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BBC2 gets back to unconventional motorsport.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03y3xqk/Fast_and_Fearless_Britains_Banger_Racers_Episode_1/

No one can say that the BBC doesn't know what its audience wants to see. Remember Gears & Tears? Stock Car racing, transformed into a Romeo & Juliet drama as Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Essex, where we lay our scene, except this time it was the Wainman's and the Smith's, locked in ancient grudge, who produced the star-cross'd lovers.

Now it's banger racing (Banger/stock car?? I thought it was the same, but no!) and we meet a cast of right diamond geezers, little bit dodgy but they larve ver kids! And the kids are great. 14 yo Alfie, bullied at school for his red hair, gets out on the track ..... and is beaten by his rivals! But wait for next week!

Loved every minute, its pure gold.
John
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Glad you watched it, Maxwell, evenif you didn't like it. No one else here seems to have bothered.
But what a second episode they missed. Old Farts, out of banger racing twenty years, reform their old teams, specificly to 'get' the other lot. (Why does that make me think of Triumphs?) This wasn't Romeo and Juliet, it was Game of Thrones!

So far from the gentilities of the MSA regulations this made the BSCC, where 'tagging' and door-handling' are accepted, look like the Bronte Sisters compared with "Fifty Shades of Grey". Roll cages, not carefully sculpted from bent tubing, but made from RSJs welded together. Bonnets held down by 1" threaded rod, double nutted, not by fragile bonnet pins. Helmets, but no gloves, with ordinary garage overalls; seat harness that lloks not bought or even salvaged from other cars but as if it had been dug up. These guys are not just tough, they are invulnerable!

And moving, too! Diamond geezers to a man, they know not only the joys of life but the fears too. The past World Champion told us about feeling really frightened by the prospect of returning to the tiny oval, but still looking forward to the "larf". One, now past his third (or was it fourth?) marriage is on the blowah trying to contact his daughter to get his grandson to come along and see grandpa out on the track again. He even paints his grandson's name on his car! But the star to my mind is the wiley OF who in his prime was not a member of any team, as a rodder or a wrecker. This time, he manages as before to duck & dive, keep out of trouble and make it to the final. Will we see the Old Master triumph again?

No, we don't. In the final, every hand is against him, and he is pinned against other cars and the crash barrier, and pummeled out of the race. But does he get out and surrender? NO! We heard him say before that he had been so busy that the hadn't read the newspaper, so he stays in his car and gets out Page Three to enjoy.

Don't worry, I haven't told yout the plot or anything that would spoil your enjoyment. This programme is packed with magnetic personalities, excitement and fun, far, far more than most TV pap. GIve it a go - it's still on iPlayer!

John

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"Glad you watched it, Maxwell, evenif you didn't like it. No one else here seems to have bothered."

 

 

John. We foreigners get a notice telling us that non-poms aren't allowed to watch it. (Must be pretty good if the lower classes are excluded.)

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John,

They're too modern for my youth - but as an one time Essex lad they resonate, as did Ian Drury. ( Tricky Dicky from Billericay....)

Once watched banger racing at Walfamstow.... can never get the TR's tail to hang out quite the same.

Peter

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