“Inoffensive viewing for the Lycra-clad centrist dad” is how The Telegraph summed up Two Men On A Bike, the new More4 show in which comedians Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel chat their way through a 500km cycle trip through southern France. Inoffensive? We’d have thought The Telegraph might take issue with the presence of an e-bike.
The premise of Two Men On A Bike is that friends and former Mary Whitehouse Experience colleagues Dennis and Baddiel pedal their way through the French landscape, stopping at local sights and just generally chatting with each other.
Baddiel told The Radio Times that the idea for the trip was Dennis’s.
“For about two years he’s been trying to get me to go on this cycle ride in France with him, and I’ve been saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’
“Then suddenly he announces it’s getting commissioned as a TV show, and I wake up and ask, ‘Sorry, how long is the journey?
“He says, “Oh, just 500km,” and I say, ‘no.’ Then I ask if I can do it on my electric bike.”
This was a wise move. According to Baddiel, “Hugh’s incredibly fit, and has actually ridden the open stage of the Tour de France. So if I’d used a normal bike, it would have been just him talking and me panting – which would be a shame, because the show is partly about us having a lovely chat, and friendship, and men finding a way to talk to each other.”
The e-bike in question is the quirky-looking VanMoof X4, the Dutch brand’s 24in wheel model which boasts a rear hub motor, 478Wh battery and automatic 2-speed hub gearing.
It also features the brand’s Turbo Boost feature, which delivers on-demand acceleration up to the 25km/h assistance limit, so long as you’re pedalling.
“I was, basically, on a moped,” said Baddiel – who, as a comedian, has no particular motive to talk these things down in interviews. “My e-bike has a ‘turbo’ button, and if you use that, you’re expending no effort at all – you’re essentially on a two-wheeled Tesla.”
It is, in fact, a lot less dramatic than he makes it sound – except in the sense that it allows him to more easily keep pace with Dennis and so makes the whole trip viable. Early on, we see him slip behind after dropping to a lower assistance level before ‘boosting’ his way back to his companion. (As you’d imagine, Baddiel’s usage and non-usage of the Turbo Boost button appears to be a recurring topic of conversation during the ride.)
As is always the case with these sorts of programmes, your enjoyment will largely hinge on your feelings about the two men involved, but it’s a pretty good advert for e-bikes. While Dennis has completed the Tour d’Etape, Baddiel claims his longest-ever ride before the trip was from his home in North London to Wembley, also in North London.
Baddiel’s e-bike means that these two cyclists of very different ability can undertake a long and leisurely ride together, neither getting frustrated with the capabilities of the other.
It sounds like Baddiel was glad he went along. “I wasn’t a big Francophile,” he said. “I always preferred Spain or Italy, but now I think I was wrong.
“The part we were cycling [mostly along the Canal des Deux Mers, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean] is so beautiful. The food’s lovely, the small towns are amazing, and it’s very zen, because the canal creates this sense of endlessly flowing water.”
At the time of writing, with only one episode broadcast, the impact on his appetite for e-biking is less clear. He said if he did the trip again, he’d take a bucket “in which to bathe my aching undercarriage.”
Two Men on a Bike is broadcast on Mondays at 9pm on More4 and is also available via Channel 4’s streaming service.
