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Re-Tour De Ned: ITV’s Ned Boulting returns to the stage this Autumn

Mathew Mitchell

• Published on March 12, 2022

Ned Boulting, ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator, will be returning to theatres nationwide this Autumn with his one-man stage show based on everything to do with cycling.

“Re-Tour de Ned” is a very rough guide to the tactics (pedal faster) and challenges (not pedalling fast enough) that will need to be deployed to win the biggest bike race in the world – the Tour de France.

The 29-date tour will travel up and down the country, starting at the Quad Theatre, Plymouth, Devon on 8 th  October, taking in no less than four stops in Yorkshire, and ending at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms on 13 th  November.

Ned Boulting’s love affair with the Tour de France began in 2003, and the 2022 edition will be his twentieth time working behind the mic at the world’s biggest cycle race.

“My last stage show tour was in 2018 so I’m excited to be getting back out there. Along the way, there will be time to call to mind the greatest racers of the age and to do hopelessly bad impressions of them. There will be scope to celebrate all that is French about France, and all that is Tourish about the Tour: Stuff like ignoring 12th-century cathedrals, peeing at the side of the road, pushing spectators over, punching demonstrators and generally behaving like a shaven-legged hooligan for a month while riding over entire mountain ranges! Join me for another ride through the peaks and troughs of the silliest and the grandest month of the year. I’ll hand out copious, thoroughly unreliable, advice on How To Win The Tour de France. Or if not that, then at least How To Watch It On The Telly!” Ned Boulting

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned’s Tour de France co-commentator for the last 8 years comments: “If it’s anything like the previous editions then you’re guaranteed to leave the theatre with a smile on your face. Ned provides a fantastic look behind the scenes at the Tour and you’ll get a small insight into what I must put up with travelling around France with Ned for a month every July!”

I reviewed Ned Boulting’s Bikeology stage show in 2018 after attending at Stafford – the monologues with the build-ups and crescendos about cycling were well worth seeing. I even got to join in, going on stage to answer questions against the clock and getting an autographed copy of Ned’s legendary book – How I Won the Yellow Jumper .

The 2022 edition of the Tour de France starts on 1 st  July with the first of three stages in Denmark before finishing on the Champs-Elysees, 21 stages later, on 24 th  July. Ned then has just ten weeks to write, develop and perfect the show before the first doors open on 8 th  October.

• 29 date tour starts in Plymouth on 8 th  October, travels to 21 counties across the nation, and ends in Edinburgh on 13 th  November 
• Tickets available exclusively through  www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting

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Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That coming to Edinburgh

N ed Boulting, ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator, will be returning to theatres nationwide this Autumn with his brand-new one-man stage show, Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That.

In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic and inspired his bestselling book "1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession!”

Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama and part French farce, Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.

Along the way, in an evening's odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

Following the sell-out success of his 2022 tour, this year’s 21-date circuit will travel up and down the country, visiting The Queen’s Hall Edinburgh on 2nd November .

Ned Boulting comments: “This story starts off with a bang, literally, as a bike crash left me helpless and looking for interesting projects to pass the time. The film led me on an adventure around France and Belgium trying to discover the riders and stories of the 1923 Tour de France, and following the success of the book, I’m excited to get head back to the theatres to bring this fascinating piece of history to life.”

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned’s Tour de France co-commentator said : “There is no one quite like Ned at recreating a fascinating story for the stage. Expect high production values and a stellar one-man performance that is brilliantly written and executed, appealing to both cycling enthusiasts and keen theatre goers.”

Tickets available exclusively through this link HERE.

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ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator Ned Boulting is returning to theatres across the UK with his one-man stage show… ‘to provide a fresh assault on your cycling senses.’

The ‘Re-Tour de Ned’ is billed as… ‘an indispensable theatrical road map for anyone aspiring to wear the yellow jersey on the Champs Elysées: a really very rough guide to the tactics (pedal faster) and challenges (not pedalling fast enough) which will need to be deployed to win the biggest bike race in the world.’

