Prowlers Party

5th Prowlers Party 20th October 1985 - Prowlers BC

Following the demise of my previous bike, on the way home from the GPO Rally, I had decided to go for a brand new one, preferably fully-faired, to transport me the length and breadth of the country. The shop where I got the old one, and had it serviced, had the ideal model for me, so I was soon out and about on my brand new R80RT. I was glad the next few rallies I had planned were local ones, as I would be running it in for a while, and this one was only 30 miles or so, near Borehamwood. I noticed while I had it that, on one section of the fairing, the two pinstripes, (one red, one white), were upside-down when compared to the striping on the rest of the machine. The dealers, being BMW perfectionists, took the bike back straight away to rectify this before too many people saw it. Probably co-incidentally, subsequent BMWs I rode had both stripes the same colour. This meant the only bike I had was my spare bike, a Yamaha RS200, which I knew was capable of carrying the required luggage for such a local trip, It didn't even need a fuel stop in either direction. To make a point, I stuck a BMW roundel over the name on the tank and referred to it as my BMWaha.

I went to the first Prowlers Party in 1981, which was suddenly relocated when the landowners discovered that the innocently named 'Party' was, in fact, a bike rally, and decided they didn't want several hundred dirty oiks riding around their nice clean park. It had been relocated to just a few hundred yards from this field. It remained in this field, and the one just over the road, for the rest of its run.

The Friday night consisted of good clean fun, loud music, and heavy drinking, interspersed with massive straw fights throughout the marquee.

On Saturday the huge number of rallyists ensured the games were well contested, at times resembling little more than mass riots.

In the evening the music was provided by one Doc Cox, more famous at the time for appearing on BBC's 'That's Life'. He was previously better known as Ivor Biggun, singer of songs so dirty that the BBC not only wouldn't play them, it wouldn't even name them, The Winker's* Song (misprint), being his first hit, which reached No12 in the charts with no publicity whatsoever. It wasn't for his rudeness that he was hired though, his band, Ivor's Jivers, were pretty damned good, (although they did throw in a few of the dirty ones).

The miss rally contest was also quite popular, with a face, (and other bits), that was already quite familiar in the area, winning the prize.

The night wore on, beer went down, music volume went up to eleven and potential hangovers were created.

Sunday morning was quite chilly, but dry, and the trip home, unsurprisingly, took hardly any time at all, once I had managed to get all my stuff back on the RS200.

After the rally, I managed to get the new bike back from the dealers, and rode around for three whole weeks before meeting a Ford Granada doing a right turn across my path, which led to me taking a flying lesson. Unfortunately the flight was curtailed somewhat by a tree directly in my path, which interacted with my head. I was in hospital for six weeks with some crushed vertebrae, (no information on the state of the tree), which still give me a bit of trouble to this day. I was informed that the driver, who originally blamed me, had been given three points and fined £45, (WOW!!). I was off bikes for a further six weeks after leaving hospital, Well, it SHOULD have been, but the RS200 was completely undamaged, and there was a club night and well... It took until well into the next year to get some compensation out of the insurance company, a mere fraction of what you can expect these days.

- Phil (the Spill) Drackley