Norman Cook’s bike: Rescued halfway between the gutter and the skip

From our Not Strictly Mountain Biking desk comes word of a new bicycle-related enterprise based in the eternally-trendy but distressingly asymmetrically-piered seaside town of Brighton. Specialbike’s USP is the rescue of weary old abandoned bicycles and their rejunvenation into something new-looking and shiny.

The Specialbike ethos is about turning decent but neglected bikes into stylish one-offs. Owner Paul Topham explains:

“The Specialbike concept has grown from my belief that the bicycle is a superb leisure, sport and transport facility. Everyday I see good quality bikes fall on hard times and end up in landfill sites.”

“Just doing them up isn’t enough. We wanted to offer our customers something different and special. Art meets engineering to create the perfect bike for an individual; our ‘specialbikes’ are beautiful, prized possessions.”

“The quality of our workmanship is changing people’s concept of ‘second hand’ – by re-making a bike as a niche, boutique item, it works against the high volume, low quality manufacturing culture that is so bad for the environment and so opposed to our values at Specialbike.”

By way of an example, here’s DJ and local celebrity Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) and a bike that was destined for the tip until his wife, Zoe Ball, took it to Specialbike for a makeover. Once stripped, blasted, repainted and rebuilt the result was an as-new bike that’s still an old favourite.

So if you’ve got an old bike that deserves to come back to life as something a bit different, or if you’d like a new bike without some factory somewhere actually having to make a new bike, have a look at www.specialbike.co.uk.