I MET Roger Davies on a cycle ride, halfway up the North Yorks Moors.

Nothing unusual there you might think.

However, whereas I had the standard two wheels, his cycle only possessed one.

The Northern Echo:

Unicycle.com staff, from left, Nick Curwen, Paul Stacey and MD Roger Davies. Picture: Stuart Boulton

Roger, I was to learn, runs Unicycle.com, a huge exporter of, you guessed it, unicycles, based in Billingham.

Roger, and a fellow franchisor in the USA, have 14 outlets worldwide, and sell thousands every year to all corners of the globe. How about Antarctica? I ask. “Yeah, I think I’ve sold one there,” he says confidently.

A product designer by trade, Roger not only sells unicycles, he races them and is taking part in the World Championships in San Sebastian, Spain this coming week, otherwise known as Unicon.

The Northern Echo:

Roger out training on the North Yorks Moors

Our meeting on the Moors during the recent Stockton Cycling Festival was part of his training regime.

“I have always ridden a unicycle, since I was a kid,” he tells me. “You couldn’t buy a decent one so I designed and made one out of carbon fibre. I went to competitions and got a reputation for having a really nice unicycle.

The Northern Echo:

“I got a phone call one day from a guy in America saying ‘I have bought this domain and am thinking about selling unicycles online, can I buy a unicycle off you?’.

“I told him no and ended up buying the domain and now work with a team in the US running 14 companies around the world.”

Roger said the key to designing a good unicycle was being able to ride one.

“We know about unicycles because we ride them. We know what bits need to be strong, which bits needs to be that shape or this shape. We know the important of good saddles and where to spend money and where not to,” he says. “They are designed by riders and they are the best in the world.”

If you think one unicycle is very much the same as another you would be wrong.

The Northern Echo:

“There is every type of unicycle that there is conventional bike,” says Roger. “There’s the road unicycle, there’s the children’s unicycle, there’s the baby unicycle – we do one for 18 month olds kids. You have freestyle unicycles, which is like ice-dancing.”

A key market for Roger and his company is Japan.

“In Japan every child at school gets given a unicycle,” he tells me. “It’s something you can’t do instantly. No one can get on one and ride it straight away. It’s something that needs dedication, you need to work on it and they have this philosophy that it’s good to push children and give them something at five, six and seven, that is really hard.”

Worried it’s dangerous? Roger says don’t be.

“It’s considerably less dangerous than a normal bike,” he assures. “If you fall off a bike you rotate around the front wheel and go head first into the ground. When you fall off a unicycle it falls away and you drop to the ground. Unicycle injuries are like tripping up. We have wrist problems, but head injuries are relatively rare.”

Want to join Roger’s revolution? There’s only one proviso.

“I would expect every one who works here to learn to ride, or at least attempt to,” he says. “Every single person who picks up a phone here is able to ride a unicycle, even the accountant.”