This story dates from 1928; it defies further description...

Fame in a month
The Sensational Rise to Romantic Heights in the Motor Cycle Industry of a Rider Doomed by the Doctors

The silence of the Harley Street consulting room was intense. One could have heard a pin drop. William Morisson Globb looked into the face of the famous specialist. The face of the specialist was grave, scornful, like that of a camel. (I do not wish, however, to be thought rude to camels).
“Well?”
The famous specialist folded up his stethoscope and cleared his throat: “For one month you must observe the strictest diet. At the end of that time –”
“– I shall be well?”
“You will be dead!”
Silence reigned (the same kind as before), broken only by the physician’s cough, by means of which he tactfully strove to suggest that his fee was five guineas, and the sooner the quicker!
One month to live!
William Morisson Globb passed out into the damp fog of Harley Street with bowed head and the great physician’s umbrella – a doomed man! “One month!” said he. One month! Such a little time in which to prosecute life’s unfathomable purpose. To be nipped in the bud like any wayside flower! To be parked like a lump of discarded spearmint on the bedpost of eternity! He laughed hollowly.
“’Ere! Wotcher larfin at! You ain’t no blinkin’ pitcher yourself – ’ere, arf a mo’” – but William Morisson Globb had hailed a taxi. “A month’s a month,” he said. “I must refrain from laighing hollowly in public places.”
To William Morisson Globb, Man and all his works, conventions, laws constituted a big joke. He was outside the pale. For instance, that large, bulbous policemen: it wouldn’t be a bad idea to kick him in the pants. Even if he were hung for it – well? Or he might go to the British Museum and touch all the glass – he might ring the bell in a teashop, or – a great idea struck him: he might go to the office and pull the nose of Mr Boom!
Mr Boom, advertising manager of Gooper Motor Cycles Ltd, was about as popular as toothache with his subordinates. That afternoon Mr Boom was puzzled. He had used all the superlatives he could think of – what next? He stood bewildered, an imposing figure executed in ‘vieux plum’ shade, his thumbs stuck in the elaborate belt which tenderly cradled the gigantic mass of his paunch.
To Mr Boom entered Mr Globb. Mr Boom testified his pleasure in the usual manner. He enquired (1) whether Mr Glob thought he was the Prince of Wales, coming in at that time; (2) what he thought he was paid for; and (3) if he’d have the sack now, or when he got it?
In reply Mr Globb said he hoped no act of his was going to sever a connection which he valued as much as that existing between himself and his revered chief, Mr Boom; furthermore, he would like, before matters went further, to assure Mr Boom of his extreme willingness at any time to give him a dashed good zonk on the point.
“Say, old man,” gasped the enfeebled Boom, “you been taking a willpower course?”
“Moreover,” continued William Morisson Globb, “you’re about as much use at writing advertising copy as a sick headache. Look at this: ‘The Gooper, the best motor cycle.’ Poo-bah! Pshaw!  Faugh! This is the stuff that sells.” And, seizing Mr Boom’s gold-mounted stylo, he wrote: ‘Say, fellers! You regular guys! We ain’t speiling, none at no poor, dumb, candy-coralling lounge lizards. No sir! It’s the reg’lar hard-boiled yeggs who’ll bet their suspenders that they got enough grey stuff put away in the organ loft to spot one real 100 percent, drawn from the wood, hell-tearing, bone-crushin’, skull-smashin’ tornado of a packet of dynamite. Yep bo, you said it – one Gooper!
‘Send along right now for our catalog all dolled up in dandy holiday duds – shows you just how and why you gotta have one o’ these road-tearing speedirons. Buy a Gooper and show the speed-cop where he gets off!’
“Great!” gasped Mr Boom. “Your pay’s doubled!”
“Doubled?” said Mr Morisson Globb coldly.
“Trebled!” corrected Mr Boom faintly, as the door closed on Mr Morisson Globb.
The Gooper works were in confusion! In three days was the IOT, the great international road race round Taggs Island, or as we motorcyclists affectionally call it, the DT. Pinney, the great hope of the Gooper team, awaited an operation.
“What’s he got?” was the question.
“Money!” answered the surgeons joyfully.
“Who will ride?” was the cry. Who has the reckless courage to – well, who do you think? “William Morisson Globb!” shouts the staff with one (extremely raucous) voice, lifting him shoulder high.
William was extremely popular with his workmates. Every evening they would gather at the gates, take the horses out of his Ariel, and pull him through the streets in triumph (preferably towards the nearest pond).
Well, when our hero – I’m not going to write the name “William Morisson Globb” again for a long time; I’m fed up with it – won the IOT – oh, didn’t I tell you? Well, he did! With that reckless daredevilry, and insousciance characteristic of one who knows not fear, and that he’s about to hand in his checks anyway. ‘WMG’ tore round the island, lap after lap, two laps at a time sometimes. True, he fell off the island every lap except one (when he ran into the pits with moths in his engine), but fortunately he was a good swimmer. And so he brought home the bacon amid the plaudits of the crowd, thus winning the Woolworth Cup, the freedom of Wigan, and the right to sport the badge of the Firestone-Chapel-of-Ease-Young-People’s-Get-Together League.
The following day, after a successful career on road and track, he retired from racing and took over the post of head designer and managing director of Goopers. Round the board table would sit some of the cleverest brains in Europe (in their usual casing, of course) and at their head W Morisson Globb, silent, omnipotent, omnivorous, omissive and omnibus.
The meeting would break up. Each man would strive to shake the hand of his revered chief. They would return to the battle of life strengthened, enheartened – but William Morisson Globb would sit on. Perhaps, in the gathering gloom, he would soliloquise. “What the devil they are talking about, heaven only knows!”
William M Globb! The world thought him fortunate, but they knew not his secret. “Ha!” he would laugh hollowly (if in private). “Ha!”
And then, one day, LOVE came to William.
She was a lovely thing – so fragile, so petite, one of the first of that little band of American Campfire Girls who came over at the end of ’28 to show our lads what’s what on the dirt tracks.
Her lush lashes duskily embowered the violet depths of those twin pools she called her eyes (they were twin, but only just). A neck so slender could eke support the chestnut fires that warmed the copper of her hair, and all that sort of thing. In short, she was a wooze!
“Aimee!” said William. “Aimee! I must tell you my secret.”
“Say! You ain’t broke?” asked Aimee anxiously.
“Broke!!! Broke on the wheel of Fate!” And William laughed hollowly. “Harley Street has condemned me!”
“Say Wum!” (she called him ‘Wum’ now). “You ain’t going to put your kelly on your dome and call it a day just because that old backwoods medico put the death stuff over on you? Lemme give him the once over; I guess I can make him change his mind.”
“You are right,” cried William. “Courage! Not for nothing is the motto of the Globbs ‘Ne Se Pencher Au Dehors’.” And, throwing himself on his Brooklands Blutz (he was far too intelligent to use a Gooper) and his beloved into his Brooklands sidecar, he tucked her in carefully with his heel and they were at Harley Street in as long as it takes you to persuade a policeman that your rear light is still warm when you haven’t one fitted.
Silence in the Harley Street consulting room as before. The celebrated surgeon folded up his dethoscope.
“Doctor!” cried William Morisson Globb. “Before you speak, remember! You condemned me once, but what did I care! Life held nothing for me, but now – ah, now!” – his big hand sought her little one (which was exploring his watch pocket) –now life holds everything – that jewel without price – the love of a woman!”
The great specialist cleared his throat: “You came to me,” he said, “and I told you what at that time I believed – that you had one month to live. I was wrong!”
With a strangled cry of mingled ecstacy and relief the lovers fell into one another’s arms.
“I was wrong,” continued the great specialist. “I should have said three weeks!”