The 29-date tour will travel up and down the UK, starting at the Quad Theatre, Plymouth, Devon, on 8th October, taking in four stops in Yorkshire, and ending at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms on 13th November.

Boulting’s love affair with the Tour de France began in 2003, and the 2022 edition will be his twentieth working behind the mic at the world’s biggest cycle race.

Ned Boulting said “My last stage show tour was in 2018; so I’m excited to be getting back out there. Along the way, there will be time to call to mind the greatest racers of the age, and to do hopelessly bad impressions of them.

“There will be scope to celebrate all that is French about France, and all that is Tourish about the Tour: stuff like ignoring 12th century cathedrals, peeing at the side of the road, pushing spectators over, punching demonstrators and generally behaving like a shaven-legged hooligan for a month while riding over entire mountain ranges.

“Join me for another ride through the peaks and troughs of the silliest and the grandest month of the year. I’ll hand out copious, thoroughly unreliable, advice on how to win the Tour de France. Or if not that, then at least how to watch it on the telly!”

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned’s Tour de France co-commentator for the last eight years said “If it’s anything like the previous editions then you’re guaranteed to leave the theatre with a smile on your face.

“Ned provides a fantastic look behind the scenes at the Tour and you’ll get small insight into what I must put up with travelling around France with Ned for a month every July!”

The 2022 edition of the Tour de France starts on 1st July with the first of three stages in Denmark before finishing on the Champs-Elysees, 21 stages later, on 24th July. Ned then has just ten weeks to write, develop and fine-tune the show before the first doors open on 8th October.

www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting

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Ned Boulting's Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That

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Ned Boulting returns again! But this time he’s 101 years too late for the 1923 Tour de France!   In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic, and inspired his bestselling book '1923!”   Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama, part French farce, Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.    And along the way, in an evening's odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Poga?ar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

Ned Boulting

Ned Boulting is a British sports journalist and television presenter best known for his coverage of football and cycling.

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Ned Boulting set for Tour de France stage show this autumn

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Ned Boulting, ITV's lead cycling commentator, will be returning to theatres nationwide this Autumn with a one-man stage show based on his experiences covering the Tour de France.

The cunningly entitled "Re-Tour de Ned" is billed as "an indispensable theatrical road map for anyone aspiring to wear the yellow jersey on the Champs Elysées".

In the show, Ned offers a rough guide to the tactics (pedal faster) and challenges (not pedalling fast enough) needed to win the biggest bike race in the world.

The 29-date tour will travel up and down the country, starting at the Quad Theatre, Plymouth, Devon on 8th October, taking in four stops in Yorkshire, and ending at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms on 13th November.

For full dates and tickets, visit www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting .

Ned's love affair with the Tour de France began in 2003, and the 2022 edition will be his twentieth working behind the mic at the world's biggest cycle race.

"My last stage show tour was in 2018 so I'm excited to be getting back out there," says Boulting.

"Along the way, there will be time to call to mind the greatest racers of the age, and to do hopelessly bad impressions of them.

"There will be scope to celebrate all that is French about France, and all that is Tourish about the Tour:

"Stuff like ignoring 12th century cathedrals, peeing at the side of the road, pushing spectators over, punching demonstrators and generally behaving like a shaven-legged hooligan for a month while riding over entire mountain ranges!

"Join me for another ride through the peaks and troughs of the silliest and the grandest month of the year. I'll hand out copious, thoroughly unreliable, advice on How To Win The Tour de France.

"Or if not that, then at least How To Watch It On The Telly!"

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned's Tour de France co-commentator for the last eight years, comments: "If it's anything like the previous editions then you're guaranteed to leave the theatre with a smile on your face.

"Ned provides a fantastic look behind the scenes at the Tour and you'll get small insight into what I must put up with travelling around France with Ned for a month every July!"

