The rift between Lord Beamish and Lord Julian continued to grow, however, and aside from some minor consultations and statesmanship used in the development of the WarDog and Desert Fox, the Pointer marked Lord Beamish Spagthorpe’s last direct involvement in the development of Spagthorpe motorcycles (the chronology is somewhat unclear here).

The aforementioned rift may have had to do with the notorious “red/green” controversy, a controversy, as can be seen below, which continues to the present day.

One bit of controversy concerning the history of the Pointer was strangely enough the colour of the thing. Lord Julian wanted to break with tradition and paint it a bright red. The more conservative Lord Beamish Spagthorpe was furious, and demanded that the traditional British Racing Green be used. Portions of the Pointer were repainted, but the development was halted before this work was completed. Because of the unique Yuletide color scheme, and because many of the parts were scavenged from the two Irish Setter prototypes, Spagthorpe employees were rumoured to refer to the Pointer derisively as “that bloody Point-Setter.”

It should be noted that this was one of the early prototype models that had a bright red brake rotor on the left front, and had a British Racing Green brake rotor on the right front. From experimental evidence gathered from this chance occurence, the first hypothesis of the principle: of the red/green brake rotor theory was made.

This is pure American Male Cow Manure. The Red/Green brake disc colouring scheme was introduced on the far earlier Spagthorpe Rounddog. This was an experimental machine featuring the then new hydraulic system. Oil was a late addition to the system, they first used water with special patented release valves to vent the steam when the system heated up under “unrestrained” braking. Demonstrating the machine to a friend of his, the Shah of Imonaq who was interested in a fleet purchase for his personal police force, Lord Julian was embarrassed by his friend’s remarks about the left disc glowing a bright red. He quickly ad libbed about their new colour direction coding scheme. On the pretext of making an urgent telephone call, he ran to the garage and stopped the rider from riding back until the other disc was painted a glowing green. This disc’s caliper was disconnected so as not to burn the paint, and the bike was then ridden past the Shah in the opposite direction to show off the green disc.

Alas, all this was to no avail, as the Shah’s brother had shown himself up as the traitor, he in fact later turned out to be, by accepting rather a large bribe and signing up his country up for a large fleet of a rather old fashioned looking and plain motorbikes manufactured by a relatively new company called Vincent HRD. (Apparently they were never used and are reported to be languishing, still in their greased tarpaulin and hemp packings, in a warehouse somewhere in what was the old empire of Imonaq.)

I wonder if the red/green thing had anything to do with the Naval background of the family? Some rumours indicate a bastard connection between one of Lord Beamish’s ancestors and Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. (the ruler of the Queen’s Navy).