Paisley 165

HOW IT ALL STARTED…

Paisley Vespa Club (VCB Branch No. 165)

In the year and a half since the Falkirk Vespa Club formed (in December 1959) there was nothing new in the way of VCB branches north of the border. But in the summer of ‘61, as the club in Perth was leaving the scene, a new branch was forming in Renfrewshire.

Twenty members and potential members of the Vespa Club of Scotland attended the inaugural meeting on July 6, 1961 of a new branch of the Vespa Club of Britain in Paisley - bringing the number of active Vespa Clubs in Scotland to eight (the branches at Dunfermline and Perth both having folded).

The idea for a new club and the meeting held at the Y.M.C.A. was all down to Pamela Bliss who had recently moved down from Aberdeen to take up work in the area. Five members from the Ayr Vespa Club travelled up to Paisley for that first meeting, at which Gerald Newton the General Secretary of the Vespa Club of Scotland also attended and gave a resume of the VCB and the Vespa Club of Europe which according to the August 1961 edition of Vespa News was “of absorbing interest”.

The Ayr club again travelled the forty-mile round trip a couple of weeks later for an “at home” in the Paisley club’s newly acquired clubrooms. The local press ran an article on the get-together, describing how one of the Ayr club’s members showed slides of “rallies, Canada and of Princess Margaret”. With the new clubrooms at Espedair Street being in premises owned by the Homing Pigeon Society the heading for the article in the Renfrewshire paper was “Something to ‘coo’ about’”.

The club started out by meeting every Thursday evening and in addition to a well attended Highway Code quiz, designed to test club members on the changing laws of the road, a popular subject for the initial meetings was the regular maintenance nights. To help members become familiar with the workings of a scooter the “energetic and enterprising” club captain Neil Clark produced a cutaway Vespa engine that showed in detail how the various moving parts work in relation to each another.

The May ’62 edition of Vespa News also reported how Neil Clark and fellow member Iain Graham had organised a ‘mock rally’ to prepare themselves for if the club was to ever host the real thing. During the course of the exercise “every single competitor got lost. However, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and put the unusual result down to lack of experience”.

There doesn’t appear to be any record of the Paisley club ever getting round to hosting a proper rally!

But they did get round to producing a traditional Vespa Club cog badge. With their home town being renowned for its textile industry - giving its name to the Paisley Shawl and Paisley Pattern - club members voted in favour of the cog badge simply depicting a roll of thread and needle.

And that’s how it all started! For how long Branch No.165 ran I’m hoping someone can maybe help - any information or photos, or any copies of old Vespa News from the late sixties / seventies that you wouldn’t mind scanning for any mention. I do know they existed for at least three years as Iain Graham was presented with a trophy in July 1964 for being the first applicant and first arrival for the VCB’s national rally at Woburn Abbey.

Paul Hird