The Bandit of the South Circular

The cycling-music interface has not always been a happy place.

True, Eric Clapton's passion for all things Italian (principally wine and supermodels) has led him to build up an impressive collection of Colnago's and a couple of Cinelli's -- but I've seen no evidence of him actually riding them.

There's a great signed picture in Condor's shop of a young Mick Jagger on one of their Mackeson team bikes but it doesn't seem to have been more than a passing Sixties' fad.

And who can forget, however hard they may try, the sight of Paul Weller struggling to maintain his normal icy cool in a wool-mix Magniflex top? Not since Bryan Ferry took to the stage dressed as an Argentine cowboy has a normally stylish man made such a fundamental error in dress sense.

Kraftwerk and the Delgados both include hard-core bikies in their line-up; disappointingly, Campag Velocet never did.

Beyond that, you're really scraping the barrel. The drummer out of Madness was in my old club in the mid-eighties -- he left after he was repeatedly dropped on the mid-week Regents Park chaingang.

And dance music has flirted sporadically with bike clothing. Early ravers briefly took to wearing lycra shorts; and team tops were popular with the late-nineties hard house crowd. Appropriate of course, since Gatecrasher kids were one of the few groups whose consumption of illegal drugs approached the levels of a professional cyclist.

But in all these discussions, one name is routinely forgotten. Step forward Billy Connolly, bearded Scottish comedian, former folk singer and bikie.

At least, I'm pretty sure he was - although I can find no record of it in any of his biographical profiles But I remember reading an interview with him in the eighties where he talked about riding when he was younger.

In particular, he wrote a song when he was a member of the Humblebums, called "The Bandit of the Great North Road".

It was a hymn of praise to those riders who prefer to train alone rather than join clubs or go out with larger groups.

Sometimes, this morning for instance, I feel a bit like that Bandit -- the only rider in Richmond Park not part of some brightly coloured peloton. I like riding in company, and do it when I can.

Equally, there are times when just wheeling along with nothing but your own thoughts is a real luxury.  This morning, icy cold but clear, felt like one of those times.