The NEC again hosts the International Motorcycle and Scooter Show, to give the full name, and as usual the great, glamorous, gargantual, gregarious and, occasionally, grotty turned out in force to see what was around.

And the answer, to be brutally honest, was not a lot. Of course there were new models on display. Of course there were lots of staggeringly attractive young ladies (and a fair few men this year, too) with remarkably little clothing. And of course there were the obligatory celebrity visits, both from biking and the outside world.

But despite all that there were several notable absences. Moto-Guzzi. Aprilia. MZ. Peugeot. Sachs. Benelli. MV-Agusta. And the people that were exhibiting, though the stands were as great as ever, seemed not to be as crowded as usual. Which makes the show a far nicer place to visit, of course, but must get the money men scratching their heads rather. After all, this is supposed to be a bouyant market. We can't blame everything on a damp summer, can we?

So let's have alook at what was on offer. Ducati surprised several people with an orange Multistrada. Orange seems to be the new black, for big pseudo-trailies, anyway. This particular Multistrada was the new 620 and it sat beside a very purposeful looking Multistrada S, complete with Ohlins suspension and all the trimmings. Talking of trimmings, elsewhere on the stand there was a nicely tricked out 999S. Nicely tricked out to the tune of around £21,000 in extras. That's on top of the base bike. In the photo there's about £12,000 alone - £10500 of which is the fork kit...

Honda had little new to show but the 2005 colour schemes look good - far better in the flesh than in print. Kawasaki have the new ZX6-R which looks much like a shrunken (yes, really) ZX-10 and should be very good indeed.

Yamaha have thrilled us all by actually producing the MT-01. And it looks sensational. The race version on display is just beautiful, and even the standard road bike has a fantastic level of detailing. We really can't wait to get hold of one to test...

Harley Davidson haven't got anything new to show us except for colour schemes. No change there, but the stand is always a nice place to be with decent music and bikes well laid out and easy to see.

BMW, of course, were dominated jointly by the K1200S which drew a lot of attention and the R1150 Adventure of round the world rider and TV person Charlie Boorman, who of course rode with Ewan McGregor in their epic "Long way round" adventure. It was very interesting to see a stripped K1200S and a working model of the suspension - lots of the black art of BMW peeled back in one go.

Suzuki, as always, have a stand dominated by sportsbikes. The new GSX-R 1000 looks brilliant in the flesh and should be a class leader, but for me the best looking bike of the show was the anniversary GSX-R 750. Built to celebrate 20 years of the model, this is painted in the original and best blue/white colour scheme and simply looks a million dollars.

And finally Triumph. the new Sprint ST, Speed Triple and Daytona all look fantastic, but pale into relative obscurity next to the behmoth that is the Rocket 3. Gosh it's big.

The show closes on Sunday 14th November but if you have a chance to go you should take it. Especially without the crowds...