THE MOVE. Well, all the boys stayed in Grantham. Still go to the same Pubs and do the same things to this day. I was doing a lot of the big Custom shows with “Nasty” at the time, and, not being a “Tenty” person, I’d bought an old caravan and put a door in the back so I could load the bike in and have somewhere comfy to crash. I loaded the bike in, along with my tools and welding gear, left a note on the girlfriend’s kitchen table, said goodbye to the wife and patted the kids on the head. Then I started driving, without a clue as to where I was going. When I stopped, I was in Great Yarmouth. Didn’t know a single person. First thing I did was to find somewhere to park. I found a nice quiet spot by the Gasworks. Once I’d unloaded the Chop, I went for a ride, and found the local biker-pub. Took about five minutes! Before I’d even started my first pint, I had a load of new mates. Within days the old tom-toms were going and word was round that there was a new biker in town looking for premises.
After a few weeks, I heard of a little workshop for rent at £25 a week, a bit way out, but I decided to go and look. I snapped it up!

Kessingland near Lowestoft, was where I ended up. The place was ideal. A large wooden Herring Curing shed. ¾ of the lower floor were used by the owner as a LandRover repairshop. I could have the other ¼ for £25 a week, electric included, and could offset my rent helping out on the LandRovers. Upstairs was a ramshackle bike-breakers, and the icing on the cake was the guy in the next building who restored Model “A” Fords, and drove an Oldsmobile Rocket 88. All I had to sort out was somewhere to live. With my new Landlord’s contacts, I rented a 5 acre field on the edge of the cliffs, bought a 6-berth holiday caravan from one of the local camps for £50 (Fully equipped with crockery, bedding etc), and towed it down the main road with one of the LandRovers! Sorted. Now all I needed was some work. It was now a month since I’d left Grantham. My redundancy payout was only £750, and funds were dwindling. I was so skint, I made my first “Shop” sign from a couple of old number plates. I also forked out £25 for a really

robust (1930’s) pillar drill. As it was 3-phase, I fitted an old washing-machine motor. Little did I realise I’d still be using it 20 years later!
I decided to build a Chop to sell, and sourced a 350 BSA in bits from various places. After a few weeks, it was transformed into quite a respectable bike. Word had got round that I was building, and “The Curious” started dropping in, the result being that the Chop sold, and I got my FIRST paying customer. A full build on an A10 BSA…..my favourite bike! From that day on, I was never out of work!
But I really wanted to be in Yarmouth. One day someone told me of a Retail Shop, just off the town centre. I took on the lease.

Great Yarmouth I was quite sad leaving Kessingland. I’d been there a year and made some good mates. I’d also taken over the Bike Breakers upstairs, lock-stock-and barrel, after the owner decided he’d had enough. He’d run it right down, but it was potentially a good business, so, whilst he was down the pub everyday, I just sort-of ran it and told him one day it was now mine. He looked glad to be shot of it.
The shop was a blessing. Large downstairs, and huge upstairs. Good to live and party in, and enough room to build one bike in the back. Big window, main road location. Pub three doors down. I got a nice girly to come and paint “Desperate Dan’s” on the front window. She finally left about 3 months later. The shop was running as a “Bike Breakers”, and I was starting to accumulate a good stock of new and used parts. I had started to build my supercharged NSU car-engined bike in the back room, and only a year-and-a-bit after I’d left Grantham, things were looking up. Not a lot of money, mind you, but plenty of wine, women and song. In fact, I’d accumulated a bit of a Harem. Six regular girlies, and one night off to recover!
Then something else happened to change my life (again). I met Lynne. To say it was love at first sight was an understatement. In not so many words, she made it plain she didn’t like sharing. The Harem had to go, and from that day to the present, I have been “Mr. Faithful”.
The shop was doing Ok, breaking anything up to 250cc (they were cheap to buy), but I really wanted to “Build”. Then I got wind of a new law coming in restricting learners to 125cc. Oh dear. My shelves were stacked with Superdream, KH250, RD250 and other assorted parts. Time for a short sharp exit! Amazingly, someone made me an offer for the whole business, and I sold up. Time to move again, something I’d get used to as I kept outgrowing premised. A new workshop was located in the adjoining town. This time, at last, it was a factory unit.

