News
Bob Chicken wins Industry Achievement Award
Carlton Reid Oct 6 2008, 12:29pm
The industry veteran - currently living in Madeira - was the clear winner in a hotly contested category of the BikeBiz awards
The Bike Biz Award joins the MBE which Bob Chicken received in June.
Of his MBE he said: “I am honoured to have received this award in recognition of my services to an industry that I have spent my life promoting and working in. It is a very special industry with some very special people. In a time when there are increasing fuel costs and increasing awareness of the need for individuals to exercise I feel that it is also a very exciting time for the cycling industry."
Bob is 87 years young.
His life is chronicled in Graeme Fife's 'Bob Chicken - A Passion for the Bike'. This is a biography of Bob interspersed with a history of the post-1945 British bicycle industry.
Bob is a past president of the Pedal Club and the Pickwick Bicycle Club. He joined the Pickwick - the world's oldest bicycle club - in 1954.
He's the club's longest serving member.
Chicken Snr is the former owner of RJ Chicken & Sons. The company is now run by his sons, Robert and Cedric.
RJ Chicken & Sons introduced many European road bike accessory brands into the UK from the 1950s onwards.
Phil Liggett describes Bob Chicken as ‘a doyen of the bike industry’.
Graeme Fife, author of best-selling books on the Tour de France, said:
"Like many of his generation who had fought in the [Second World] War, Bob Chicken espoused the cause of European unity, and the support of European markets, in a rapidly changing commercial world. Whilst iconic British manufacturers buckled and eventually yielded to the pressure of fierce competition from the Far East, a number of old firms in France and Italy survived by holding true to their traditional production values as well as adapting to new demands."
