Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter E154, and – please put your lips together and pipe us a tune – it’s our 8th birthday! That means Simon has been making Front End Chatter for 14% of his life – and 20% of Mufga’s.

Front End Chatter is proud, nay, positively tumescent to be sponsored and supported by Bennetts, the bike insurance specialists, and their multimedia wing, BikeSocial.co.uk. We implore, nay we beseech you to get your bike insurance with Bennetts – bike insurance run by motorcyclists, FOR motorcyclists, and putting more back into the industry than any other bike insurer, FACT. From BSB sponsorship to their YouTube channel with bike reviews and features and kit and gear tests, to the BikeSocial website with news, stories and tests – right through to BikeSocial Membership which gives you access to tons and tons of cool stuff such as: discounts at Sportsbikeshop, money off Yoshimura and Akrapovic exhausts, R&G stuff, Evotec stuff, a VIP weekend at the Nick Sanders Expedition Centre, and bargain track days exclusively for Bike Social members.

Anyway, before all that, a bumper episode of FEC including MotoGP testing from the disintegrating Mandalika circuit, rants about MotoGP Unlimited, surprising indifference to the news Wayne Rainey is riding at Goodwood Festival of Greed Speed, the new Yamaha Ténéré Wordle Raid, and a slew of lovely listener emails.

Keep ’em coming to anything@frontendchatter.com

And catch Simon and Martin on the socials at

@SimonHBikes
@Mufga

Hello and welcome to Front End Chatter, Britain's most paracorded motorcycling podcast Fronted by Simon Hargreaves, Ended by Martin Fitz-Gibbons and Chattered by www.bikesocial.co.uk and Bennetts, the bike insurance specialists.

And in E126 we have:
• Yamaha's overhauled, uprated and enlarged (but not in the way you might have read) MT-09
• Martin's unnatural desire to buy a Piaggio MP3, as winter-hack path to an almost equally irrational Aprilia RS660
• the usual ramblings on MotoGP including where in the world is Marc Marquez, has he been moonlighting as his own brother, and what does this all mean for the 2020 title? 
• plus emails on topics as wide-ranging as more small acts of human kindness, the IOW Diamond Races (or not), ugly features on otherwise not ugly bikes, the difference between buying the first bike you look at and the bike you look at first, why under- (or over-) inflating a tyre for an extended stint on a motorway might not be a good idea, and the real reason you want to adjust your suspension.

Thanks for letting us into your ears, hope the new lockdown and winter aren't too savage for you, and please email us your further thoughts, comments and/or questions to:

anything@frontendchatter.com

@SimonHbikes
@Mufga

Welcome to Part Two of FEC's Summer Special, featuring your emails and assorted chatter about: 

• the pros and cons of riding at night

• the ethics of washing bikes and bikinis

• the truth about new tyres

• how best to listen to music while riding

• is the future electric?

• have electronics spoiled racing?

• is Ducati's new Supersport a Monster in drag with the wrong engine?

• what's the best adventure bike for a tall Hamburger?

• why buying a Crossrunner is a good, good, good thing

• why sportsbikes might not be the best idea for people with little self-control

• what's the best bike to strap to the back of a motorhome?

And as if that isn't enough, you can hire Simon to come and play bass at your party/wedding/festival etc.

Once again, we thank you for listening!

Hello, and welcome to Front End Chatter, Britain's original... most original... oh, whatever. It's a podcast mostly about bikes, with added swearing.

This is the Front End Chatter Summer Special Part One, which is only special by virtue of being a) shorter than usual and b) accompanied almost instantly(ish) by Part Two. So this half is the usual racing chatter, including gossip from the Austrian Red Bull Ring Pull MotoGP round, followed by mini-reviews of a couple of bikes we've ridden recently, and Part Two will be along in a while with a sackful of readers'... no, listeners'... emails. Of which there are many, and for which we thank you. We read all of them, even if we don't read them all out. It would take a long time and there aren't enough seconds in, well, a second, basically.

Thanks for your patience in waiting for the least consistent podcast in all creation, and please get in touch via anything@frontendchatter.com or @SimonHbikes or @Mufga