Magic Spanner, by Carlton Kirby

Title: Magic Spanner – The World of Cycling According to Carlton Kirby, Eurosport’s Legendary Tour de France Commentator
Author: Carlton Kirby (with Robbie Broughton, foreword by Sean Kelly)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sport
Year: 2019
Pages: 250
Order: Bloomsbury
What it is: Geraint Thomas’s The World of Cycling According to G knocked off and loaded up with Carlton Kirby’s highly imitable witterings
Strengths: The name on the cover
Weaknesses: The name on the cover

Hello and welcome one and all wherever you are to the Podium Café, the second home of cycling! I’m Carlton Kirby and we’re here today for a live reading of Carlton Kirby’s Magic Spanner – The World of Cycling According to Carlton Kirby, Eurosport’s Legendary Tour de France Commentator. Our reader today is the Café Bookshelf’s chief book stacker, Fergus McKie and he’ll be trying to get through all 250 pages of this epic tome written by me, Carlton Kirby, Eurosport’s legendary Tour de France commentator.

The stations of the cross only had 14 stages, as Henri Pelissier famously told Julie London at the 1942 Tour. The Big Buckle itself has 21. But there’s much more suffering in line for McKey today as he attempts to tackle in a single sitting all 28 chapters of Carlton Kirby’s Magic Spanner, written by me, Carlton Kirby, and brought to you by Bloomsbury books (available in all good charity shops, pay no more than 75 pence).

Other books are available. Ha! Ha! Only joking! They’re not.

I’ve no idea what sort of day McKee has in store today. Maybe he’ll sprint through the chapters like Mark Cavendish eager to get to the finish line and get a hug from the fragrant Peta. Or maybe it’s going to be like a long day out in the fabled Circle of the Deaf, where no one can hear your tears, those five fabled climbs in the Pyrenees that include the Col d’Aspirin, the Col de Turnip, and the Col de Mount Vindaloo. Can MacKeye make it all the way to the finish without stumbling and needing help from a domestique like Simon Serene? We’ll soon find out. I’ll be your commentator today – airdoors to manual! – here at the second home of cycling, Podium Café. Let’s go reading!

As you all know by now, British cycling hasn’t always been where it is today. Hard and all as it is to believe,…