always hard to start (she breathes fire and demands miles as a sacrifice)solved

[Lawrence]

"The starter engine doesn't take that much power however the sparkplugs take a massive amount and if it isn't 100% they won't work" - not quite.

Thumbing that starter button draws a significant current from the battery (far more than people realise usually), which is then recharged when the bike is running (but requires a long enough run to recharge the power drawn), and battery voltage will drop while that button is pressed.

Which is why you can't run the starter for too long before the battery starts to die.

The fact that it cranks and cranks and then just starts up still makes me think it's electrical.  If it were fuel it wouldn't backfire or smoke, plus it should at least try to fire from the fuel that's left in the carbs.

Next time it fails to start try flicking the killswitch/key on/off a few times and try starting again.