The 2022 edition of the Tour de France starts on 1st July with the first of three stages in Denmark before finishing on the Champs-Elysees, 21 stages later, on 24th July.

Ned then has just ten weeks to write, develop and perfect the show before the first doors open on 8th October.

Tickets are on sale now at www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting .

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Ned Boulting's Marginal Mystery Tour

Ned Boulting returns again! But this time he’s 101 years too late for the 1923 Tour de France!

In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic, and inspired his bestselling book “1923!”

Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama, part French farce, Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.

And along the way, in an evening’s odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

By purchasing a ticket to this event you are agreeing to adhere to Islington Assembly Hall’s terms and conditions: https://islingtonassemblyhall.co.uk/customer-terms-conditions-2022/

Stage times are posted at 11am on the day of the show on our website.

All tickets to shows at Islington Assembly Hall are subject to a Venue Levy of £1 + VAT. As a Grade II listed building, this levy will be reinvested into Islington Assembly Hall and its services, meaning the customer experience can continue to be enhanced.

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Ned Boulting

Ned Boulting has covered the Tour de France for UK broadcaster ITV since 2003 and is now the channel's lead commentator for the race. He's the editor of The Road Book Cycling Almanack, the author of several non-fiction books about professional cycling and co-host of the Never Strays Far cycling podcast with former pro rider David Millar.

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To celebrate the launch of the this year's edition of cycling almanack The Road Book , we asked commentator and editor Ned Boutling to weigh in with his top five  weird and wacky   moments of the road season this year.

With the book chronicling the epic highs and lows of the season, brilliant first moments, history being made, and capturing the minute details we can so often overlook. 

Here Boulting remembers the moments that gave him the biggest laughs, that highlight the fun and the joys of the sport. 

Julian Alaphilippe’s crash at Strade Bianche

Of all his crashes, this one at Strade Binache was the greatest. It was a crash of three parts. A nine from me for artistic interpretation and a nine for technique. Hard to see how he’ll improve on it next year.

Pidcock and Wout van Aert’s Existential Crises

Both riders had days in the saddle where you could literally see how little they could be arsed with their allotted task.

For Wout van Aert , this came on stage five of the Tour de France, when he nearly managed to disappear under the wheels of a team car, before briefly looking like he was about to abandon.

In the case of Tom Pidcock , it happened in the pouring rain on stage one of the Tour of Britain. He dropped off the back, and then magically appeared at the front to finish fifth when he remembered what his job was.

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The voice of road cycling – the Ned Boulting interview

Sometimes I wonder whether you actually need to have an interest in road cycling to enjoy watching Le Tour de France. The build-up, the spectacle, the stories, the anticipation we watch on our TV screens, surely these elements of Le Tour are fascinating for everyone? Award-winning sports journalist Ned Boulting was never a road racer. Before landing a job as ITV’s lead commentator on Le Tour de France, he was better known for his coverage of live football… and darts. He’s written several books and he’s the editor or road cycling almanac The Road Book, which is packed with insightful essays, data from every single World Tour race in the calendar, team profiles and more. Ned’s at home in south east London when we speak on the eve of his departure for commentary duties on the Giro d’Italia.

What are your predictions for this summer’s tour.

“Did you ask David (Millar, his co-commentator) the same question? I wonder if we’ve said the same things! Tadej Pogačar , he will come back and he will win. I actually don’t think that Jonas Vingegaard – who won last year – will ever win it again, but I’ve got no real reason for saying that, it’s just a hunch. I could be completely wrong. Pogačar will win yellow, I think he’ll accidentally win the white jersey also, I think this is the final year in which he’ll qualify for that because he’s still an under 25 rider. And I think he’ll accidentally win the polka dot jersey; I say accidentally because the polka dot jersey used to be a separate prize that could be contested by riders in breakaways but the way that they have, in recent years, distributed the points on offer, it tilts it in favour of the GC riders overall. It’s a bit of a shame really, but if you look over recent years, very often the polka dot jersey has been won by the wearer of the yellow jersey , which is a bit of a disappointment and I think that’ll happen again this year. I think the green jersey can be won by no other rider than the man who won it last year, who is Wout van Aert , I think it’s just perfectly suited to him.”

