‘We may not have looked like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, but we felt like him’

It was sad to see recently that the Netherlands-based Accell Group, owners of the historic Raleigh bicycle brand that made the classic Chopper, has started insolvency proceedings after failing to find a buyer.

With their padded high-back chrome-springed ‘banana’ seat (with the white strap warning printed in red ‘This bicycle is not constructed to carry passengers’ (yeah, right), hooped ‘sissy bar’, ape-hanger handlebars, chrome mudguards and different sized wheels – 16” at the front and a luxuriously treaded 20” at the back, the Chopper actually deserves to be called ‘iconic’. Even the kickstand was designed to give the stationary bike a Brando-esque lean reminiscent of a parked chopper motorcycle.

At the age of nine I had a mongrel bicycle, made up from bits and pieces of different bikes. It had no fancy handlebars, mudguards, bell or even gears. But I loved it.

Then, on my 10th birthday/Christmas (I was born on 24 December), I got a Raleigh Chopper.

In those days my sister and me went into my mum and dad’s bedroom to open our presents. I hadn’t been particularly ‘good’ that year, poor at school, like most of my classmates I had taken up swearing, indulged in a few days’ truanting and there were the two tins of Top Brass Lager that went missing from under the sink, so I wasn’t surprised that my Christmas bin liner wasn’t at full capacity.

‘Nip down to the kitchen and get us cigs,’ my dad asked me. (This was 1976 and parents were obliged to light up in their bedrooms first thing, especially when their kids were present.)

So I raced downstairs, saw the gleam of the golden packet, grabbed them and ran back up.

‘Well, didn’t you see it?’

‘See what?’

My mum and dad laughed.

‘Go back down and put the kitchen light on,’ said my mum.

So I did. And there, leaning nonchalantly on its stand, was a pristine purple Chopper with orange writing and chrome everything. (My dad had actually left his cigs on the saddle.)

I ran back up.

‘Is it mine?’ I said.

‘No,’ said my dad. ‘It’s Mr Haig’s next door…Of course it’s yours.’

I don’t think I bothered putting anything other than a coat and wellies over my pyjamas before taking it for a spin in the gloom and mizzle of a 6am South Pennine Christmas Day. I was on the deserted dirt road and fields outside our street for an hour before my mum called me in.

My mongrel bicycle was wheeled into the outhouse and forgotten about.

A quick read up on its history shows that MK1 Raleigh Chopper models were produced from 1968 to 1972 and the MK2 models from 1972 to 1983. There was a MK3 made from 2004 to 2012 and sold through to 2018, but these were an abomination of the originals. A sort of PC version with all the fun and danger surgically removed.

The MK4 was the last model to be made and the design returned to the classic MK2 model outline. Released to the public in June 2023 the entire stock sold out within three hours.

There were other, smaller models in the Chopper family, including the Chipper and the Tomahawk (with its strangely shaped seat backrest, which for some reason seemed designed specifically to protect a rider’s coccyx). There were also the Formula 3 and Budgie models, neither of which I can recall.

The Raleigh Chopper was a classic in shape and style, but was it any good to ride?

From our street to Lund’s Tower in Cowling, a castellated folly from which you could clamber up 36ft to see panoramic views across the Aire Valley and even the distant hills of Lancashire (though, obviously, this was never advertised by the Yorkshire Tourist Board), was a 10-mile round trip and we regularly cycled there. So riding it long distances wasn’t a problem.

We also did a lot of riding through mud and puddles and rain and snow (mandatory in Yorkshire) and it stood up to that pretty well, too.

I never knew at the time but there was quite a bit that could go wrong with a Chopper. Apparently ‘backward tipping’ was a thing. The centre of gravity was positioned too far back, making the bike prone to rearing up or flipping backwards when you pulled a wheelie or gave a friend a ‘saddle’ (or two-ups in Guernsey).

I could never pull a wheelie on mine because it was too heavy. Also, having a friend on the back parcel rack never seemed to bother the balance of my bike, unless they started jackassing around swinging their legs or running on the ground. If this happened, they had to get off and walk. And it’s a long way from Lund’s Tower by foot.

Also, because the front fork was light and the front wheel small, it supposedly caused severe speed wobbles and/or loss of control once the bike sped beyond jogging pace. If that did happen, I was 10 years old and oblivious to danger, so potential hospitalisation was all part of the fun.

However, the ‘gear shift hazard’ was very real. And eye-wateringly painful.

The prominent, T-shaped, aircraft throttle-like gear lever was mounted on the main crossbar. A sudden braking, collision, broomstick in the back spokes or accidental kerb-bump would send you sliding off the saddle landing you crotch-first into/onto the lever.

Our neighbourhood had an old character called ‘Orreight Billy’ (his catchphrase was shouting out ‘Orreigt’ to all and sundry). Billy had rickets. After a gear shift incident, you walked like Billy.

To this day if I ever see the words Sturmey-Archer, I get an uncomfortable twinge and have to sit down.

The other real problem with mine is that over the months the handlebars began to bend forward. The Mk2s had the bars welded to the nut, so you couldn’t loosen the nut and pull the bars down into a more cool – and so the makers believed – far more-dangerous-to-steer angle.

Also my mate Woody had already got an American chopper bike. Lower-slung, sprayed copper, glitter saddle, hand-grip tassles. He might’ve even had a flag on the back with a pennant on the end. At any rate, his bike was far cooler (and in hindsight, much camper) than a British Chopper and it was called a Stingray. Mine looked almost awkward next to his.

Then, one day, my handlebars bent too far forward and there was a real threat that they might suddenly snap, so The Purple One was ceremoniously driven to the scrapyard where it probably became a fag-break plaything for the blokes who worked there until a gear shift hazard occurred and it was smashed to bits in a frenzy of agonised cursing.

But at least I still had my old mongrel, faithfully awaiting my return to rescue it from its outhouse hibernation. It welcomed me back a few inches taller and slightly more wary of style over substance. A few squirts of WD40 and it was right as a bobbin. But thank you Raleigh for providing myself and thousands of other young cyclists in the mid-70s with something cool to ride on before our teens. With our brushed denim flares, tank tops and ‘lunatic fringe’ home haircuts, we may not have looked like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, but for a year or so, we certainly felt like him.