Career
He invented the SOS racing bike in 1926. In 1999 he was awarded the Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire for being Britain"s oldest worker and in 1999 he also became the oldest subject of This Is Your Life. When Len was a youngster, his six older brothers ran two garages in Birmingham and they made him a small motorbike.
They used to take him to Sutton Park and taught him how to ride lieutenant
He was too young to fight the First World War, though he drove a munitions lorry at 14. He lost one brother on the Somme and another was invalided out of the forces.
In the Second World War, he was pronounced unfit to serve by doctors who, as it turned out, were all to die before him. When he was 26, he designed and built a motorbike.
The frame weighed 19 lb and cost 19 shillings.
lieutenant was so light, that he took out a world patent on lieutenant When they had met, she was just a country girl who was staying with the parents of a friend of his. She was 16 and he was 10 years older, and when he took her to the pictures, it was to silent films.
He proposed to her after they had been going out for three years.
They became a formidable business team, both being workaholics and living above the shop. They had some land where they were going to build a house, but even when they eventually became millionaires, they decided not to move.
They bought more property - another three shops and a showroom and two or three smaller companies. Foreign two years he simply could not think straight, and that was when the business went through tough times.
But eventually he got over his problems and threw himself back into his work, labouring on his bikes even at night.
Despite his commitment to motorbikes, Len was not quite so keen on the automobile age. He once said in an interview:
He continued to ride until the age of 102. He died in 2004, shortly before his 104th birthday.