The Road Book has become such a significant part of road cycling in recent years, what actually is it?

“The Road Book does for road racing what Wisden has done for cricket over the course of the last 150 years. We can’t claim to have been around for 150 years, this is only the sixth year of our existence, but it struck us a few years ago that it’s absolutely staggering that a sport as complicated and intricate and as important as road racing simply didn’t have it’s own printed document, bound together, including everything that happens in a year of the sport. So it’s really, I suppose, a 900-page luxuriously printed, hard back annual love letter from us to the sport that obsesses us. And it’s also a stubbornly analog product in a digital age. It offers the aficionado – the people who get the sport – the option to browse through history and to relive it in a much more leisurely and receptive way than just simply scrolling around on a tablet or surfing the internet.It’s to be opened with a glass of wine, sitting in front of the fire, four years after the event. Our first edition came out in 2018, which was an extraordinary year from a British perspective, because every single Grand Tour was won by a British rider, which was quite incredible and was the first time it had happened. Thomas won the Tour de France , Froome won the Giro d’Italia , Yates won La Vuelta a España , so that almost feels like a bygone age and it’s only six years ago. The lesson we’ve learnt about The Road Book is that the further back in time it is, the better it gets, like leaving a bottle of good wine in a cellar for a decade and then taking it out. It matures and gets better with age. It’s nostalgic and gains quality.”

Sport talks a lot these days about GOATS (Greatest of All Time). Is it fair to compare modern day cyclists with the riders of yesteryear?

“On the one hand it’s not fair because road racing is not football, it’s not cricket, it’s not contained within a stadium. The game itself isn’t confined within a prescribed time with clear rules. In other words, if you take the Tour de France , it’s unrecognisable now from the early years, it’s a completely different thing. And in fact it’s pretty much unrecognisable from the 1980s, which were pretty much unrecognisable from the 1960’s. The sport shape shifts all of the time and if you take the 2022 tour for example, there were almost no time trialling kilometres in it, the lowest amount in the entire history of the race. They have tweaked the rules of the game in order to produce a particular result and that’s been the case for the last 120 years of Le Tour. In the years when Jacques Anquetil was dominating, or Eddy Merckx , they were doing it under a different set of rules. The nature and the tactics were markedly different from what they are now. It’s a nonsense to try and compare across the generations. It’s interesting though and I think right now there’s a genuinely interesting debate being opened top on whether Tadej Pogačar , who is this phenomenal rider and not just at the Tour de France, whether he genuinely is the first rider to come along since Merckx and do the things that Merckx was doing. That’s the question that’s been hanging over road racing since he retired, who will be the next Eddy Merckx ? No one has come close until now and Pogačar is breaking the rules of modern cycling, we’ve never seen a rider like him. You could build a case that Pogačar is on his way to becoming the greatest ever road racer.”

Le Tour can be baffling to watch, what insight can you give us into the roles within a cycling team?