Gorleston-On-Sea 1300 sq. ft. industrial unit. Only problem was, it was on the first floor, but it had a big industrial lift. The accommodation problem was sorted by partitioning off the end of the workshop and making it into a bedsit, and now I had the problem of equipping it, as there was still a great shortage of cash. The money I got from the “Breaker-Buyout” wasn’t vast, but old lathes and such are amazingly cheap, and within a couple of weeks the place was equipped (even had 3-phase) and I had a nice MIG welder. It was in this little workshop that “Desperates” really took off. I built my first bike-trike there, a 750 Honda, and the prototype “Preying Mantis” VW kit. Plus God knows how many bikes. I started advertising in BSH, and had finished my supercharged NSU. I had taken on staff, and couldn’t cope with the orders. The retail side had taken off too. Lynne popped in one day. She’d lost her flat. Could she stay at mine for two weeks? Well, I’d left Grantham partly to get away from “Girly” problems. Reluctantly, I agreed. But for two weeks only. She’s still about. That two weeks turned into 22 years. Our daughter Erin is 13!
A decision was made to go into partnership with my old mate Boots Waite (NCC) so another move was on the cards, only, this time, to sunny Leighton Buzzard. I’d been doing work for him, and he’d been selling me parts. A partnership was the obvious way to go. We found premises, loaded a hire-lorry, and set off. I followed the lorry there in my newly-aquired (on a silly impulse) 1952 Commer Fire-Engine complete with ladders, pumps and a big chrome bell!

Leighton Buzzard This was to be home for nearly 10 years. A small workshop was located in the village of Stewkley, just outside the town. Now, Stewkley is a mega-posh, quaint old village, full of mega-posh quaint old people, so you can imagine their reaction when they found out a bunch of scruffy bikers had moved in. Especially when I explain that our workshop was “The Primative Methodist Chapel” and in the heart of the village. I set up home upstairs, we sold custom parts in the vestry, and built bikes in the main “room of worship“! But this was a “stopgap” until we found suitable premises in town, which we did, after a year.
I think the place we moved to, right in the centre of Leighton Buzzard, was the one people most remember, and the one where the silliest stuff came out of. 17a-17b Old Road. We started with a shop and two workshops. When we moved in the neighbours were aghast, as it was semi-residential, and virtually every house went up for sale. It was so bad that we put “fliers” through their doors explaining we weren’t going to bite the heads off their chickens or rape their daughters/sons. Eventually, they accepted us. By now we were building like men possessed, and had a staff of four. We bought out the company we used to buy our frames off, “Challenger”, and pretty soon everything from Springer Forks to exhaust systems were manufactured in bulk and supplied to other shops. We sold stuff across the world, every country in Europe, and even the USA.
Before I knew it, we had taken over another huge shop over the road as well.
I was getting a little uneasy. The place was getting too big. We now had an engineering shop, fabrication shop, MOT  Test-Centre, Road-bike showroom, Chop showroom, bike repair shop and polishing shop. On top of all that, we also had our own retail shop in Northern Ireland. All the money was going on overheads. Three lots of rent and rates, a staff of 8, subcontractors such as powder coaters, painters, upholsterer etc. And I still never seemed to have much dosh. By now me and Lynne were living on a boat on the Grand Union Canal. It was called “Nervous Wreck”. Turned out to be the perfect name, as I was becoming one under the pressure of work. It wasn’t unusual to do 20 hours in the workshop! But I’d come a long way in 10 years. The shop was now pretty famous in the custom bike/trike world. The FIRST “Beach Bastard” was built in that place, a name now used to describe any trike utilising the whole backend of a car. We were also pretty well in demand for TV work, even building special vehicles for “Doctor Who”.
Then one day, Boots announced he was leaving. Both the shop and the country. It was a tearful parting, we’d spent 8 years as partners. But now I had the chance to downsize (I thought). I shut down all the retail side, stopped doing MOT’s and moved to a brand-new factory at the other end of town. But for some reason, I was growing uneasy. A few things had happened in my personal life that had upset me, like my best mate dying and stuff like that. I still had a huge staff, and we had a 12 month waiting list for work. I wanted out. Lynne thinks I had a Nervous breakdown. Well, if I did, it was only a taster for the big one.
So I decided to lay everyone off and move back to Yarmouth, where I had always been at my happiest. There had always been the pull of the sea in my life.

PS I’ve built a nice workshop on the side of the house. I’m building again…..but only for myself. Maybe “Desperate’s” is only taking a nap?

                            Chris Ireland