June 19th, 2020.


With some enforced free time on his hands, Trader columnist Mark Williams is reviving an infamous brand and launching a new blog/website entitled Running Out Of Road.

Williams, who claims to be Britain’s longest serving columnist, launched Bike magazine in 1971, grandiosely describing it as ‘the motorcycle magazine that dares to be different’, whilst its current publishers claim it as ‘the magazine that invented biking’. He then began his column, Running Out Of Road, and for some forty-nine inglorious years he’s continued churning out his controversial views, wild claims and mindless nonsense, albeit under different headings in some of the other magazines he himself launched, edited and/or published. These include WhichBike?, MotorCycle International and Classic Bike Guide, and several he didn’t, such as Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, TrailBike Magazine, Quad and Motorcycle Trader, the latter for which he still scrawls the End User column, whilst occasionally contributing to the magazine he started all those years ago, most recently as its Custom Bike Editor.

“However”, says Williams, “the wretched Covid-19 pandemic and its consequential lockdown has left even fewer opportunities to perpetrate dubious views and so-called humour. Moreover, in recent times much of the motorcycle media have, perhaps understandably, shunned columns – which I believed help to build editorial character, a sort of ‘gang culture’ even, in the cause of reader loyalty – in favour of more advertiser-attractive feature space. To a compulsive scribbler and committed biker, this double-whammy has prompted me to re-publish, with contemporary updates, comments and even the odd fresh tirade, some of my several hundred columns from 1972 onwards… even though there’s no bloody money in it.”

Running Out Of Road – the blog – is now live at www.runningoutofroad.uk