“Every single rider has a different role in the eight man team, and that’s complicated enough. But then every team has different ambitions in the Tour de France . There are some teams who’ll only be looking at one part of the race, other teams who are looking at a different part and each team is slightly differently constructed, so it’s like going to the football World Cup, each nation has 11 players on the pitch, but one team is looking to do something entirely different, so they’ve packed their whole team with defenders. So it’s complex and it’s the only sport I can think of where it’s both an individual sport and a team sport and that confusion is what keeps the tension in a race very often. That’s never more apparent than when you have a team where two riders could potentially win the Tour de France . And it happened in 2012 when Bradley Wiggins won Le Tour. Was he the best rider on Team Sky back then? Probably not. I think Chris Froome was, and that played itself out in quite dramatic fashion in the Alps when they attacked each other on La Toussuire. You’ve got to sacrifice your chances in order for another rider. But you can’t win it without the support of your team; only truly exceptional riders – possibly Pogačar – can do this without his team. Even though you’re the star that’s paid millions of Euros, you’re the star that will stand on the podium in yellow in Paris , you can’t do it without everyone supporting you. So you have to be a natural leader of many as well. The psychology of what goes on – and don’t forget that it’s not over in 90 minutes plus extra time, this thing takes weeks – and you’ve got to live with your teammates and share rooms with them in Campanile hotels up and down the country. They share rooms! It’s like a pressure cooker that they live in, it’s relentless so the psychology is as important as the physiology.”

There’s so much money in road cycling these days, has it changed the sport for the better, in your view?

“No. It’s hard to make a case for that, unless you happen to be a sportsperson competing in road racing, in which case you’d say, emphatically, yes. But that’s not how I see it from the outside at all. For many years, before cycling took over my professional life – which it has done now, I worked in football for ITV Sport, covering the Champions League and the World Cup . Year on year I became more and more jaded by the experience of dealing with the vested interests of football clubs because frankly, they have so much money, the levels of controlling behaviour and paranoia that swept around the sport became totally suffocating. A little bit of that we’re beginning to see in cycling, but for me, coming from football, cycling still has an endearing amateur heart. Even though some of these young men are incredibly rich, the rewards are quite rightly ridiculous at the top level of cycling. At the bottom level, I mean it shelves off pretty quickly, you’ll have riders at the Tour de France on $60,000 a year – quite lot of them actually and equally, they’ll be rubbing shoulders for three weeks with riders who are on $3-4-5-6 million a year. It’s extraordinary.”

Did Team Sky change professional cycling in your view?

“They’ve had a profound impact, which has almost backfired on them now because they led the way for the other teams – they set the blueprint and arrived, by chance, at a particular moment in the development of cycling. When L ance Armstrong finally quit the scene, what followed in his wake was basically a power vacuum in a profoundly corrupt peloton. Doping was catastrophically rife, technology hadn’t caught up with the dopers so they were getting away with it. When that all collapsed, they needed something else to come in and what was unique about Sky was that their sponsor was a huge, monolithic media organisation who put a substantial amount of money in. For a long time they were the best funded team. And that changed everything, because the previous model of sponsorship had been relatively small French or Italian grout manufactures or tile makers or aluminium smelters and they did not have the heft economically, nor did they have the imperative to protect their image like Sky had, to dictate the terms of the peloton. And Sky went in and said ‘so you think you can win the Tour de France, but do not drag us down with you. You cannot afford to be cheating here, this has to be a clean sport’. Arguably you have to question whether everything Sky did was above board, but certainly in broad terms, the peloton is now so much cleaner than it was 15 years ago. It’s now considered too unprofessional to take the risk of doping, whereas literally 20 years ago if you were riding clean, you were the person who was unprofessional. You’d be harming the prospects of your team and therefore the livelihood of your teammates if you weren’t doping. In its place we have a cleaner peloton. A lot of what Sky did was really straightforward. They did a thing called training, which sounds ridiculous. Prior to Sky, not all of the teams would have prolonged training camps, they’d have the bare minimum, riders would be left to their own devices. Sky had the budget to get everyone to Tenerife for a month. And now a lot of the teams have copied that model. As it turns out, practising something a lot makes you better at it! I’m exaggerating slightly, but Sky did professionalise what was a pretty amateur sport at that point.”

How does the Tour de France compare to other sporting challenges, in your view?

