About A Buoy

Mick Phillips is the Sideburn Sub Editor. Check the small print at the front of each issue (except the first ones where we were just making it up as we went along). That's not like being a sub in football where you sit on a wobbly bench rubbing your legs all day waiting for someone to get injured. Mick is our third wheel. Without Mick, Sideburn would run off kilter into the nearest dyke. And we'd keep forgetting what semicolons were for. He does more than dot our 'i's and cross our 't's. Mick has been a motorcycling journalist in his own right for many years.
I once bought a copy of Bike magazine in Luton airport on my way back to Amsterdam after a commercial shoot. I read Mick's report on the dreary annual NEC bike show and spat my in-flight G&T over the back of the seat in front of me. I texted Gary that I wanted this twisted man on our team. Gary responded that he happened to be one of his best friends. Our office at the time was already a long open plan between Holland and England, so triangulating it to Italy was no deal breaker.
Some of my personal favourite Sideburn stories have been tapped out on his Roman keyboard e.g. Iron Maiden from SB#5, and Ann-Margret for SB#17. If you ever get to meet the man, ask him to tell you the story about the safari park monkeys who were nearly blinded by windscreen wash. You are guaranteed to spit you drink over the nearest innocent bystander. It's probably a good thing we don't actually share the same desk. BP
Oh, and Mick is 50 today. Sideburn ♥ Mick Phillips