BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
BBC’s flagship evening magazine programme The One Show was filming in Stevenage yesterday and a town bike shop was able to get the show back on the bikepath after the TV presenter suffered a blow-out.
Paralympic wheelchair basketball player and BAFTA-award winning TV presenter Ade Adepitan is fronting three cycle-based films for The One Show. The first is based on the history of Stevenage’s 1970s cycleway network, with principal filming taking place yesterday. The film crew was waiting on one of Stevenage’s sunken, cycle-specific roundabouts with 70 cyclists ready to shoot the final scene of the day but Adepitan had been delayed thanks to a blow-out. His hand-crank bike is fitted with 650-size tubular tyres. The front tyre’s sidewall stitching had worn through, leading to air loss.
Adepitan was stuck. However, one of the cyclists going to the roundabout rendezvous was Andrew Boyle, sales manager of Edd’s Bikes of Stevenage. This is a new shop, opened about a month ago. Boyle and a roadie customer of the shop used tyre cement, a patch and some gaffer tape to fashion a repair to the tub. The repair wouldn’t last long term but enabled Adepitan to do his last piece to camera and ride off, followed by the 70 cyclists.
The One Show was filming in Stevenage thanks to Carlton Reid, executive editor of BikeBiz.com. The film is based on Reid’s history article about Stevenage’s Dutch-style cycleways, which were known around the world in the 1970s. Stevenage’s chief designer Eric Claxton was later a consultant to the UK bicycle trade’s efforts to get Dutch-style infrastructure built in the UK.
Reid was filmed by the independent production company producing the film for the BBC. It’s not yet known when the Stevenage film will appear on The One Show.
