Is it just me, or is the sight of an Englishman on a bike faintly ...

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Is it just me or is the sight of an Englishman on a bike faintlyabsurd? Across the country, sports fans cheered Scot Chris Hoy ashe went round and round very fast without getting so dizzy that hefell off. Good on him and his murderous-looking quads. On thedownside, his triple gold seems almost certain to encourage far toomany tubby English thirty and fortysomethings back into the narrowleather saddles that they abandoned in their twenties for acomfortable car and the prospect of children.
I don't mind the enthusiast in baggy tweed trousers and bicycleclips so much - it is a way for him to get sweaty without botheringthe wife. Infinitely worse are the helmeted, Lycra-clad,Masai-buttocked colleagues who bounce self-righteously into theoffice, daring you to snicker. The Englishman and his bicycle inall their glory - sorry, it's just not sexy.
What goes through their polycarbonate covered heads as the bikingbrotherhood crouch over their handlebars and push off to work?“I will get there faster, cheaper and more healthily. I willlive longer and prosper”. Cyclists, after all, specialise inmaking everybody else around them feel bad; beating their chests totell the world: “Provided that bendy-bus doesn't kill mefirst, I am going to live longer than you because I deserveto.”
Cyclists deny this. They tell me that the attractions are the freshair, endorphins, benefits to the cardiovascular system, the sheerdistances they can cover - and, of course, a high-tech, gleamingmachine whirring away between their shaved legs. Worthy enoughreasons. But have they seen themselves?
David Cameron and Boris Johnson are not helping the cause of men onbikes. Politics and bikes don't mix - somebody tell the Tories toget back into their gas-guzzling cars. They might die a bit soonerbut they would lose fewer votes. Cameron's bicycle is a permanentsource of embarrassment. His adventures so far have includedcycling to the Commons with an official car behind him carrying hispapers, a clean shirt and polished shoes; the revelation that hecycles only once a week anyway; and ignoring a red light andcycling the wrong way up a one-way street.
In the book Cameron on Cameron: Conversations with Dylan Jones , the Tory leader admits that allowing his official driver to takesome of his papers to work while he cycled there was one of hisbiggest mistakes and something that he regretted (he particularlyregretted getting caught, I imagine). The same book reveals that“security people” came to see him and told him that hecouldn't ride his bicycle if he became Prime Minister “unlessit's unexpected”. Most recently, Cameron had his bicyclestolen after he popped into Tesco to pick up some groceries. He hadchained the bike to a bollard. Thieves lifted the bike off thebollard, complete with lock, and carried it away.
This man who thinks, “I know, I'll just chain my bike to thishandy 2ft bollard”, by the way, may soon be in charge of thecountry. Presumably if he had two carloads of protection officerswith him on his “unexpected” cycle ride, he would beless likely to fall victim to entirely-to-be-expected bicyclethieves.
The Mayor of London has had six bicycles stolen. I wonder whethercolleagues are trying to tell him something? At a meeting ofIslington Cyclists' Action Group last year, Boris Johnson said thatNavy SEALs should go through the windows of bicycle thieves and“show them what it's all about”. Take their bicyclesaway and here comes the “nasty party” - on foot,presumably, since its members can't manage to keep hold of theirbikes. And why are Tories so happy to ride bicycles anyway? Becauseit proves that they have the energy to govern? Or because a bicycleis as near as they can get to a horse in the city?
You deliver groceries on a bike, and papers and sausages - surelyyou don't deliver a programme for government. I'm sorry but, if newConservatives are cycling, how much more proof do you need thatcycling is just not trendy?
Physically it's not a good look. Politically it's a liability. Andcyclists generally, Conservative or otherwise, are deeply annoyingto the noncycling majority.
In the country, if the rain lets up for a few minutes in the greatBritish summer, you jump into the car to go somewhere - and if itisn't a tractor in front of you, it's a caravan; and if it isn't acaravan, it's a rosary of puce-faced, calf-bulging cyclists. Thesesadists make you drive for mile after mile of bendy road watchingtheir muddy bottoms, before a straight stretch gives you enoughtime to overtake without killing at least one of them. And I canonly drive by in awe when I see an entire family out cyclingtogether - particularly those parents who cycle with thefive-year-old on the back seat of daddy's tandem, the eight andnine-year-olds three miles ahead on their own bikes with tinselwands, and a panting mummy at the rear pulling baby Alice in atrailer. An entire gene pool there for the taking. They areobviously parents with far steadier nerves than I have. I wouldspend the entire journey screaming hysterically: “Keep in,boys. I said KEEP IN”.
Which is worse, I wonder - the smug commuter cyclist or the fitnesshobby cyclist? It's a close-run thing. And, God help us, there islikely to be more of both of them after Britain's 12 cycling trackmedals. London already has a cycling event planned for next monthin which 100,000 people are expected to ride.
There are, obviously, cycling heroes - Scotland's Hoy; America'sLance Armstrong, who beat testicular cancer and went on to win theTour de France seven times; indeed, anyone who has ever worn theyellow jumper. But the sad Englishman in the too-tight shorts,pedalling away in front, won't be hearing my applause any timesoon.