CYCLISTS can possess that rare knack of driving sane people berserk. Just this month I’ve survived three near crashes. But before I blow my horn let me admit something. I’m all in favour of cycling. My only issue is with those select few who seem to be making it up as they go along. Those who specialise in what I call jazz cycling.

Observe the wild, preposterous improvisation in the face of oncoming buses. Regard the directionless flailing of arms and legs. It’s as though your local roundabout has been swamped by outcasts from an indie disco. Let’s imagine, for sake of argument, I’ve just seen a student cycling diagonally across two lanes of oncoming traffic. He’s sending a text with one hand while underlining passages from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot with the other. Could it get any worse?

Actually it could. I’ve been reading into the early years of Italy’s greatest bicycle race, the Giro D’Italia. Imagine these characters unleashed on our roads and you’ll have cause for comfort.

When the Giro kicked off in 1909, cyclists would set off at dawn with a couple of litres of red wine strapped to their handlebars.

The standard kit consisted of a wooden bicycle with no gears and a pair of woolly pyjamas. Perfect for navigating your way up Italian dirt tracks.

For sustenance, it was customary for riders to store large numbers of eggs in their pockets.

These would be swallowed raw along the way. And the performance enhancing drug of choice was strychnine – rat poison.

If you think this is unusual, take note that Thomas Hicks, who ran the 1904 Olympic Marathon on injections of strychnine and tumblers of brandy, won the gold medal.

There was the sideline sport of stopping at the roadside to kill chickens. One cyclist was seen falling off his bike while attempting to eat one. It’s unsurprising behaviour. These riders, usually impoverished, were lured in by the prospect of free food and wine. Word got out. During one early stage riders were tied to trees while Italian bandits stole their clothes and rode the final few kilometres to claim the booty.

Fabulous characters emerged such as Giovanni Michelotto, nicknamed ‘The Dwarf’ and three-time Giro winner Carlo Garletti, ‘The Human Stopwatch’.

Giovanni Gerbi, ‘The Red Devil’, invented the tactic of throwing nails over his shoulder to slow down his rivals. Gerbi later had a finger torn off in a fracas with spectators.

The 1909 race was won by bricklayer Luigi Ganna. When asked how he felt about his triumph his response was brilliant: “My backside is killing me”. I can’t imagine Chris Froome coming out with that one.

Sound like a marvellous bunch don’t they? But imagine the chaos they would cause you up the Botley Road at rush hour.