My first sighting of scooters en masse occurred during the mid sixties, when, as a youngster I was taken by my parents on seaside outings to the local resorts of Bournemouth,Swanage and Weymouth. These outings were often interrupted by pitch battles between Mods and Rockers on the seafronts from which I was hurried away by my worried parents. I was only about eight or nine years old but the site of scooters tearing round corners with sparks flying from their exhausts registered a vivid impression that was never to be removed.
This impression stayed with me right through to my teenage years and developed into an obsession that actually took a hold in the early 70s. By this time, Mods were virtually extinct and Lambrettas were rapidly disappearing from the local streets. At this time I was thirteen and I purchased my very first scooter, a Lambretta Li150 series 1.It was still in original paintwork and was purchased for the vast sum of £5. This was to be the going rate for several years as Series Threes and GPs were the only scooters desirable to the few that still rode them, everything else was considered old fashioned junk, not collectable, just junk. Hopefully this excuses my next action. I then proceeded to remove the legsheilds with an axe! Thus modified and fitted with knobbly tyres it became a scooter scrambler. There was about half a dozen of us with various models of Lambrettas (Including a TV 1!!) which we steadily destroyed by scrambling on the local heathland, much to the amusement of the local motorcycling fraternity. This continued through my early teenage years, when we were guilty of destroying countless Series 1&2 Lambrettas on Canford Heath.

During the summer of 1971 I started to hang around the amusement arcade at Rockley Sands holiday camp. The Rock-Ola would be booming out tunes like Dave and Ansel Collins ‘Monkey Spanner’, Slade ’Coz I Luv You’ and Family ‘In My Own Time’ in the new fangled stereophonic sound. I had the ‘Royal’ loafers, red H&J ‘Indestructible’ socks, bottle green Levi ‘Sta-Prest’, pale green gingham check ‘Ben Sherman’, ½” red braces and a blue/green tonic single vent jacket complete with sloped and flapped fob pockets. My hair was not too short, but smooth, just right. I could have been cool, I could have pulled, but I lacked one vital ingredient. The girls would be wearing tonic suits with short skirts, white thick lacey tights paired with crepe soled loafers or Levi ‘red tag’ shrink to fit jeans and boys loafers. (Girls NEVER wore Dr Marten boots; these were boy’swear for football matches) They had long feather cut hair and they were beautiful! But they hung around the guys outside, who as well as being a couple of years older than me,had the one vital missing ingredient, a Lambretta.

Searching for the Young Scooter Rebels

My fanatical obsession with scooters lost me many friends and potential girlfriends during this time, but I would watch these local ‘smoothies’ and ‘skinheads’ posing around the holiday camp on their Lambrettas and I couldn’t wait for the day when I was old enough to join them. Around this time the scooters consisted of left over mod type Lambrettas still well turned out with mirrors, bars, racks aerials etc. Also starting to make an appearance was the earliest form of cut downs. These merely had the legshields cut or removed and the sidepanels removed and were favoured by the skinheads. The Innoccenti Lambretta GP was still available, but was only ridden by the lucky few that could afford a brand new machine. These tended to be left in standard trim with an Ancillotti seat and possibly a large Amal carb poking through the sidepanel. My total and utter fascination with these machines and the accompanying cultures continued through my school years until I left at the age of sixteen and purchased my first road going Lambretta, a second hand late model SX150 with clip on panels. I had been going into Arnatts in Bournemouth, the local scooter shop and paying £5 a week until it became mine. Boy, was I the odd one out! I was about two years too late. The whole town was now full of sixteen-year-olds on Yamaha FS1E and Fantic 50s. Accompanied by a similarly obsessed and fashion displaced friend, Alan Prax, I rode my scooter illegally through my sixteenth year. (This was also the last year that you could legally ride without a crash helmet) To our knowledge, we were the only two ‘scooter boys’ in the whole of the Poole and Bournemouth area. We would spend blissfully happy sunny days fantasising about the days when scooters ruled the roads,but we were to come under frequent attack from local ‘Greasers’ who were determined to stamp out what they saw as the last of the ‘Mods’. Little did they know this was just the beginning….

