Playing with the boys

When Olga Kevelos (who would become a well-known figure on the 1950s trials circuit) was a child, she wanted to be a pirate. Not just any old pirate, either. Olga’s pirate was a knife-bearing, knife-wielding heroine with a fleet of rigged ships.

She also fancied herself as a private detective and even created her own mocked-up business card that read: Olga Kevelos, Private Detective and Tap Dancing Teacher etc.

The ‘etc’ is especially important: if the adage ‘variety is the spice of life’ is true about anyone, it would be true about Olga. Her life – including her romantic conquests – was one long ‘etc’ list.

Thanks to the deeply insightful book Playing with the Boys: Olga Kevelos – Motorcycle Sportswoman by Colin Turbett, we are privy, for the first time, to fascinating personal diaries, scraps of doodles, letters, certificates and press cuttings from all stages of Olga’s diverse and interesting life.

Olga was, aside from being a seriously competitive – and very attractive – gold star-winning trials rider, Mastermind contestant, pub landlady, the canal equivalent of a Land Girl during the Second World War, a member of the British Astronomical Society, journalist, traveller and something of a female Casanova. Even Tony Blair would later quiz Olga on her Mastermind specialism in later life. But more of all that later…

Olga was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham on November 6, 1923. Her father was a wealthy Greek businessman and her mother a housewife.

Colin said: “Olga was a very spoiled and indulged child who, to a great extent, ruled