The Johnny Kay touring bike on Ebay is very typical of the sort of frame that Johhny was best known for...531 tubing and almost inevitably, Nervex lugs.
His frames were very very popular in the 50s and 60s with club and racing cyclists from east Lancashire, in the large mill towns such as Burnley, Blackburn, Bury, Clitheroe, Nelson etc. ..say 20.30 miles est of Manchester.There was in those days a very distinct loyalty among riders with the Manchester riders using Johnny Berry, Berry and Bentley, Stenton Glider and a dozen or so other locally -built frames, while the others on the slopes of the Pennines and in the Ribble valley rode Kays , Ossie Jacksons, Cusworths or one of the many continental frames imported by Jackson or Jack Spencer .
In the 50s and 60s Johnny Kay had his own three-man semi-Pro/Independent team amongst whom featured Alan Ramsbottom, a sewing machine mechanic, who like Brian Robinson before him and at about the same time as Tommy Simpson and Barry Hoban, left the UK to try his hand at pro-racing on the continent, spending a shsort time with gemin iani before having his best years with the Sauvage-Lejeune team as a team-mate of Henri Anglade. Alan's best ride was probably his 16th on GC in the 1963 Tour de France after having been placed 3rd for a short while. He also did good rides in some of the Clasics such as Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Alan celebrated his 70th birthday about six weeks ago..and can still be seen, occasionally, pedalling around the Lancashire dales and valleys on his Johnny Kay. Somewhere on Google it should be possible to find an interview with Alan about his days in the continental peloton, and , as I recall, he literally rode off to find fame and fortune, leaving his close friend, Jack Spenser's kitchen, on his Johnny Kay
Johnny Kay frames were never fancy frames there were more precisely well-crafted purpose-built machines. It is a tribute to that quality of the build that they are still regular sights among the Youth Hostelling fraternity and those "hard men" who still go to work on their bikes instead of in an SUV.
Norris Lockley...Settle,in the Ribble Valley, UK