As I rode into my 17th year (1974) we would meet the occasional skin/suede who was getting out of his Lambretta and into a Ford Cortina or Anglia. We would pester them to sell us the accessories from their scooters before they sold them. This was because the numerous local scooter shops were rapidly disappearing and even the most basic spares and accessories became unavailable. We would even knock on the doors of houses where we could see a disused Lambretta in the garden. The skinhead/suede cults were now in massive decline, Glam rock was displacing reggae and Motown in the charts and scooters were going out of fashion with a vengeance. The Innoccenti GP range had gone out of production and the only new Lambretta to be seen in the remaining shop, ’Moordown Scooters’ was the appallingly finished Jet 200. This was available in the single colour choice of yellow ochre panel work teamed with bizarre under panel colours like purple, orange or yellow. All of which seemed to have been applied with no undercoat or primer. These truly were, grim times. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse my mate Alan went and got a steady girlfriend! I was left with my newly purchased 1966 SX200, my dreams and precious little else. However I persisted with my love of Lambrettas and the scooter cult image that was firmly implanted in my mind, much to the amusement of all those around me. Just in case you were wondering about my sexuality, I also acquired a steady girl about this time who I quickly brain washed intoLambretta submissiveness for the next 5 years. (I often wonder if she’s ever recovered/forgiven me!)
My persistence eventually paid off and by 1975 I had persuaded a couple of friends to purchase Lambrettas. Initially this was just a cheap form of transport, but it didn’t take long for the bug to bite and before long 4or5 of us would cruise the streets together, we were nearly a gang! During the spring of 1976 I heard rumours about a mysterious group of Northern Soul fans in Swanage that allegedly rode scooters. So, one Sunday afternoon I headed off on the 15-mile ride to Swanage in search of this lost tribe. I rode my accessory laden SX around the town for a couple of hours and I was just about to give up when a couple of ‘Soul Boys’ flagged me down. They were astonished to see someone from out of town on a scooter but they were friendly and soon introduced me to some of these strange people that rode scooters. They had long feather cut hair, wore sports shirts and high waister 24” ‘Spencer Soul Bags’. They explained that although they had seen other scooters on their pilgrimages to the far away land of Wigan, they believed themselves to be the only members of the tribe in the South of England. In order to prove them wrong, I arranged a meeting in Swanage for the following Sunday.
Three of us duly arrived to be confronted by ten immaculately turned out, gleaming, chromed up Lambrettas. The excitement and atmosphere of this meeting was unbelievable,a bond had been formed. These Sunday Swanage runs continued for many months. On one day, we had the unbelievable figure of 23 scooters, so, feeling pretty confident we set off on a 20-mile trip to Weymouth. We had only gone a few miles when we confronted by a red GP200 hurtling towards us weighed down by two outrageously large rectangular spotlights and a ton of mirrors. A grinning lunatic called John Loving from Dorchester piloted this machine. He had ridden to Swanage after hearing about the gatherings of scooters taking place. Due to a firefight with local greasers the trip was abandoned but we agreed to meet John in Weymouth the following Sunday.

The day arrived and scooters gathered from Poole, Swanage, Weymouth and Dorchester. There were at least 30 of us; we were now officially a gang! It was probably the largest gathering of chromed up Lambrettas seen on the South Coast since the sixties. These meetings continued ad hoc until we decided to form a scooter club. In late 76 the Dorset Scooter Club known then as the ‘Lowriders’ came into existence. For me as secretary and John Loving as President, this was a mutual dream come true. At this time we believed ourselves to be the only road going scooter club in existence. To put this in perspective you have to remember that there were no scooter magazines in print and the motorcycle magazines had deleted the word scooter from their titles and copy. We were in a communication wilderness. However, we were shortly to discover a photocopied magazine called ‘Scooter and Scooterist’. This was only available by post and was compiled by a guy called Norrie Kerr. This was about to end our isolation.

