The Myway Code by Ian Vince and Dan Kieran - Classic Motorcycle Book Review

11th April 2007

The Myway Code by Ian Vince and Dan Kieran
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A spoof on the Highway Code? Sounds great. But Jim Peace didn't get too many laughs out of reading it...

I use my local charity shop as a library. I buy a book or two, read them, and then give them back. This way I donate a few bob to Cancer Research, and don't clutter the house up with piles of books.

So it was with great delight that I recently picked up a copy of 'The Myway Code', by Ian Vince and Dan Kieran. It's a take-off of the Highway Code, and lavishly illustrated.

This has been done before. In the 1930s, when the first Highway Code came out, a parody was produced called 'You have been warned' by Fougasse and McCullough.

It was very amusing. I had a copy for years until my dog ate it.

The Myway Code is rather more recent, and here's what its publishers have to say about it:

'The Highway Code' is Britain's best selling non-fiction book, and in 2006 it was exactly 75 years old. Isn't it about time that the old codger got out of the driving seat and let the real rules of the road take over?

'Enter "The Myway Code", the shifty, wayward offspring of the original that has priority over all oncoming vehicles and is set to drive itself to the top of the charts faster and harder than is legally appropriate.

'Written and laid out in a style which will be familiar to anyone who has seen, and therefore failed to read, the official book, "The Myway Code" puts its foot down and its finger up, as it rips up the L-plates and tears up the road like an XR3i full of feral children on alcopops.

'The Myway Code is written by Ian Vince (Britain: What A State, Channel 4) and Dan Kieran (Crap Towns, Crap Holidays, I Fought the Law) and is in bookshops now.'

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But, and I write this with great reluctance, 'The Myway Code' is just not funny. I had assumed, having once been a Driving Examiner and having an ongoing interest in all things motorised, that I would really enjoy it.

Instead this book pushed no buttons at all; I found it boring, dull, and full of clichés.

It may, of course, be me. And I don't want to be too unkind when the authors have clearly put a lot of work into it. So may I suggest you buy a copy, read it, then give it someone as a present. Or give it to a charity shop. You may even find it funny.

Reviewed by Jim Peace

'The Myway Code' by Ian Vince and Dan Kieran

Published by Boxtree Ltd, ISBN 0-7522-2620-7

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