I queue, see the faces, hear the screams and go for a baked potato instead. Moreover, a microphone ensures that in space everyone can hear you scream. The video (£10 extra, but optional) is broadcast to the festival on a screen: to see it is to look into the face of terror. Once, at the prospect of Sling Shot, a machine which, for £15 apiece, hurls two people 265 feet into the air in a rotating steel cage. "Only Angels sell it," sighs a food-stall owner. They also have the on-site water monopoly. Just to make sure, Angels patrol in cars with no licence plates and with "Security" painted in emulsion across their doors. Thus there are no freelance drug dealers, no roving merchandise sellers (save one brave man offering illuminated collars in the darkness of Saturday evening) and no hint of violence. People at Bulldog do as they please, within regimented parameters. "Bulldog is something we neither welcome nor do not welcome," says a spokeswoman guardedly, "but the traffic police compliment the riders on their road skills." In the event, the Warwickshire constabulary receives one complaint during the weekend.
"Some locals moan, but we know who they are." They look after the roads outside and agree not to come on site without warning," he adds. "We have good relations with the police and conform to every regulation, especially the noise ones. The atmosphere developed of its own accord. "We thought of the event we would like to attend and made it. The 2001 Bash is the most popular yet and as early as Friday evening Ken's chief worry is securing more land for the incessant influx of happy campers. On the Field of Dreams "build it and they will come" principle, drag racing and bands were added, expanding into Europe's biggest biker gathering. Ken ("We'd rather you not use surnames"), Harley-Davidson-riding Hell's Angel since 1972 and well-spoken, neatly bearded Reading businessman, works alongside Bilbo.įifteen years ago, fewer than 200 leathery souls gathered for the first Bulldog, a straightforward bike show. He will neither discuss the event, nor be photographed. Rumours abound that their income comes from drugs and prostitution, the pillars of conventional criminal gangs, but of late their attention has been focused upon murderous squabbles in Scandinavia and upon the sheer rigour of maintaining discipline in a society that increasingly pours scorn upon tribes of any ilk, especially ennui-laden, wild-hearted outsiders. With their "three can keep a secret if two are dead" motto, the club retains its air of mystery. While Hell's Angels and the death's head logo are now both internationally recognised trademarks ("We've had a lot of trouble, especially with clothing," frowns a commercial Angel), there are only 1,800 members worldwide, of whom 1,200 are American and 200 British. (Olsen himself never became an Angel he merely wanted to go biking with his war buddies after hostilities ceased.) They took their look from Olsen and his comrades and the image was subsequently fuelled by Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin in The Wild One the stomping of Hunter S Thompson the 1947 Hollister "motorcycle riot" that inspired The Wild One, and celebrity Angel Sonny Barger, now resident in Norway. The Hell's Angels were named by Commander Arvid Olsen after an American air force squadron active on the far eastern front before their country had officially signed up for the second world war.
The Hells Angels book the bands, hire the family-owned Avon Park Raceway, south of Stratford-upon-Avon, and set the charges ("what your grub should cost you" - £2 a bacon roll, 80p tea etc - is outlined in the complimentary programme) and they divide the substantial profits among the 16 British chapters.
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