Olympic scooters to ride into music festival

As part of the now famous closing ceremony dozens of scooters rode out in the Olympic Stadium as a spectacular backdrop to The Who performing its much loved anthem Pinball Wizard. Many of those very same scooters will now be on display at Suffolk’s Live and Kicking Music Festival, being held at the MEL Group Stadium, Sudbury, in June.

The festival, which is being headlined by ska legend Neville Staple and coincidentally includes a Who tribute band in its line-up, is being supported by Sudbury Scooter Club and it is this connection which has led to the Olympic scooters being added to the line-up.

Warren Brown, a member of the Sudbury Scooter Club, was one of the riders who took part in the Olympic closing ceremony and has now organised to bring the display to Live and Kicking.

“Taking part in the closing ceremony was without doubt one of the best experiences of my life, to be amongst that crowd with that atmosphere was simply amazing,” said Mr Brown, who lives in Great Cornard. “More than 50 scooter clubs from across the country were represented as the closing ceremony and I just thought it would be a great idea if we could get some of those scooters on display at the festival, so I started pushing the idea out there. So far around 20 of those who took part in the Olympics have agreed to put their scooters on display at Live and Kicking, this includes people from Sudbury, Colchester, Halstead, Braintree and London. The display will include some fantastic vintage scooters including a Vespa Rally 200, a Lambretta LI 150 and many more.”

Live and Kicking is now in its fourth year and will feature more than 15 musical acts over the weekend of June 22 and June 23, including the Mannequins and the Old Town Souls, both popular acts on the national scooter scene. As well as headline act Neville Staple some of the UK’s top tribute acts including those to Paul Weller, The Jam, The Who, The Commitments, The Stone Roses and Oasis will also be performing.

Richard Instance, one of the festival organisers, said: “We are delighted that part of such an historic event will be coming to Live and Kicking, it will be fantastic to have so many fabulous scooters on display. We have our best line-up to date and to have the Olympic scooters on display is a great coup for us and we thank the Sudbury Scooter Club for their hard work to make this possible.”

For more information on this year’s festival go to www.livekicking.co.uk or call the festival hotline on 07974 222 777.

Members of the media needing more information should contact Patrick Lowman of Patrick Lowman PR www.patricklowman.com on 07792 428555 or by email at patrick_lowman@sky.com