“There’s no comparison. It stands alone. I’ve talked about how much it’s changed over the years and at the risk of contradicting myself, it still has, contained in its heart, the extraordinary ethos of the very first Tour de France in 1903. The first stage was 468km long, started in the middle of the night and finished when it grew dark the next day, riding bikes that had only one gear on gravel roads. It went from Paris to Lyon and something of the insanity of that challenge remains today. It still boggles and bewilders that this is even a possibility – every day they get up and they do it again, and again, and again. And of course Le Tour isn’t just about the physical challenge, it’s a celebration of the country of France, it’s a cultural juggernaut. It was quite specifically designed by its founder to bind the different parts of France together and to introduce the idea of nation-hood. There’s a very big political message behind it as well. Le Tour has such a rich history and some of its greatest champions died for France in the first world war. Because it isn’t in a stadium, you don’t walk through a turnstile to get into this separated environment in which most sports take place, the stadium is the open road, the country is the stadium and its uncontrollable. Even in the modern era, the one thing you can predict about each year of the Tour de France is that something unprecedented will happen, and you can’t know in advance what that’s going to be. It’s a set of chaotic circumstances, like trying to catch water in a sieve, something will go wrong. The inflatable arch collapsing on a rider in the moment they pass underneath it for example.”

Are you ever concerned by how close the crowds get to the riders while you’re commentating?

“That’s being going on for 120 years. The riders used to find themselves being sabotaged by opposing supporters, Eddy Merckx was denied the opportunity to win his sixth Tour de France because a spectator jumped out of the crowd and punched him so hard in the kidney, it was ruptured. This has been happening for as long as the Tour de France. There’s no answer to it, there’s no way you can take the crowds away. You can’t police an entire mountainside. The crowds will always be there and it’s just part of the spectacle.”

The background commentary during Le Tour is as much a part of the broadcast as the thrills of the race. Where does all the info come from?

“Television commentary teams are given this huge book, which has been prepared by the ASO, organisers of the Tour de France . It’s filled with information about all the little places that the race goes through and it’s incredibly badly written. So the challenge is that they give us a whole paragraph about a basilica for example, and I’ve got about eight seconds to say something genuinely informative and interesting about that basilica. The skill is actually in doing the research ahead of time, to pick out which bits are actually of interest. Often none of it is of interest, so you know that a particular basilica is going to be part of the coverage that day, I do my own research and then I feel confident in delivering the line. Each morning, before the stage starts, I will spend time researching and that’s my responsibility as the lead commentator, more than it is David’s. He’s there to break down the tactics of the race, I have a lot of responsibility to shoulder in terms of the future of the race and I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about what we might be seeing that day. Once you’ve been doing it for a good few years like I have – this will be my 21st Tour de France – despite the fact that the race route changes every year, it does come back and visit places so you build up a kind of reservoir of knowledge of certain places that we see quite often. I’m genuinely interested and I take that side of my job very seriously and I try and do my best but it’s not easy.

Here’s a good example, and I really have to credit David for this. Each year the Tour takes a different route into Paris and in the final stage they’ll approach the Champs-Élysées in a different way. In 2020 we’d looked at the route and it struck us that they were coming right next to Notre-Dame cathedral; this was the first time since the fire that Le Tour would pass by, and so knowing that was coming, I spent quite a bit of time researching on what was going on with the restoration, what the plans were. And when it came to it, we were both really surprised that there were absolutely no helicopter shots of Notre-Dame , we didn’t see it at all, which was really surprising. And then, mid-commentary, David suddenly said – and I’ll never forget it – ‘I understand now, Notre-Dame , for France, this is too soon. They’ve taken the race right next to the cathedral, quite deliberately, but they’re also withholding the sight of this wounded building within the heart of the capital city deliberately. It’s too raw, when Notre-Dam e is ready, we’ll see it again’. The Tour de France is still used to talk about France and the meaning of France to this day, and that’s entirely in keeping with the founder’s ambitions 120 years ago.”

“Le Tour isn’t just about the physical challenge, it’s a celebration of the country of France”

How important is it that the Tour de France Femmes is a permanent feature in the road cycling calendar these days?

