Kevin Ash

Kevin Ash, who has died aged 53, was for 15 years the motorcycling correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, bringing readers an unrivalled expertise and converting many into armchair, or even actual, bikers.

A great number of the latter were of the “born again” variety – middle-aged men who had dabbled with motorcycles in their youth but then put them aside, only to be fired with enthusiasm by Ash’s columns and coaxed back into the saddle. For though he was a fearsomely talented rider himself, Ash was never condescending about the weekend amateur. Indeed, in the 1990s he presciently foresaw the coming popularity of leisure biking, and his rise through motoring journalism coincided with the rise of that trend.

To those new or long-lost bikers baffled by the often nerdish complexities of modern motorcycling terminology, he provided guidance and succour. He knew which bikes readers should or would be interested in, and those that they could forget. Such clarity and broad appeal drew in even those who knew they would never kick-start anything more powerful than a lawnmower.

For Ash himself, however, such vicarious thrill-seeking would never suffice. He always, relentlessly, wanted to be in the saddle, and had done from his earliest years.

Kevin Charles Ash was born on December 10 1959 in Ilford, Essex, to Margaret and Dennis Ash. His father worked in insurance and, after his parents moved to Suffolk, Kevin won a scholarship to Ipswich School.

From the outset his overriding passion was for cars and motorcycles. As a boy he acquired a scooter on which he suffered countless scrapes. Accordingly the machine was perpetually being taken apart and repaired. Naturally enough, when Ash went up to Imperial College, London, it was to study Engineering.