The Unspeakable
in Pursuit of the Unseatable
by Jeremy Paxman

There is a horrid scare going around London. It is about something called Numb Penis Syndrome. Scientific research, we are told, has established a terrifying affliction striking male cyclists. Too much pedalling on hard seats and you will lose all sensation in your underwear. Eventually, presumably, when all their willies have fallen off, cyclists will breed themselves into extinction.

It's in the tradition of Flann O'Brien, who suggested in the Third Policeman that people who ride bikes on rocky roads start interchanging atoms, so that huge numbers end up half human and half bicycle.

But I think I know the source of the disappearing willy scare. It is almost certainly the work of the frothy-mouthed anti-cycling campaigners in the newspapers. One is Anthony Daniels, who told Evening Standard readers of his reaction to the sticks some of us have attached to our bikes to encourage motorists to give us a wider berth. They make him see red, he says. "I want suddenly to knock the cyclist over," he tells us.

In the Daily Telegraph, another booby claims that the urban cyclist -- what he calls the 'two-wheeled warrior' -- has been driven mad by "gulping in carbon monoxide and lead, effluvia from fast-food restaurants, from air conditioning plants and Durban sewers. The fear and poison of modern city life is in his nostrils and his brain." That, he thinks, is why so many bikers are getting so angry about the state of the capital's streets.

Listening to these people is like watching a skunk deliver a lecture on personal hygiene.

Anyone who has ever tried to negotiate London on two wheels knows that the greatest hazard to life and limb isn't the bicycle but the internal combustion engine. As Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow puts it, "I cycle on the basis that everyone is out to kill you."

To survive, the urban cyclist has to learn to spot the killers at a hundred yards. The snake-eyed driver who approaches Hyde Park corner with an eye for the gap between two buses, oblivious to anything smaller. The van which treats each set of traffic lights as if they're the Silverstone starting grid. The mother dropping off her children at school, or parked on a yellow line while she dashes into a shop; you can guarantee she'll open the driver's door without a backward glance and catapult you into the oncoming traffic.

All cyclists quickly make up their own bestiary. My own list of the most hateful drivers in London ends with one particular car, the Mercedes, since it seems to attract people not merely blind to bikes but homicidal towards them. Worse even than Mercedes in general are elderly left-hand drive Mercedes and -- most loathsome and deadly of all -- all Mercedes with diplomatic plates. If you see an elderly left-hand drive Mercedes with diplomatic plates bearing down on you, leap for the pavement at once. And then these motor-fascists have the never to accuse cyclists of being antisocial.

The other day I saw the result of a collision between a cyclist and a car. The biker was lying concussed on the pavement, bleeding from his face, arm and legs. To judge from the minimal damage to the car, the driver had braked suddenly and the cyclist had shot through the back window. It says something for the values of motorists like these that the driver was berating the policeman tending the injured cyclist -- loudly and foully -- for not being more concerned about his broken rear window. And yet Anthony Daniels believes that cycling helmets are "a silent reproach to the rest of us, and imply that we are all potential knockers down of innocent and harmless bicyclists." Well, so sorry.

He doesn't like the masks that many cyclists have chosen to wear, either. These, apparently, are "a religious symbol, the visible sign of righteousness." No they're not, they're a way of trying to filter out the crap which spews from the back of Anthony Daniels's car. Any cyclist -- or pedestrian -- could tell him the reason London has become such a stinking, poisonous place. It's because of the diesel fumes belching out of buses, taxis, lorries and vans. It's an irony doubtless lost on the people behind what's laughingly called London's transport policy that the vehicles which are supposed to provide the solution are the ones which cause the most stink. When it comes to air quality, the problem isn't cars, it's filthy old buses.

The arguments for cycling are so well known that it seems redundant to repeat them. But for the benefit of those who spend their lives sitting in traffic jams, they are as follows.

It is easily the quickest way around central London, faster than bus, Tube or taxi. Apart from the occasional puncture, you can predict precisely how long every journey will take, regardless of traffic jams, Tube strikes or leaves on the line. It provides excellent exercise. It does not pollute the atmosphere. It does not clog up the streets. And when was the last time you heard of cycle rage?

Then there's the question of cost. At the last Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, Jon Snow suffered not one but two accidents. The first came when he collided with a pensioner standing in the road gawping at the seafront illuminations, the second when his front wheel got stuck in a tramline. Scurrying away to avoid Sun photographers, he found sanctuary in the back of an invisible mender's. There, the anchorman of Channel 4 News stood in his underpants as the tailor got on with patching up his trousers. Funny thing was, on each occasion, he got a big black bruise in the same place. It was caused by his wallet.

Cyclists are fed up right now because there is so little provision for them. The plan for a national bicycle network is a start. But the key is to separate cars from bikes in town. As it is, the meagre number of cycle routes around London often invites bikers to travel three times as far as they need in order that the mighty internal combustion engine should be incommoded as little as possible. And when cycle lanes exist on highways, they're as likely as not to be blocked by a delivery van or parked car.

So the answer to the four-wheelers is obvious. Give the cyclists space of their own and they won't get in your way. You'll be free to sit in traffic and indulge your auto-spleen to your heart's content.