Show Notes
Hello everyone and welcome to THE 2025 FECSTIVAL – live from the beautiful Buccleuch Arms Hotel in stunning, sun-drenched (cough, ish, ahem) Moffat, Scotlandshire! After a couple of fantastic (truth), incident-free (truth-ish) and bone-dry (truth-adjacent) days riding through the very best of the Scottish Borders and the Galloway Forest, Front End Chatter – Britain's best biking podcast – has retired to the bar for a small sweet sherry, a roaring radiator, and 43 minutes of inspired, improvised, impromptu biking banter and deep-drivel discussions including: Marc Marquez's ninth (or is it seventh?) world championship, if his comeback really is the greatest return ever witnessed across the near-infinite history of sporting achievement, and whether MotoGP's new owners are trying to control our collective thoughts Witnessing hostility towards Chinese-branded bikes thaw in real time, the reasons we're starting to be interested (b£¥ond the obviou$), and how soon before the first one is part of a FEC tour Nominations for the greatest, must-ride, can't-miss riding roads in all of mainland continental Europe, especially if the definition of 'mainland continental Europe' now includes the UK and a bit of America… Could electric bikes be the future of trackdays? Simon & Mufga's mixed fortunes with electric bikes on track. And could Front End Chatter's future lie in someone's fuel tank? Radical suggestions for reorganising bike ergonomics and controls, featuring foot clutch, backwards-action left-hand throttle and bum brake The perfect bike for when you're retiring to live in Japan Thank you FECers one and all - and to Paul, Jo and Anthea at MCi Tours - for joining us at the 2025 FECstival, either live and in person or via time-travelling earholes. And, of course, sincerest gratitudes as ever to Bennetts, Britain's best bike insurers, for continuing to enhance, advance and romance Front End Chatter – don't forget to get a quote direct from Bennetts the next time your motorcycle insurance is up for renewal, then be sure to buy your policy direct so you can enjoy more than 100 offers, discounts and exclusive opportunities all thanks to a year's free BikeSocial membership! Ciao for now – and maybe see you at Motorcycle Live in November…
More from Front End Chatter
Hello, welcome everyone and eyes down for The Big FEC Quiz Of The Year! For the first time in 224 episodes of semi-popular pontification, rarely informed speculation and increasingly elaborate two-wheeled tangents, him Simon Hargreaves and him Martin Fitz-Gibbons finally stop pretending to know all the answers… and start asking the questions instead.
Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter, Britain's most celebratory biking podcast, currently marking the historic 223rd anniversary of the moment Simon Hargreaves and Martin Fitz-Gibbons opened up a small family firm manufacturing essential podcast components. After the original Chatter Manors was flattened by an implausibly large quantity of pancakes falling from the sky, the burgeoning business was brought under state control by the good folk at Bennetts, Britain's best motorcycle insurance brokers. If your bike insurance is due soon get yourself a quote direct at bennetts.co.uk - and if it isn't, then head instead to bikesocial.co.uk for all manner of two-wheeled news and reviews. Oh, and don't forget to check out Bennetts BikeSocial on The YouTubes, where a brand new season of The Great Escape To The Country - sorry, What Bike Next? - will be dropping soon. Anyhow. In this episode Si & Mufga chatter all about: Downsizing, and whether small bikes are the next big thing Why Langen's Lightspeed is the polar inverse of BMW's R1300GS Silently sneaking around the countryside on Stark's Varg EX Screen (extenders) if you want to go faster Whether bike security is a total waste of time More grey import goodness Endurance racing glory and probably some other stuff too! It's a (relatively) tight one this, clocking in at just over an hour [Thank goodness - All]. Thank you, as always, for listening - and for the lucky few, we'll see you on FEC's 2026 The Moors The Merrier tour very soon! Until then, keep on sending your thoughts, wonderings and ponderings to [email protected] Mwah
Hello and sorry and welcome to Front End Chatter, and episode 222 of the motorcycling podcast that may (or may not) owe you an apology. That grovelling worm is Martin Fitz-Gibbons, and that recalcitrant rascal is Simon Hargreaves. Having spent several months avoiding facing up to the monster they unwittingly (in both senses) created, they're back with two hours of unrehearsed waffle about all things biking. As always they'd like to atone for their two-wheeled transgressions to Bennetts, Britain's best motorcycle insurers, represented on the interwebs by both BikeSocial (bikesocial.co.uk) and BikeClub (bikeclub.bennetts.co.uk) – between them a bewilderingly big bonanza of motorcycling news, product reviews, used bike buying guides, industry expert advice and so much more.
Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter, the motorcycling podcast, and none other than Episode 221 – they said we couldn't do it, but we've naysayed the naysayers. His name is Martin Fitz-Gibbons, editor of Bike magazine, and my name isn't but that's not important right now – what's important is we thank Bennetts, Britain's best motorcycle insurers who put more back into biking than insurance companies who put less back into biking, and some of whom put nothing back but merely take take take. Good people one and all. And also uber-thanks to the bikesocial.co.uk, the world of wokecycling on the web and on the YouTubes, with loads of news, views, new bike launches and road tests – all the good stuff.
Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter, the podcast home of all things motorcycle-related, albeit tangentially sometimes, which, let's be honest, it's a slow news decade and we have to talk about something so why not just gossip? He's Martin Fitz-Gibbons and he's Simon Hargreaves, a pair of motorcycle content creators. And they're Bennetts, Britain's Best Bike Insurers, to whom we are all indebted, sometimes quite literally. And they're bikesocial.co.uk, where the web meets the world of bikes.