After leaving school in the summer of 1946, Mike started serving his apprenticeship with Dennis Bros of Guildford. He used his 1939 250cc OHV Triumph to get there each day. For some reason, part of the work involved assembling lawnmowers with JAP engines - and even those got raced a bit as they were driven to the paint shop!

In 'Challenge me the Race', Mike recounts how one day he decided to drive one of the Dennis lorries, of which there were plenty: this one was partly assembled ready to go to the body builder. Unfortunately he hadn't noticed that the body panels were stacked looose on the back - he had to stop suddenly while accelerating down the yard and one of the panels came off and landed at the supervisor's feet....

At the end of the apprenticeship, he moved to Kingston Technical College and then the College of Automobile Engineering at Chelsea. Shortly after that, racing came to the fore and the rest is history.

Eagle Comics produced a two page entry about Mike in 1956 - here is one of the illustrations showing him while at Dennis!

The two photos below come from sometime in 1958 and show Mike at an event hosted by AEC. We have no information on this so far - can anyone help? He appears to have been involved in a 'test' of some sort and is obviously presenting a trophy to a member of staff.

Raymond Baxter is holding a microphone at the extreme right so the event must have had some significance! The local Mayor is also there... Both Mike and Raymond have signed this photograph