Almost from the first, humour featured as an integral part of the motorcycle magazines. If the jokes seem ancient it's because they are – some of the chestnuts unearthed here are well over a century old – and the cartoons also reflect the style of the times. But some are rather sweet and their very naivete is part of their appeal (I think so, anyway). This ribtickler dates from about 1911:

The four-cylinder engine is rapidly gaining in popularity. The sweet and silent running of this type contrasts most favourably with the open exhaust too often used on certain singles and twins. The four-cylinder engines does not deF.N. you as it passes!

Belgian manufacturer FN, of course, was famous for its inline fours. 'deF.N.'... deafen... geddit? Oh, suit yourself. How about this cartoon from the same period?































Wonderfully weird, and did you notice the notice on the barber's wall, "MOTOR BIKE TYRE FOR SALE, AS GOOD AS NEW"? Waste not want not. Here are a few more, all from the pioneering years before the Great War, starting with an early on-board sound system.



































This one uses one of the oldest schoolboy jokes of all ("Do people drown here often?" "No, only once"... remember?)
but maybe it wasn't thus 100 years ago.





















































































Here's one that reminds us that sidecar outfits were once startlingly new – and that there weren't always rules about tacking the mick.





























Cartoonists in the Green 'Un had a taste for visualising fantasy bikes; pity none of these made it onto the road.




















































































































































The Post Office was among the organisations to embrace the motorcycle; many years later telegram delivery boys were to be isued with bright red BSA Bantams. Mail trains regularly collected and dropped ogg mail bags without stopping – the Green 'Un's staff suggested that high-speed outfits could be used in the same way, refuelling by dipping a scoop into a trough of petrol. No really, check this out.

































Like many riders in the South-East I've enjoyed the odd run to Camber Sands over the years. Many years ago a veteran rider regaled me with tales of ad hoc speed trials on the sands back in the 1930s (he still had a wicked glint in his eye as he recalled the local bobby doing his best to catch the miscreants on his bicycle). To the best of my knowledge no-one's yet used Camber for a race between a bike and a sand yacht, but in case you were wondering what such a head-to-head would look like... 












































By contrast, the following impression of a suggested car vs bike race at Brooklands isn't as silly, though I enjoyed the Green 'Un's admission that the contestants "would need to be evently matched".