Lee Parker – My First Rally

I first met Lee Parker at the Isle of Wight rally in 2000 over the breakfast table at a B&B we were both staying at in Ryde. We got chatting and I was impressed by his lovely AF Lambretta which had a striking orange and silver paint job.

Fast forward a year or so and I recognised his face on the cover of Scootering, and then another year or so later I met him again properly as he was in my then-boyfriend (now husband’s) scooter club, the Nuneaton Pacemakers. I became firm friends with him and his lovely wife Lucy, despite his swearing habit, which luckily we have toned down with the use of ‘chihuahua’ for his favourite x-rated swear word!

Known affectionately as just ‘Parker’, he never seemed to tire of me saying ‘hello, Parker’ in my best Lady Penelope voice and him replying with ‘Yes, Milady’, which tickled me every time! I’m very easy to please sometimes…

We regularly have an annual catch-up with Lee and Lucy at the Isle of Wight, where they work on the gate at Smallbrook on the Friday, and then meet them for some beers in town at some point.

In 2011 he and Lucy wore these hilarious ‘Lightside’ t-shirts, the irony being that he then subsequently saw the light and bought an auto himself!

So how did this lifelong passion for the scooter scene start for Lee? Here is his story…

Lee Parker – My First Rally

How did you first get into scooters?
A very good question! I suppose it all began in late 1978 or early 79 being a lad growing up on a council estate in a town on the outskirts of Coventry. I can vividly recall the punk thing, being an impressionable 10 or 11 year old and wanting to be “in” with the bigger kids. It was around this time that a lot of the punks were swayed by a mixed race Coventry band who eventually became The Specials. A true comedy moment was seeing a good bunch of my punk mates attempting to pogo to Gangsters, their debut single, at Camphill School Youth Club in my home town of Nuneaton, a regular Friday night haunt. Alongside this, Quadrophenia the iconic Who film screened, which brought about the mod revival and lasted a couple of years or so. Ironically, I was never really a mod as I liked the ska sound and although I listened to the likes of Secret Affair, The Chords and the Lambrettas, they didn’t really float my boat at the time.

I did however, like the scooters. The curvy shape of the Vespa and the sleaker pencil-sharp styling of the slimstyle Lambretta. It wasn’t too long before my Harrington jacket had Lambretta and Vespa badges pinned amongst the rude boy, ska and Specials patches. A few of my mates followed suit and Saturday excursions to town invariably ended up with a stop-off at Scooter Sales at Abbey Green in Nuneaton, chatting with Keith Trill who’d owned the business since the late 50s and his son, mechanic Darren. Although technically they were a Vespa dealer, they’d also have a smattering of SIL Lambrettas and Servetas for us all to drool over. I knew from that point I’d own a scooter someday. 

I also became aware of northern soul at this time, and a couple of my older-looking schoolmates were venturing off to the Wigan Casino before it closed in the early 80s, as well as the Top Of The World Club in Stafford and the legendary local allnighter at the Hinckley Leisure Centre. I enjoyed the music, the mystique surrounding the scene and the unbelievable value of the 45s my mates were coming back home with following a weekend away. It all stood me in great stead for what happened a few years later.

What was your first scooter?

I’d owned a Vespa 100 since the age of 15 (I told you I’d  buy one!) and it was my sole purchase from my paper round tips from the Christmas of 1982. One of the benefits of doing half a dozen paper rounds on a council estate, is that they were generous folk, all of them!  It cost me the princely sum of £80 from a fellow scooterboy by the name of Morph (his real name escapes me). Apart from an MOT, the bike and I were completely illegal and my riding was restricted to the locality of Nuneaton. It was stored in my nan’s garage so most weekends I’d go get it and have a bit of a ride around. Risky business really, as the police were always willing to pull anyone over on a Vespa back then. I used to return the scooter to my nan’s house late on a Sunday night, after the scooterboy and mod nights at Stockingford Liberal Club, which always seemed to have at least 20 scooters of all styles, shapes and sizes in the car park.

Where was your first rally?
I daren’t chance riding to my first rally for fear of being stopped by the police and the ensuing wrath of my dad, so I set off to Skegness at Easter 84 on the train, with a big bunch of lads from Nuneaton, including Dave Downs, Jezz Hobbins and Glen James who all still ride. It was technically my first ever scooter rally at the tender age of 15 and I got there courtesy of British Rail. Although only 120 miles away it seemed to take an age to get there.

For pretty much the same reasons, I also did Newark and Morecambe using British Rail that year. My first ridden rally was the Great Yarmouth rally of 1985, by which time I’d been promoted to a two year old Vespa PX125E which my Dad signed for on HP and cost me the princely sum of £11 per week.

What job were you doing at the time?
I was a schoolboy in my last year of school but I had a few paper rounds. I seem to recall doing the whole weekend in Skeggy on about £25! By 1985 I was at college and a part-time chef.

Where did you stay when you were there?
All of the three rallies in 1984 were spent in the allnighters as every rally back then seemed to have a “nighter”. I did have the luxury of a tent for Yarmouth 85 though. Finding somewhere to pitch it was the challenge, as anyone who did the 80s Yarmouth rallies will know.

Were you in a club at the time?
I rode with a local club called the Smiling Mushrooms, which later seemed to evolve into Chapel End Bad Company.

Do you have any memories of the rally itself?
As far as Skeggy 84 is concerned, I recall the rail journey as quite eventful, with the Transport Police ejecting one of the Nottingham lads from the train at Boston after he’d thrown a fire extinguisher out of the pull-down train window somewhere in the Lincolnshire countryside, down the embankment and though some old geezer’s greenhouse. I blame the snakebite we all seemed to be freely swigging!

