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Rolling the Night Away

‘Rollapaluza II’: Saturday night, the Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green. Outside there is a swarm of bikes attached to all the available street furniture. Inside, the 15 square metre room is packed with people and the air is dim with smoke. As the room fills, the temperature rises. Water runs down the walls. Golly, it’s hot! At 10pm, the doorman starts refusing people at the door, on health and safety grounds. The walk from stage to bar has become a struggle – too crowded.

The noise is deafening: people are screaming and shouting at the top of their voices. Sometimes it is confused; sometimes the crowd bursts into cheers. A crescendo is reached as one rider, pedal stroke by pedal stroke, edges level, and then beats a rival right on the line. It’s a drama – the gritting of teeth and twisting of faces, as riders give everything in those 20-something seconds of each race. Only opera could portray the intensity and drama.

I am trying to draw a picture of a London bicycle messenger roller race. The event is appropriately named ‘Rollapaluza’ echoing the music festival that tours the States every year. It is a multi-media recipe consisting of a good mix of roller racing, together with messenger bands, DJs and a dash of messenger film. The formula has been very popular; venues across London have been packed out with riders and spectators.

So what is ‘Roller Racing’ and what’s a ‘Roller Race’? Roller racing involves riders racing on two or four sets of old-school rollers – two rollers under the back wheel (not these home-trainers that many people use now) that clamp to the rear axle. The heats are usually 500 meters from a standing start and the progress of each rider is displayed on a large clock with different coloured hands representing each rider. The clock makes it easy for spectators to follow the unfolding battle. It makes for spectacular and intense viewing.

Mind you, roller racing is nothing new. A glimpse of racers on rollers is served up in the deliciously dark animation ‘Belleville Rendezvous’, released in 2003. ‘Champion’, the aspiring 1960’s Tour de France rider with hugely distorted thighs and hunched back, is abducted along with two other riders and made to race for the entertainment of gangster clientele in a Gotham-like metropolis.

In 1950s Britain, roller racing was a grand night of entertainment, albeit without the sinister involvement of the Mafia. Roller races were frequently staged before film performances and in Mecca dance halls in between dance sets. They drew huge crowds. Eddie Wingrave, the only British professional roller racer, toured England with a big band. He remembers:

‘I travelled with the dance band on the train. We went on the train with all the equipment – the rollers and that. We must have been about 30 or 40 people. The dancing was on the dance floor in between heats. We had four bikes with steel rods instead of the front wheel, so people couldn’t fall off. Normally, riders had to ride as they were on the rollers, but you couldn’t afford this with the general public. They would just come off. In those days you could still get sued! The winners would go into the semi-finals and finals. They would be four up – four riders at the same time. [The distance was] a quarter mile flier or half a mile standing start. We would have 50-60 riders and a hall full of spectators. People from the audience were also invited to take part. I always made sure to just beat them. Turning up the excitement. It was a set-up, a show, you see!’

The roller racing show did not primarily rely on spectators to take part in the racing. As always, a successful evening of entertainment required a degree of planning. ‘I would write to the clubs and ask if they would come along and run the club championships. Sometimes you wouldn’t get any reply and you wouldn’t have anybody to go on stage. And I would have to go around to the local telegraph boys – in those days, telegraph boys used to ride bikes. I would give them a ticket, if they would come to the show and get on the rollers. And then, once you got going, you sometimes had too many people who wanted to have a go!’

The excitement and fun on stage wasn’t reserved for the men, Eddie assures me. ‘Yes, we did have girls competing. But sometimes, I would only have two or three girls. Not enough. There was this chorus girl in the band and she used to ride on the rollers for me. She would always get up on stage for me. And she would always win. And she would win genuinely! She was a surprise, really!’

Roller races were fantastic nights of dancing and entertainment but faded in the late 1950s, overtaken by television and ‘nights in’. Somehow, the London Messengers have now stumbled across the recipe and it works. See for yourself at the Rollapaluza. For details of the next event visit rollapaluza.com