Bradley Wiggins

Theatre Royal, Brighton, Monday, September 30

BRADLEY Wiggins, “Wiggo” to his friends, retired from professional cycling three years ago to focus on family.

One of the UK’s most decorated athletes (and a knight), he won the Tour de France in 2012, and Olympic Gold for Time Trial the same year.

With Channel 5’s genial Matt Barbet hosting the Q and A, and with a surprise question from Sean “The Animal” Yates who was in the audience,

An Evening With Bradley Wiggins held some fascinating insight into the life and thoughts of a determined and thoughtful elite sportsman.

Wiggins’ upbringing on a Kilburn housing estate instilled a disregard for celebrity and the idea that anyone is better than anyone else, and has given him the motivation to use his retirement to retrain as a social worker.

He wants to show young people living in poverty how to use their passion and skill to elevate themselves.

Cyclists in the audience would have been astounded by the wattage exerted by Wiggo in his time trialling (470-490 or seven watts per kilo), non-cyclists by the fact that he prefers cheese and onion crisps to salt and vinegar.

Then there’s Wiggo the music fan. A mod at heart, he lays claim to a long-standing friendship with mod-father Paul Weller, and taught himself to play guitar well enough to join Weller’s band onstage.

A decent guy, Wiggins isn’t one for throwing his cycling colleagues under the bus and so any salacious gossip was neatly skirted. He wasn’t that into Lance Armstrong when everyone else was is all he’ll admit.

Maybe the most endearing marker of Bradley Wiggins’ humility is the fact that he keeps his medals, including the Olympic gold one, in a Co-op carrier bag - although, if we’re being mischievous, he has also spent £45,000 on a cycling jersey.

Kirsty Levett