After meeting at university and becoming best mates, Seb Inglis-Jones and William Stirrup swore that one day they’d run a business together. In 2018, they made good on their promise and became the proud names behind one of the finest examples of British manufacturing: Maeving motorcycles.

I meet Inglis-Jonesas he drops Maeving’s very first bike – the RM1 – on my doorstep for a week’s test ride. Tall, good-looking and exuding cool, he could not be a better poster boy for Maeving’s products. His accent reveals a classic English education, finished at Durham University. It was there, at a philosophy debate, that he met Stirrup, and they soon realised they shared a passion for music, the environment, surfing … and arguing. “We were also very good at coming to a conclusion, which we thought would be a positive in business,” Inglis-Jones laughs.

Since neither of them had an engineering or business background, they agreed to go out into the world and work for five years to get the experience they’d need to get a start-up going. Stirrup specialised in finance and Inglis-Jones in…