Derek Beattie, my life in Pictures
Bill Head Ltd.
England 1977

In 1977 I moved to work for BMW in London. The guys I worked with were ok. but the City Folks had no time to be friendly so when later an offer to move North to Preston in Lancashire and work for one of the biggest Motorcycle dealers in the UK  arrived, I jumped at the chance... there followed 19 years with Bill Head Ltd.

Bill Head's Honda Parts Distribution Centre on Walton Summit in Preston, Lancashire. We supplied most of the top Honda Dealers in the UK,. Motorcycle,Car and Power Products. It brought me in contact with some wonderful people who hopefully get a mention later.

I was very lucky in that my beginnings with Bill saw me working at the Main Distribution Centre with some top class workmates. The Co.Director Percy Harrison was a typical Lancastrian, what you saw was what you got,. no back doors,.  Carol and Joan in the office were very pleasant and Stuart Cousins was on maximum revs all the time,. he would greet customers with various Monty Python lines,. "Don't mention the war" etc. Jack and Bernard worked in packing and I joined the motley crew of order chasers,. Paul, Dave and ???. Lol Savage was a rep for our Power Product Division and a very pleasant man, our deliver man was Les.
Later I moved to the main Motorcycle Retail Division at North Road Preston which gave me the opportunity to meet more people and make a lot more friends. At that time Bill entered the Formula 2 event at the IOM TT with rider Alan Jackson riding one of our Honda CB550 models,. we won the event in 1977 and 78 and 79 plus the Ulster GP in 1979.  Carl Fogarty also rode for us on many occasions and thats where we first met.,  a few tales later in the stories section of the site...

Right - Lancashire Evening Post short announcement November 1993 our Classic Bike Show which grew from year to year and soon drew the attention of the local press and Magazines such as Classic Motorcycle mechanics which gave us two, two page spreads in two years,. not bad for a Dealers,... 

Left - Lancashire Evening Post Feature in November 1994
The 1994 Show was especially good as we had so many rare machines.

We had taken on Ducati so I decided I needed to make myself understood,.. what a ball I had. Silvio was an excellent teacher and the class members were all enjoying it so much that ideas were suggested to help us learn faster and Silvio thought it was marvellous. One idea was to have a 30 minute period in class when only Italian could be spoken and we would all make a speech etc. Oh dear,.. much hilarity. 
Silvio then decided that he had an idea,. once a fortnight we would visit an Italian resturaunt for a meal and again try to speak only Italian,. it was a superb idea,. later we passed the classmate stage and became friends,. Silvio would visit the Motorcycle Shop etc. as would other former classmates.

After the Boss Bill retired the business changed so much that it lost that personal contact with its customers and after a few years with other dealers in the area espically a fantastically enjoyable time with Shorrock Motorcycles I decided to move to France...