Vroom, vroom, vrrrrooom

BBC NI are said to be ‘in a state of panic’ after it emerged that the man who makes motorbike sounds for TV coverage when the biking season is at its peak has retired today, leaving the station without a recognised motorbike voice-over.

Mike ‘Vroom Vroom’ Morgan from Cookstown, who has been making bike sounds since 1969, was said to be struggling with the lower-pitched 1000cc engine noises in recent years and producers had voiced fears that he wasn’t changing gears with the extreme precision like when he sounded for the smaller, higher-pitched 125cc races before 2010.

However, his retirement leaves the BBC in a pickle with the North West 200 on the horizon. A BBC insider told us:

“This has knocked us for six. What a lot of people don’t know is that the braaaaaap braaap braap that you hear on the TV isn’t the real noise of a motorbike. That’s Mike Morgan in a studio in Portrush. The real noise of a bike is kahoo-kahoo-kahoo-kaWOOahuhukaWrrrrrooyooyooha-kahoo-kahoo and it doesn’t come across that well on the screen.”

Morgan, who also made galloping noises for the BBC’s coverage for the Grand National from 1967-1999 before he was sacked for a fit of coughing as the leaders went over Beecher’s Brook, has promised to whistle-blow on a few other small jobs he does that he was told to remain secret about, including the sound of the clack of the balls during a snooker match and the sound of animals during Countryfile.

“I’m going to blow this establishment wide open. Did you know that some of the matches in the NI soccer league are attended by no one? I’ve been asked to do crowd sounds for the Saturday results show and they use computer generated images of spectators from matches in Sweden and Azerbaijan. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

Morgan’s autobiography ‘Vroom Vroom around Toome’ is out next month.