If you’re of a certain age, and if you regularly purchased Mountain Biking UK magazine in the late 80’s and early 90’s to drool at Saracen, Muddy Fox, Kona and Marin bikes, then you’ll know who the real star of that magazine was.
Mishun H Sugworth, better known to his friends and readers as Mint Sauce, the nation’s foremost mountain biking sheep. For the past three-and-a-bit decades Mint has pedalled his way around his South Downs home, through rain and shine, good times and bad, agelessly chronicling the growth of the UK MTB scene along the way.
Mint Sauce is one of the most genuinely beautiful, touching and insightful cartoons out there, illustrated impeccably by writer and journalist Jo Burt. It’s silly, irreverent, surreal and profound and had a major impact on me as a young, bike mad lad lusting after his first mountain bike.
Now, 35 years on, our friends at Isola Press have released the first Mint Sauce anthology, a gorgeous, big thick wad of a book featuring some the most lovely Mint illustrations. It’s a thing of beauty, so when Isola head honcho and pal of HMC Max Leonard called up and asked if we’d like to his a launch event at our cafe The South Downs Social it’s fair to say we leapt at the chance.
And so it was that last Sunday we were joined by Jo, his book designer James and 45 Mint fans for a lovely, rambling evening of chat about Jo’s inspiration, honesty and love of riding. There was, as they say, a lot of love in the room for that crazy sheep and his creator.
We’ve got books on sale in the cafe, and for sale online soon. We can’t think of a better way to while away a few whimsical hours - other than getting out of your bike and joining Mint and his friends on the Downs, still getting their kicks after all these years.
