Queen, fat bottomed girls and David Duffield

I don’t believe in Peter Pan
Frankenstein or Superman
All I want to do is
Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

In 1978, Queen released the now-classic ‘Bicycle Race’, which has become the song used by TV soundtrack researchers when adding music to a bike-related bit of telly.

Here’s the original, non-rude video for the song:

A ruder version can be found .

Why rude? Because the B-side to ‘Bicycle Race’ was ‘Fat Bottomed girls.’ The single featured a pic of a nude woman riding a bicycle. Later versions of the single were released with her bottom badly covered up with pre-Photoshop panties.

The songs were included on Queen’s ‘Jazz’ album, which featured little stick men cyclists, racing across the base of a optical illusion style image. This album shipped with a famous poster of 65 nude women cyclists.

A photo spread from the shoot appeared in The Sun and both the original poster and the tabloid homage were bike workshop favourites for many years. And, of course, there’s a bike trade back story.

At the time, David Duffield - now famous as a cheese-loving, Eurosport commentator - was the marketing manager at Halfords. He set up the Jazz photoshoot for Queen. Well, the bicycles part of it. He supplied 65 Halfords road bikes. Queen’s production company supplied the nude models, and Wimbledon stadium as the backdrop.

In 1978, Terry Harris, now a rep for Greyville Enterprises, was working for Halfords’ bike making facility, Halmanco of Pontypool, Wales. He told Quickrelease.tv:

“I was working in the production/sales office and the bikes used were the Halfords International model.

“The driver still tells the story of the day he went to the stadium to deliver the bikes and then all the models came out in bath robes then derobed and got on their bicycles for the photographs.”

Contrary to the urban myth that Halfords refused to take the bikes back or that the bike’s saddles were removed for, ahem, later use, Harris said:

“The bikes came back to the factory and were checked over and put back into stock.”

Perhaps it would have been a different story had eBay been around back then…

The famous poster lived on:

“One rep used to have a copy of the poster in his briefcase and when he went abroad he showed the poster and told people this was an annual bike race held in Britain,” said Harris.

Instigator: Pinchflatnews.com