Your last big UK appearance was at the "Holeshot" competition in London at the end of 1987, it was a time when BMX was changing. You quit Skyway a while before and were riding for M:Zone (legendary Croydon BMX shop), why did you end up quitting riding for such a big sponsor?
I got sick of the whole corporate establishment around BMX, it got really boring and I knew there was another side of BMX that was yet to be seen. I was riding the streets of London a lot with Jess Dyrenforth and Nick (Anarchic Adjustment) Philip developing a style of riding that is now a massive phenomenon, we thought we were the only riders doing this at the time, we soon discovered that there were some crazy cats in California doing the same shit and it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed. At that time BMX and skating seemed to be very interlinked, R.A.D. magazine covered both and street riding was the new thing.
You, Nick Philip and Jess Dyrenforth always had photos in R.A.D. doing new street moves and London seemed like the place to be, even legendary US based magazine Freestylin' ran a street article about London.
Yeah the street skating influence was very strong at that time and Jess and I used to skate as well as ride bikes, we were always trying to work out how you could pull skate tricks on a bike.
When was the first time you went to the USA?
It was in 1985 to ride in the "King of the Skateparks" contest at the Pipeline Skatepark in California. It was such a gnarly park… we had nothing like that in the UK, I was riding against the best riders in the world in their local park, I was under pressure a bit there. I had two days practice and managed to pull a few cancan X ups which no one had seen before at that point and placed 4th behind Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther and Mike Dominguez only beating Hugo Gonzales because he did an endo drop in to head butt and almost broke his neck.