The Johnny Brittain Story – DVD

The film consists of 105 minutes of mainly Johnny talking in his armchair with cuts to still images from the period. It’s a shame that of only three brief moving video clips I remember that we see of him, sadly two have video interlacing wobble from the film to video transfer. That’s the problem with many of these historic sporting events; there simply weren’t many of them recorded to film.

While I was watching the DVD I kept feeling that perhaps his story would have been better captured in a book, where the viewer can linger over the still images and get into the transcript of the story, creating the imagery in the reader’s mind. The publisher, Gordon May, has produced some good books on Royal Enfield and is more than capable of publishing Johnny’s story in print.

Johnny started off riding for DMW and then James, where he beat the three James works riders in his first ISDT in the 125cc class. He then started riding for Royal Enfield on the British bike that had the only swinging arm, cush drive and neutral finder at that time, the Bullet. 1950 was his first full year riding the Bullet where he managed to win a special first class gold award in the Scottish six days trial, a nine hundred mile gruelling competition.

If you are seriously into Royal Enfield trials motorcycles you will find this DVD interesting. Thumbs up for documenting his story.

Reviewed by Paul Grace