“It got off to the perfect start last year, it produced the right winner, the riders finished wearing the right jerseys and it produced some really good racing, which is not a surprise to me because women’s racing is very dynamic and exciting. So it looks like it’s here to stay. Obviously cycling is a very difficult financial proposition to keep afloat because you don’t sell tickets. Everything is reliant on exposure, which ultimately boils down to television viewing figures. If they don’t quite stack up then the enterprise can collapse quite fast. The Tour de France Femmes got off to a robust and healthy start and I’m fairly confident that, within a relatively short space of time, it’ll become a solid two week race and eventually a three week race. Build it slowly, the women’s peloton doesn’t have the strength and depth of the men’s peloton because of the financial structure in place. There aren’t currently enough elite, top riders to fill a three week race right now, and of course there are other races in the women’s calendar too. It seems extraordinary that it wasn’t always here, it’s almost indefensible, but this is progress and we look forward rather than back.”

We see some pretty shocking environmental stats thrown at Le Tour each year. What can be done to clean things up, in your opinion?

“People focus, quite rightly, on the caravan of vehicles that accompanies the Tour de France , the media, television trucks, the police motorbikes, helicopters, team busses, team cars, add it all together and its a colossal enterprise with a big carbon footprint. But that pales into insignificance when you stack it against the number of spectators who follow Le Tour in their camping cars, arriving on flights; those element never get addressed. I don’t think either of these things are stoppable or replaceable at the moment. The technology isn’t here to use drones to replace helicopters yet, you can’t rely on electric vehicles yet, maybe you can in a few years time and certainly that should be the ambition. But that’s not the whole of the argument. I do believe – because I’ve witnessed this in my own life – that there’s another meta level. Le Tour de France is the global, annual shop window for the bicycle. It’s the thing that people who aren’t even into cycling associate with the bicycle. Like in London, you’re riding around and you get white van man shouting ‘who do you think you are, Bradley bloody Wiggins?’ because of the Tour de France. If Le Tour doesn’t exist in the public consciousness, the bicycle does’t exist. This event is a global reminder that there’s this unreal invention, its over 150 years old, its barely changed, it still has a chain, two wheels and a saddle, that can do these things. I’m living proof of that, I didn’t have a bike 20 years ago when I was first sent to commentate on Le Tour; I had a car, came back and bought my first bike and now I don’t even have a car. I go everywhere around London by bike and I’ve only done that because of Le Tour. That message is being disseminated globally via the shop window of the Tour de France and that’s not inconsiderable. I don’t think it’s a total defence of the environmental impact, but I think it’s a thing that people need to remember.”

Which are your favourite stages on the route each year? Which areas are you looking out for?

“The bits of France that I love. I get excited when we go back to Brittany, it means so much to me. There’s a familiarity about certain places that I love. Biarritz, I love it there. Don’t take this the wrong way, but have a slight preference for the Pyrenees over the Alps because I don’t go skiing, I’m not a winter sports guy. So my only experience of the Alps is July during the Tour de France and it is carnage. Getting off Alpe d’Huez can take over three hours, and I see it on the route and I think really, again? Because I know what it means. I love going through the Massif Central, some of that is incredibly beautiful.

It’s a very odd route this year, it slices a diagonal route from the Pyrenees to the Alps and kind of ignores everything north of that line, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And that’s the other thing that we always look at, what are the transfers between stages like, because they can kill you. You’re so tired by the end of the second week, you finish work and you’ve been commentating all day and then you plug in your GPS for your next hotel and it’s 350km away. These days we have a driver with us for Le Tour. I leave tomorrow for the Giro d’Italia , and we’ll be driving ourselves. Commentators are quite selfish people so the transfers are important to us. The last transfer after stage 20, normally that’s a 600km drive to Paris. What’s amazing about that is you set off about 6pm in the evening, you know you’re not going to get there until gone midnight and as you get closer and closer to Paris, it’s late, the only vehicles left on the road are Tour de France vehicles and there’s lots of them. But then you see, always coming in from the south, your first glimpse of the Eiffel Tour with the search light on the top and it just never fails to mean so much to all of us. The ex-riders that I work with like David, Pete Kennaugh, those guys who’ve experienced what it’s like to race the Tour de France, they’re as emotional at completing another lap of France for the TV. It feels like we’re all part of the same journey.

