Why do I do this?

Last week an old friend told me he’d always thought I had ADD and had just never had the guts to tell me.

I have often been called a little crazy and when I think about it he’s probably right. I’m in a frenzy about most things, especially motorbikes, work, my family, Josh Brookes, riding motorbikes and talking about motorbikes.

I’m also fascinated by human interaction, what makes people tick. A while ago, in fact many years, I bought the audio book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People‘ by Dale Carnegie.

A lot has been said about this book – it’s almost become the generic brand name for ‘self help’ publications and unless you’ve actually read it or heard it, as in my case, it’s pretty easy to poke crap at. But that’s only until you’ve had a chance to listen to it.

It teaches a couple of incredibly simple rules about people. Such as: try and always see things from the other’s perspective, and never criticize others – it only gets their backs up.

The reason I am writing this, is today I had one of my profound moments. It doesn’t happen often, but it did today. The most often asked question about the c word I am asked, is ‘why do you do it?’

I never really had an answer, but today I worked it out thanks to HTWFAIP. You see, I have always said that we do it because it’s fun, and it makes us laugh – we never really thought or cared about the people who’d be watching it, it just happened to be something that resonated.

Did we try to be cool? No. Are we cool? Not for me to say. We could be really crap and some people may think we are, but we just do it because we like it. Or that’s what I always said until now.

The big change occurred when I began to see things from our ‘fans’ point of view. There aren’t a lot of them, but enough to convince us to carry on doing what we’re doing. Whatever they got out of what we were doing, it made them feel good, entertained, laugh and generally feel that they weren’t wasting their time watching us.

And my realization is this. We do actually care about what people think of us. More than I would have been prepared to admit. Why else would we be doing something that takes up our time and doesn’t really make any money at all?

I do give a shit about people who love bikes and cars. I do care that they have a laugh and I do care that they like us. Maybe not such a bombshell for you, but a pretty big one for me.

So going forward when I’m asked, I’ll say that, like us, hate us or indifferent, we give a shit about you, and hope that we give you stuff that make you say “those guys at the c word rock!”

Now, what crazy wak shit can we dream up for next year’s shows?