In 1977 we read about a scooter rally organised by the Vespa Club of Britain to take place at Havering near London, so fifteen of us duly set off on the 110mile trip, the longest we had ever undertaken on scooters. It’s hard to believe but we were so unprepared that the trip took nearly 24 hours! We only had the vaguest idea where the rally site was. When we eventually arrived, we were greeted with looks of disbelief from about 200 Vespa riders, who were mainly from the North. I should point out that no one from Dorset had ever seen a customised Vespa, or even a flipover backrest. The South Coast was 100% Lambretta at this time. Yes there was a Vespa shop in Bournemouth, Harveys. But on our occasional reccees of this shop we had concluded that these machines were for incontinent old men and people that had style lobotomies. This illusion was disappearing before our eyes. Many of the people at the rally were under the impression that no scooters, let alone Lambrettas existed south of Watford. Once these mutual myths were shattered we set about making beer flavoured friendships that were to last many years. In particular the crowd from Burnley and Pendle, Terry Burns, Terry Pratt, Earl etc. made us more than welcome by letting us share their hotel bedrooms (not in the biblical sense!). Some of the older Vespa riders (who did fit our earlier impressions) were slightly less than pleased to see us and declined to make us eligible for any of the awards at the rally owing to the fact that we rode Lambrettas. Overall though the welcome was warm and we got to hear about unofficial ‘runs’ that took place on the North West Coast, in particular Scarborough where 100s of scooters were rumoured to gather. Three of us were so hyped from the Havering experience that we set about preparing for a trip to Scarborough on the August Bank Holiday. Myself, Steve ‘Stick’ Evans and Ricky Kashir made this epic trip to the other end of the country with some trepidation, as we had nothing to go on other than a few encouraging phone calls from Burnley.

What we found at the end of a 14-hour trip was beyond our wildest dreams. We were met by clubs from all over the North of England who treated us like gods from another planet. We couldn’t believe the site of so many customised Vespas and Lambrettas. There were probably three or four hundred machines spread amongst the cranes at Scarborough fishing docks. The atmosphere was supercharged! We found to our amazement that we could leave our possessions, helmets etc on our scooters, disappear for a drinking session and when we returned everything would be intact.
On the way home from this momentous weekend, the three of us were still absorbing every thing that we had seen and we new that things had to change in order to become part of this scene. We decided to drop the ‘Lowrider’ tag, re name the club Modrapheniacs and dedicate the club to travelling the country, on scooters to meet new people who shared our vision and to spread the faith.

The Name

‘Modrapheniacs’ was a name that I had dreamt up some years earlier whilst listening to the original Quadrophenia album and avidly studying the black and white picture book that came with the records. It had been put in the frame when we were originally naming the club but had come up against one of John Lovings titles, ’Dorchminster Mountain Coal and Oil Scooter Club’. In order to end the interminable discussion about these two names we opted for the Lowrider option. But now I new the club had found it’s rightful name, if anyone didn’t like ‘Modrapheniacs’ they could leave. I should emphasise that, at this time there was no stigma attached to the word Mod. Many scooterists considered themselves to be Mods although they wore wide jeans, D.M.s, Greatcoats or Parkas. There was no animosity between North and South it was just a feeling of belonging to a tremendous brotherhood. You had to be united because you knew when you went home you would once again be outnumbered by the local greasers or N.E.B.s (Non educated barstards),as they were known in Burnley. There was no nicey ‘we all ride two wheels’ camaraderie then. They hated us and we hated them. It seemed that scooters had never really gone out of fashion in Lancashire and Yorkshire and we were going to ensure that the South now came out of the wilderness.
On our return to Dorset we told the club about our visit to the scooter Mecca and the next trip to Scarborough became the hottest talking point. At this time I sent the famous ‘Greasers in the Sewers’ letter to Scooter and Scooterist, and people from all over the country responded positively to this letter. Also whilst we’d been in Scarborough we had been plagued with requests for club patches, you couldn’t buy these treasured items for any amount of money, they could onlybe swapped for other club patches. We returned to Scarborough the following Easter, 15 strong and armed with club patches and wooden shields mounted on our rear racks. We had also adopted the phenomenon of road sweeper mudflaps (from York S.C.), which had left many Dorset lorries mudflapless!
Now a strong healthy scooter club we attended the LCGB Southend Rallies of 78 and 79, which were to see the first outbreaks of large-scale scootering violence since the 60s. The local Teds and Hells Angels being the enemy. These scenes were quite unbelievable, with scooterists from all over the country being bound together by an unspoken bond of loyalty and actually taking the upper hand. In 1979 the rally ended with a torched police car and the SPG waiting at the gate. There were to be no more Southend rallies.
Modrapheniacs became the last club ever to win the Southend Rally cup.