I was blown away by Skegness and the sheer numbers in attendance, as well as the “characters”. I have fond memories of a guy riding a Vespa sidecar outfit round and round the Clock Tower island (Ali : translation for southerners, an ‘island’ is a ’roundabout’!) on the sea front keeping the sidecar wheel in the air all the while. There was also a bloke on a cutdown PX wheelying up and down a long stretch in front of the boating lake without a helmet for what seemed like hours before he came off and hurt himself pretty badly. One of the funniest moments was seeing a well-known large scooter club deposit what we were led to believe was a selection of sugar and weedkiller bombs, from the back of their back-up “hearse”. They proceeded to blow a number of rowing boats out of their shore moorings on the boating lake with suitably impressive bangs and massive plumes of water. Mad times back then!

At Yarmouth in 85 I witnessed first hand the effects of CS Gas and the pretty surreal aftermath of Desmond Dekker getting beaten up on stage at Tiffanys by a bunch of Sieg-Heiling pillocks. Yarmouth that year holds many more memories including riding with the largest amount of scooters from Nuneaton I’ve ever witnessed, 40 plus, mostly Vespas from PK50s to kitted  Pinasco P2s. It took over 12 hours for us to arrive at the welcoming concrete-based campsite.

That said, in-journey entertainment was provided by a well known local character complete with grass skirt, plastic US army helmet and very little else, clothing-wise, sniffing more and more glue in the backup van en route, his Vespa 50 Special having expired about three miles into the journey. He’d entertained us beforehand too, by bumpstarting the scooter backwards and riding it in reverse around the newly-installed multi-storey car park in Nuneaton which was our pre-rally meeting point.

On a more serious note, the journey to Yarmouth that year had a bit of a dark start. I recall the scooters thinning out into groups of three of four, the entire pack being spread over many miles. The group of three I was riding with stopped for the umpteenth fag break on a traffic island on the A47 just outside of Kings Lynn. We were just about to set off on the last leg to Yarmouth when a white Ford XR2 which had just circuited the island came towards us at speed and screeched to a halt directly in front of us. We got off the scooters and readied ourselves for a ruck with the four “casuals” which alighted. Helmets, chains and fists flew and one of our number hit the ground in a quickly-developing pool of blood. Our mate had been stabbed by one of them and the next three or four hours were spent being interviewed by the police and making sure our man was OK in Kings Lynn General, thankfully he was!

Was the journey home eventful?
Most journeys to and from the rallies in the 80s were eventful. Everyone seemed to hate us to be fair, from the police to bikers, casuals and garage owners. Thankfully times have changed for the better!

Do you remember what your favourite rally anthem of that period was? 
The Matt Parson’s Orchestra classic Boogaloo Investigator was a proper rally tune. Wrecking Crew by the Meteors, Longshot Kick De Bucket by the Pioneers and England by The Angelic Upstarts were other favourites of mine. My music taste always has been eclectic and the rallies seemed to cater for my kind of ear, to be fair.

What was your favourite custom scooter of that era?
I saw Little Rascal for the first time at Skeggy alongside Clockwork Orange. They both pretty much blew me away. I understand that Little Rascal is due to be resurrected this year and I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

Do you still have a scooter now?  
I’ve owned the same Lambretta for the past 19 years and one of my proudest moments was when it made the cover of Scootering Magazine in November 2000. It’s still a great bike and it makes me smile when riding it.

Prior to that I owned a self-restored Lambretta Li 150 Special which I did on a shoestring during the course of a messy divorce. I also had an original condition Lambretta SX200 which I now regret selling!

In 1988 I put together a Mk1 T5 custom called T5 Dominator which is now owned by my friend Mark Tighe in Kent, and he’s returned it to its former glory after buying it from me in 1989 and losing sight of it for a little while. That was also featured in Scooter Scene Magazine back in 1988 and more recently by Dave Oakley in one of Scootering’s Nostalgia Corner features.

After selling the T5 I focussed on a Lambretta Street Racer project, painted in gaudy flourescents by Maca at DTC which I rallied for a number of years. TS2 Stinger, as it was known, was a feature bike in Scootermanic magazine back in 1990. The T5, the TS2 Lammy and my current GP have all featured on Paddy Smith rally patches over the years.

What do scooters mean to you now?
It’s a bit of a cliche really, but a very real one, they are a way of life. I’ve made many life-long friends during my scooter-riding career and, naturally, I have no plans to give it up any time soon. It helps when your wife, Lucy, is a rally-going scooterist and that you met her properly on a scooter rally!

I also have a decent scooter club, Pacemakers SC, to rely on when things aren’t going right with the bike, or you just fancy a beer with like-minded idiots.

Thanks so much to Lee for these brilliant stories!  I look forward to seeing you on the gate at Smallbrook, if not before…

Rally Guides

Rally Guides
If you’re planning your scootering calendar for 2021 then check out my 2021 Rally Guide to get the best choice of accommodation.

For an in-depth guide to the biggest scooter rally in the world, here is a link to my Isle of Wight rally guide.

More My First Rally stories

Read more My First Rally stories using these links (in alphabetic order)
– Ali Richards
– Bill Mac
– Dave Lloyd
– Dean Percival
– Dizzy Holmes
– Iggy Grainger
– Jo Jackson
– Lee Parker
– Lee Richards
– Mike Oxley
– Niamh Pennington
– Nick Jolly
– Norrie Kerr
– Roger Williams
– Sandra Smith
– Sarah George
– Sean Robinson
– Stacey Gardner
– Steve Bone
– Sticky
– Stuart Owen
– Vince Wooloff