I met up with some guys who were just leaving the Royal Artillery Display Team, the Red Helmets.

With help from friends in the motorcycle industry and their retired Sergeant Major Tom Gledhill, we put a team together.

As a touring outfit we went out across the United Kingdom and Europe.

Motorcycle jumping was the big thing at the time and our top jumper, Robin Winter Smith, got in the Guinness Book of Records for an amazing ramp-to-ground jump in 1978.

For reasons that escape me now, we were called the Magnificent Seven Stunt Team, the reality being that we always needed a minimum of eight riders to perform the speeded-up army routines that became our trademark.

Some of the team performed stunt riding for a movie and we seemed to gain a lot of high-profile friends.

We had a fabulous week-long engagement on the Isle of Man during TT week, which went down a storm.

Unfortunately, soon after that, Rob perished trying to better his record.  Having lost another member, Alan Garrett, only the year before, I lost the stomach for this kind of madness.

Some of the guys carried on for a while afterwards but I lost contact with them all.

After featuring this story on my site, some of them got in touch! It was an opportunity to consider the good times and reflect on the dark times. Cathartic yet amusing, old stories re-told, with much banter!