Q Bikes are my very favorite things of my childhood . Thanks for sharing. Click for more info Qbike
Today is the 85th anniversary of the Beano. Local Shropshire radio had people reminiscing their favourite characters. Sadly nobody mentioned the Q bikes. My best memory. Thanks, Steve
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