This is a history about how the club started and how it has progressed over the years.
Pete had been a member of the Barrel Bikers for ages but with them you had to rejoin every year and his membership had lapsed. He was involved in the Triumph owners at the time so he wasn't necessarily worried about rejoining. If you get a chance to speak to him, what he doesn't know about British bikes ain't worth knowing. Well anyway Jez and Ian wanted to join a bike club to get more involved in the bike scene. Pete said he would take them along to one of the Barrel Bikers meetings and introduce them to the members with a view to joining and to rejoin himself. Sooty (Sooty's Customs) was the chairman at the time and they were made to feel very welcome, a very friendly bunch the Barrel Bikers. They were put up for membership. They went along for a couple of months and got on with everybody. In fact the Crazy Diamond MCC have had a very friendly link with the Barrel since the early days of the club. The idea of setting up our own club started in April 1993 when Ian, Pete and Jez were at the Boat Inn in Stoke Bruerne. This group of bikers came in (Nice Bikers MCC I think they were called). All riding touring style bikes. Well if they could start a club I'm sure we can and thats how the seed was sown. We told the Barrel at one of their meetings that we were thinking of starting our own club in Northampton and made a quick exit.
Pete who is the chairman has been in and out of bike clubs for about 30 years so it was up to him to lead us in the right direction. Jez was going to be the vice chairman and Ian was the secretary. First of all we needed a name. Well you would think that it would be easy to pick a name, well think again, we all came up with list that we thought would fit the bill. Jez came up with 'Devil Slaughterers' and 'Virgin Deflowerers' but we thought that made us sound a bit poofy. Not that there is anything wrong with being poofy its just that we all liked women. Some of our members have been a bit suspect mind you but thats another story. Pete came up with the name 'Leather Chaps' which we thought was a bit hardcore. His argument for this name was that we are all chaps and we like to dress in leather but we were not going to be called the 'Leather Chaps' and that was final. While we were deliberating round Jez's house his missus who was listening to Pink Floyd on the headphones said what about the Crazy Diamonds. Well we all fell about laughing at such a ridiculous joke name. It wasnt until later that we realised it wasn't too bad after all. We took the 's' off the end and called ourselves 'CRAZY DIAMOND MCC'.
With that done, we now needed to sort out rules. I think we went a bit mad on rules to start with but we were picking it up as we went along. We don't have any rules anymore. It has worked for the last 8 years with no problems. We advertised in the Mags that we were starting a club, where we met, what night the meetings were on and that all were welcome. We got some strange people who came along to the first few meetings. Some of them are still members to this day. We celebrated our tenth anniversary a couple of years ago now and it was a great night. There are some photos somewhere. The membership has gone up and down over the last twelve years, the most we had was about 30 members. We have an AGM every year but the committee does not change unless the person in the job wants to stop doing it. In fact Pete and Jez have kept their jobs since the club started. Ian gave up his job after about 6 years as secretary and became an ordinary member for a few years. The secretary job has been done by a number of people since (Gary, Barry and now Carol) all of which are still members of the club. Gary lives in Holland and is our unofficial overseas member. We have introduced 2 new jobs as well since we started putting on events of our own. This is a rally rep (Mike) and a treasurer. The treasurers job became vacant this year. Barry has took this job on, and is now a committee member again. Ian who has been the secretary and the treasurer in the past has always designed and printed all the stuff the club has produced over the years. He has designed and maintains this website.
As I said before some of the people who turned up to the first few meetings are still members or are friends of the club. We decided after a while that we would not just have anybody in the club. At first we took on a lot of members to build up the numbers of the club and it got a bit too big very quickly. This was a bit of a nightmare to start with. This is when we decided that only after a long period of us meeting a prospective member would we even consider asking them to join. There is no time limit for this period, but if they fit in well and get on with everybody then there is no reason why they shouldn't be asked to join. We are more like a group of very good mates than a club.
For membership queries or details contact us.
