TOP speedway boss Eric Boocock has laid bare for the first time the details of the bust-up with new Belle Vue owner, the late Stuart Bamforth, which led to his sudden resignation at the start of the 1982 season.

England supremo Boocock quit the Aces after seven years at the helm, pausing only to pick up a file from his desk, after a build-up of tension finally exploded.

He reveals in his newly- published book that he felt fellow Yorkshireman Bamforth, a former World Stock Car champion, was the best option when Trust House Forte made it known they were looking for a buyer for Belle Vue. But they never hit it off.

Boocock's first fears about their working relationship came when Bamforth asked him to build up three bikes at his speedway shop near Wakefield while he decided which riders would use them.

He said: "That was fine until I gave him the bill. He turned very nasty and demanded to know where I thought he was going to get that sort of money from.

"I told him straight - I didn't care. He had placed the order with me and I had spent my own money on buying the parts to build the bikes. Eventually, about three or four weeks later, he paid me and only then did he get the bikes.

"I found him difficult to talk to and our relationship soon deteriorated further. I used to write my own programme notes and I took my contribution for the first meeting of the season into his office.

"He was in there with some of his workers eating lunch and someone knocked soup all over them. He told me: `Never mind, you can write them again.'"

The end came after the first meeting of the season when Boocock resigned with immediate effect. He said: "Stuart upset so many people that night I didn't want to put up with it."

Current Aces' boss Ian Thomas took over and, ironically, won the league championship with the team Boocock had built. He said: "Ian said his success had come with a side he'd inherited from me, which was nice of him."

Boocock, a former British champion who was in joint charge with Thomas when England won the Grand Slam of three World titles in 1980, talks of the night he went home and cried after popular team captain, Alan Wilkinson, broke his neck in a crash at Hyde Road in 1978.

Barrow-based Wilkinson has been in a wheelchair ever since the accident in a match against Swindon.

Boocock said: "I think that 999 times out of 1,000 you would see a rider get up and walk away from a fall like that. I was in the pits at the other end of the track and expected him to get straight back up. After all, Wilkie was regarded as the hardest man in speedway.

"He never stayed down after a fall, so when he didn't get up, I realised he must be hurt. When I reached him I asked him what was up and he said: `I've broken my ...... neck. He knew and, as they took him off to hospital, he said: `Now get this meeting won without me.'

"We won and then I went to the hospital where it was confirmed he had broken his neck. I went home, told my wife Diane what had happened, and then I just burst into tears."

Boocock also talks candidly about his regret over allowing the 1980 Knockout Cup final at Cradley Heath to go ahead in poor conditions. Star man Peter Collins suffered a serious shoulder injury which put him out for most of 1981 and it still bothers him.

The meeting had been called off and then put back on again and Boocock said: "If I knew then what I know now, I would have refused to go."

The book, Booey: Around In Circles, is published by Retro Speedway at é15.99.

BELLE Vue's Craven Shield semi-final first leg against Coventry and Peterborough at Kirkmanshulme Lane last night was called off because of Tuesday's rain.

It has been rearranged, subject to confirmation, for Monday, October 16.

The clubs meet at Peterborough tonight and Coventry tomorrow. Tweet