The village of Hoo sits on the forgotten, salty fringe of Kent where the Thames mudflats meet the Medway and the air smells of dogs, diesel and chip fat. This is Privet Drive country: neat semis with Transit vans parked nose to tail, St George’s flags flapping limply, and a brittle sense of tight, intra-village pride.
At the far end of a private, single-track lane stands the clubhouse in which I am standing. Music blares from a rental PA system, rattling the chipboard walls. Men in leather vests with face tattoos hold pints in each hand. Kids run around the sticky carpets.
Inside the toilets, the walls are a palimpsest of numbers: endless iterations of “81” graffitied in red spray paint. Eight and one. H and A. Hells Angels. The shorthand symbol for the most notorious motorcycle club in the world.
I was, as Danny Dyer would say, on their manor.
Before you think I’ve gone deep undercover into a fearsome motorcycle gang — relax. This isn’t some Sons of Anarchy infiltration. The Hells Angels MC Kent — Motorcycle Club, an official affiliated sub-division of the pan-continental mother club — were having a party. A party open to the public, a get together, a knees-up, a look-at-us-we-aren’t-so-bad Kentish Garden Party.
There were promises of a bike show, a raffle and a bouncy castle. Kids were welcome. Journalists, not so much.
But I have a passing interest in old cars that could reasonably extend to bikes, and my editor packed me off with a wink and an instruction not to get caught. “My address is on Companies House, Jack,” he added, before hanging up. A line which he is definitely going to cut from this lest any disgruntled Angel reading think he needs a talking to.
What fascinated me was the outsized reputation the club possesses, living rent-free in our imagination as the Fearsome Biker Gang — a product, no doubt, of drip-fed cultural Americana. What were they doing in England? And more importantly, why were they throwing a party?
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