‘I’m in the magazine I kept for 40 years’

“Oh yeah – that’s cool”, says Ted Midgley talking about appearing in the Speedway Star magazine after he learnt to read a copy of the publication from 40 years ago.

The 58-year-old, who lives in Littleover in Derby, left school at 15 unable to read and relied on help from friends and colleagues, but about three years ago decided to start lessons.

This lead to him recently being able to read a column about former Halifax speedway rider Kenny Carter in a 1983 copy of the magazine for the first time.

After he told his story to the BBC, he said “the internet went crackers”, the Speedway Star got in touch and an edition with his story in was published on Thursday.

After seeing the piece about him in the weekly publication, he said “it’s quite a big article – bigger than I thought”.

As a former speedway mechanic to riders Chris Ellis and Sean Wilson between 1997 and 2011, he said it was not the first occasion he had appeared in the magazine.

But this time it was more personal.

He said: “I don’t know what I feel. I go with the flow – I’m not one of these people like ‘look at me I am in the limelight’.

“I just look at it and go ‘oh yeah – that’s cool’.

Talking about what happened after the BBC’s interview with him was shared by a colleague on Facebook, Mr Midgley, who has dyslexia, said “everyone saw it and it went ballistic”.

“My Facebook went absolutely bonkers for nearly a week.

“I was getting messages from people who know me, ex-riders and people riding now, saying ‘Ted well done’.

“It’s been quite overwhelming really – I have had a lot of high profile people in my life, my scene, say a lot of nice things about me.”