BIG MOD FLICK

If this cup was to be the clubs first claim to fame, it certainly wasn’t going to be the last. We amongst other clubs had been approached at the Southend rally to play an active part in the filming of a new film ‘Quadrophenia’. We thought the whole thing was a wind up until one of the directors turned up at the New Inn in Poole, waving a chequebook. Before the filming began there was a Northern organised run to Brighton. The Daily Mirror reported ‘On the 19th of August 1977 Mods will celebrate an anniversary of anarchy. This weekend, ten years after bloody battles with the rockers, the mods are planning a reunion in Brighton’. I don’t know about a reunion, I shouldn’t think there was one person from the 60s there, but it was certainly the first time that Northern and Southern scooterists had united on the South Coast. 60s mods had only really ever travelled within their local region, the new generation being less numerous were travelling hundreds of miles in order to achieve reasonable numbers. This was to set the scene right up to the noughties. After the filming of Quadrophenia, during the eighteen months before its release there was so much hype that the Modrapheniacs membership went into three figures and we saw the first Vespas joining the club, one of which was ridden by Phil (Gormont) Birch who was later to become Number One. The Modrapheniacs were to be an inspiration to a horde of new South Coast Scooter Clubs and we paid frequent visits to towns such as Torquay, Plymouth and Seaton, often becoming allies against the overwhelming numbers of South Coast Greasers.
On a local level the club existed on a diet of weekly Sunday runs starting from our meeting place at the Sandford Hotel, Wareham. A cross section of people including Skins, punks mods, soulboys, even a couple of gays (That’s a story of it’s own!) all bound together by a love of scootering. However whilst we were popular with scooterists, the same was not true of the many local bike gangs. This resulted in many skirmishes in which we were always outnumbered. One such incident led to me sacrificing four teeth whilst biting a hammer that a biker was waving. Indeed this scrap was so big, involving about a dozen of us and nearly a hundred bikers that as well as sustaining injuries and providing local and national press with column inches, we lost our meeting place. It was subsequently decided to hold meetings on alternate weeks at the New Inn, Poole and Goldies Bar, Dorchester.
During the late 70s some of us were to venture into Scooter Racing, but this didn’t sit easy following our often public hostility towards non-road scooters. This led to the mainly Weymouth section breaking away to form Wessex S.C. a racing club led by Colin Taylor. Upon the release of Quadrophenia, scooter clubs became deluged with new members and the numbers on National runs went from several hundreds to thousands, culminating in the 1980 Scarborough rally where the town nearly collapsed under the sheer weight of numbers and made the front page of many Nationals. A spate of local clubs sprang up around the Modrapheniacs, their members disillusioned with what they saw as the Modrapheniacs lack of interest in the New Mod scene.
This couldn’t have been further from the truth, but these were the early cracks beginning to appear between two new sub tribes, Mods and Scooter Boys. The club also tried to distance itself from the North/South divide that occurred during the early eighties. I believe that this was mainly caused by some (not all) of the more arrogant, new, Mod type clubs that sprung up around London. These were afflicted with the typical London delusion that they were the first and the best at everything but in reality had no idea of what had been occurring in the true underground scene for the previous eight years. Towards the end of 1982 John Loving and myself tended to take a back seat and let some of the young whippersnappers run things. I am very pleased to see that the club has survived and thrived. I know that John has been there all along, I continued to be a (honorary) member whilst spending far too much time pursuing my scooter interest through Hi Style Products and DJ work at scooter and soul gigs. Then, latterly, due to mortgage, kids an ex etc., a career in the Car Industry. I still have my Lambrettas and a fierce burning pride in having helped to start what has become one of the institutions of British Scootering.
I would like to thank everyone else who helped, rode, drank, fought, laughed and bonded but having the memory of a goldfish with alcoholic amnesia I’ll just have to assume you know who you are!

Ta Ver Much.

Robin Williams, more probably known to scooterists as ‘Yob’!