I wasn’t raised with the hornet-rasp of Road Racing ringing in my ears.

Like anyone who grew in the North in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Dunlops - Joey and younger brother Robert - were an unavoidable presence: holding up trophies (many trophies; many, many trophies)on sports bulletins; providing the star attraction on emphatically-titled programmes (RPM !) that tended to be broadcast on the dark side of eleven o’clock; appearing on The Kelly Show, smiling benignly, but clearly wishing they were somewhere – anywhere - else.

But for all their visibility, they (and the biking community in general) were an ongoing mystery to me. One that I spent little effort trying to solve.