Houdi joined the NCC back in 1992 while living in Plymouth, his first Run was Merseyside. Within his first year of Membership, he had become the Devon Rep joining the North Devon and South Devon Counties together. They had 22 Members and were custodians of the NCC National Clubhouse on the Club’s land in the North of the County.

The formative years he spent there with the Club clearly instilled a deep love of riding hard for long distances, as location required it, but also of hard partying, close Brotherhood, and a fair bit of mischief which we will not go into here! But has a natural proficiency of parking ‘borrowed’ cars on bonfires...

Houdi was invited to join Mat’s Committee in November 1996, at the age of 27. He worked hard and took his responsibility very seriously. It took Houdi a while to balance his Committee work with enjoying himself as he had in his early days, but it’s clear to the whole Club that he has well and truly mastered this now!

Houdi took over the NCC Presidency in 2011, having already served on the NCC Committee for 15 years. He had previously held the positions of Run Captain and National Secretary then served for seven years as Chris’ Vice President. Since taking the helm, he has led the Club in celebrating the monumental landmarks of 40, 45 and now 50 years of National Chopper Club at the most spectacular Mega Runs ever seen. Despite working in the Motorcycle industry and having a good technical knowledge of modern bikes, his passion is for old school Choppers; the more hardcore, the better. His main Club bike has never had an electric starter and has a very bare bones style.

He has always held strong opinions about the importance of each Member riding a unique bike, “Where’s your Chop?”. Regardless of style, he feels that no-one should have one exactly the same! Rather than creating additional Rules for NCC Members, Houdi has focused hard on applying the Rules, as they have been agreed, uniformly across the Membership. Treating everyone the same is a cause he has always pushed. He has never missed a Bank Holiday Run in all his years in the NCC and expects high levels of commitment from all NCC Members.

Houdi was responsible for relocating the Club land in the North of England. He oversaw the sale of our ‘Plainsville’ site in Yorkshire as local developments nearby had made it unsuitable for the Club’s needs, then appealed to the Club to help find us a new home in the North. He oversaw the subsequent purchase of a new site now known as ‘Area 33’ near Blackpool. The transition took many months and was the cause of a fair few sleepless nights.

As the Covid 19 Pandemic hit, Houdi was faced with making a number of unprecedented decisions. Priority number one was to keep the Membership safe; activities at a National level were suspended and meetings were moved on-line.

With money already collected for events that would now not take place, Houdi steered the Club towards using this money to ensure the NCC had something to show for the sacrifices made during lockdown, something that would benefit the entire Club, something we could all be proud of. This resulted in major improvements at the Area 33 site.

Very much a people person, Houdi’s personable and disarming nature has helped to promote ever closer collaboration across the entire organisation. He has worked closely with other Presidents to ensure that the ‘One Patch, One Club’ ethos continues to ring as true as it ever has in the expanding empire.