Ladies and gentlemens, pray welcome to Front End Chatter E128. Inside you'll discover presentation by the ineffable Mr Simon Hargreaves and the inestimable Mr Martin Fitz-Gibbons, plus their delightfully delictatious Mr Ben Nets, the bike insurance specialist, and wwwbikesocial.co.uk, the world of motorcycling on the webbage.

And in this episode of FEC we have:

• Mufga's riding impressions of the new Aprilia RS660 (closes eyes, makes brum brum noises)
• and SiH's riding impressions of the new Ducati Multistrada V4 (closes eyes, makes brum brum noises), in case anyone hadn't been watching Bennetts YouTube channel, reading the website or picking up just about every UK bike magazine and newspaper in the last few weeks
• Marc Marquez going for third time lucky for arm operations, while FEC will henceforth be acting as medical advisor for DORNA on the grounds we have a better handle on what constitutes fitness to ride than they do
• why we shouldn't dismiss Long Way Up with such offhand flippancy
• why do we measure bike tank size in litres and fuel consumption in mpg?
• how to – but really, why – pull a wheelie
• what should a rider do with their helmet when dismounting and walking about?
• what's the best electric bike out there, and why?
• why oe tyres might not be perfectly not great, but it's not the tyre manufacturer's fault, it's the bike manufacturer we should blame

Thanks to Bennetts and BikeSocial for their indulgence and please download FEC from www.bikesocial.co.uk if you can.

Thank YOU massively for indulging our nonsense, and please continue to populate the FEC sack with your thoughts, ideas, questions and nonsense of your own – write to [email protected] You can catch us on the socials here: @SimonHbikes

@Mufga

One more before Xmas! Yay! A Yuletide FEC.