How do you occupy yourself when you’re not commentating on road racing?

“Road racing is my favourite sport to commentate on, but my next favourite is darts. I recently wrote a book about it called ‘Heart of Dart-ness: Bullseyes, Boozers and Modern Britain’. But the hilarious thing is that they’re at the complete opposite ends of the sporting spectrum. I don’t think you could get any further removed than darts and cycling. But there you go, they’re the two sports that I love. Half of my life is sitting at this desk writing, I’m as passionate about writing as I am about commentating on the Tour de France. I’ve a book coming out in June called ‘1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession’. It’s as much about history as it is about the Tour de France so I’m seven or eight bike books into my writing career. I enjoy it as much as commentary, I’d be bereft if I lost either of them actually. I also enjoy my speaking tours and I’m thinking about doing another one in 2024.”

David Millar asked us to ask you what it’s like working with a former pro-cyclist?

“You need a profound understanding of the disparate phycology of a human being to have any possibility of controlling the mood swings of a professional cyclist. They are uniquely constructed as human beings and those us who haven’t been professional cyclists can’t even begin to understand the world they inhabit. He’s the best co-commentator in the business.”

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Ned Boulting - Ned Boulting's Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That

Tour synopsis, cast & creatives, cast/performers, tour details for ned boulting - ned boulting's marginal mystery tour: 1923 and all that 2024, dates for ned boulting - ned boulting's marginal mystery tour: 1923 and all that (one person show) tour, qr/qtix links.

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The Visual Pulse Of London

Ned boulting’s marginal mystery tour: new london dates announced.

Ned Boulting, ITV’s lead Tour de France commentator, will bring his brand-new one-man stage show, Ned Boulting’s Marginal Mystery Tour: 1923 And All That, to London this autumn, with dates confirmed for Islington Assembly Hall on 28th October and The Clapham Grand on 11th November.

In his latest celebration of the greatest race on earth, Ned delves into the hidden mysteries of a mysterious roll of film from the 1923 Tour de France that fell into his possession during the Covid pandemic and inspired his bestselling book “1923!”

Part detective story, part murder mystery, part costume drama and part French farce. Ned weaves his own typically ridiculous story into the astonishing discoveries he makes about the hidden world of the 1923 Tour de France, its characters and tragedies, and ties it all together with the wild upheavals of Europe in-between the wars.

Along the way, in an evening’s odyssey, he draws a connection between the heroes of yesteryear and the champions of today, from Cavendish to Pogačar and beyond! It’s a touching, hilarious, fascinating journey that bounces between the centuries, but always has Le Tour at its very heart.

Following the sell-out success of his 2022 tour, this year’s 22-date circuit will travel up and down the country, starting at the Hertford Theatre on Tuesday 22nd October, and ending at the Bromley Churchill Theatre on Wednesday 20th November.

Ned Boulting comments: “This story starts off with a bang, literally, as a bike crash left me helpless and looking for interesting projects to pass the time. The film led me on an adventure around France and Belgium trying to discover the riders and stories of the 1923 Tour de France, and following the success of the book, I’m excited to get head back to the theatres to bring this fascinating piece of history to life.”

David Millar, former pro cyclist, and Ned’s Tour de France co-commentator said: “There is no one quite like Ned at recreating a fascinating story for the stage. Expect high production values and a stellar one-man performance that is brilliantly written and executed, appealing to both cycling enthusiasts and keen theatre goers.”