My weekend
Motorcycles dictate my life, to a degree. All my life I’ve been in love with motorbikes. And I’ve been lucky to bring my hobby in to my work. So I’m always looking for excuses to mess around with them.
I do off-road racing at weekends. I have a friend in Wales so we’ll do some dirt bike racing down there. Or if it’s a beautiful day we’ll ride down to Brighton along country lanes.
I’ve just started building motorbikes. They’re modern bikes but made to look old, like 50s, 60s and 70s style bikes. So with my friend Roy we spend a lot of time messing about doing that.
We’ll go out with a few friends, including Ewan (McGregor) if he’s around, then have dinner and few drinks.
On Sunday I’d doss around with the kids. I have two girls, aged 12 and 14. They both ride motorbikes. If we go down to my father’s place in Ireland they doss around on the first bike I ever had.
Or we’ll play a bit of tennis. I quite like the Tate Modern and we go there sometimes. They like it because there’s some really fun stuff that goes on there.
On Sundays we’ll do the family thing, which I love because I travel a lot and that’s one of the things that I really miss. We sometimes go down to (wife) Olly’s parents’. Her mum makes the best roast potatoes in the world.
We love entertaining, having friends round for Sunday lunch, for a traditional roast. And lots of gravy, rich gravy.
I don’t watch much television apart from films. I’m a big movie buff. I’m an actor really. I started as an actor a very long time ago. My father (John) was a film director. He made films like Excalibur, Deliverance and Hope and Glory.
I had a small part in Deliverance when I was four. When Jon Voight comes back to his family there’s a little boy sitting on the sofa. That’s me.
I was given a tricycle for that. Maybe that’s why I love motorbikes.
I watch all genres of films, from Avatar to Milk. I see a lot of kids’ movies because my kids like to go and I go with them a lot.
I’m not a big sitcom fan but I do like Frasier, that makes me laugh and Scrubs is hilarious.
I’ll read everything from Harry Potter to Zen Of The Art Of Motorcycling. And I like travel books. There’s one called Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon about a guy who travels around the world on a motorbike in the 70s.
I listen to a lot of music. Anything from Stereophonics to The Who, Rolling Stones, Kasabian. I listen to a lot of music on the bike.
And I listen to audio tapes on long trips. Stephen Fry’s Harry Potter books are fantastic. His voice is absolutely mesmerising. I listen to one of them riding through Africa.
I’m quite dyslexic so it works really well for me.
I do a bit of jogging to keep fit. It’s the quickest and easiest thing to do to get it over and done with. But riding a bike is a good workout as well. If you do a few hours on a motorcross track it’s a fantastic workout and you’re having really good fun doing it.
My perfect weekend would be to go out on a Friday night with some friends to a restaurant. Maybe do some riding at some point, doss around with the kids and then have a lovely Sunday lunch. That would be perfect for me.
Charley Boorman brings his stage show to the Royal Concert Hall next Friday, March 12. For tickets call 0115 989 5555. Full details of the show can be found at wwww.charleyboormanlive.com
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