Dear Billy and Babs. Tom Loughridge IS an ex TT rider of a good few years ago, and quite a good one at that, if my memory serves me right.

Correct Ammo Tom has been around and has done the bussiness.

That's okay Pikey 21 years at the racing job was to long, together with sponsoring funding and providing machines for a very young Bob Heath, Charlie Williams, and Des Founds/Jim Craig on sidecars was a bonus.

You know better than anyone why I have an axe to grind and am bitter over two in particular unfit/injured riders being allowed to race by officials and the gut wrenching distress of being with the wives and children left behind.

You know the two riders and our close personal friends who I refer to and we will never forget them. It would have been far worse for me if one of them had been on one of my machines.

No personal offence taken by the posting we all have our hero's and Robert Dunlop appears to be one of their's and deserves to be so.

Tom your a true gentleman.

I would'nt bet on it if I were you Stella.

But like my grandma told me during the war when she made a pot of tea for the local home guard and the bailed out crew of a downed German Heinkel bomber. "Manners Maketh Man and those Germans were so polite and spoke such good English they made me feel like a queen". And she had already lost two son in laws in that war.

Being civil costs nothing.

"Being civil costs nothing" couldn`t agree more and i still stand by my previous posting.
cheers Stella.

If the rider is on pain killers, he will report that "it does not hurt now"!!