Jeremy - The Times

[RedMoon11]

Up Next On Radio Against Racism, The New Hit From the Loony Left Lynch Mob

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 18 May 2014

Last weekend we learnt that after playing The Sun Has Got His Hat On a BBC Radio Devon veteran of 32 years called David Lowe was taken outside by a vigilante group of liberals and shot in the back of the head.

Apparently the second verse of this song, which is about as well known as the second verse of Auld Lang Syne, or the national anthem, contains the n-word. So anyone who plays it is basically Hitler.

I’m in the same boat. A couple of years ago, while delivering a piece to camera, I quoted the rhyme Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe. I knew full well that this contains the n-word and I also knew that its use today, by a middle-aged white man, is deeply offensive. That’s why I mumbled it. And it’s why, a few weeks later, when I realised the mumble wasn’t quite good enough, I replaced it in the edit suite with the word “teacher”.

However, even though the word was neither enunciated nor transmitted, I too fell foul of the liberal lynch mob and forever more shall be thought of as racist. Which, excuse the language, pisses me off because actually I’m not.

In my book it works like this. I can make jokes about Americans and Germans and the French — the Greeks too at a pinch — because none of these people have been persecuted. But I cannot make jokes about people who have. Which is why, after the Top Gear Mexican brouhaha, I went to see the country’s ambassador in London and apologised. That was my bad.

I think the vast majority of people in Britain think along the same lines. Which is something of an achievement because we grew up with Wing Commander Guy Gibson’s dog, the Major in Fawlty Towers and the film Blazing Saddles.

We’re still not perfect. Black, Jewish and Asian people living here all have their own horror stories. But look at it this way. In Spain they are still throwing bananas at black footballers. On the eastern side of the EU racism is rampant. Africa is full of it. And America? I was there fairly recently with a black sound recordist and even in the middle of supposedly enlightened northern California he was afraid for his life.

Which brings me back to David Lowe from Radio Devon. I’m pretty sure, having studied photographs of the man and all that he’s had to say about his sacking, that in the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers there is no pointy white hood and that in his garage there’s no big cross pre-soaked in kerosene. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that at night he drives around Tiverton beating up what used to be called gypsies.

However, because he played The Sun Has Got His Hat On, he was fired for racism. Which raises the question: where exactly is the bar?

Only recently I was criticised for calling my new scottie dog Didier Dogba. “You’ve named your black dog after a black football player,” liberals screamed. “You are Reinhard Heydrich.” No, I’m not. I like the dog very much and it seems fitting, as a Chelsea fan, I should name him after a man whom I believe to be an all-time great.

What would you have me do instead? Name him after a white player just because he’s black? Call him John Terrier? Well, sorry but I wasn’t thinking about the little mutt’s colour. Because, as I said earlier, I’m not racist.

Not that long ago a girl was subjected to abuse because she had called her dog Toby. Can you see what’s wrong with that? No? Well, it turns out that in the 1970s novel and TV mini series Roots the plantation owner changed the name of the slave character of Kunta Kinte to Toby and since then it’s had racist connotations.

This is the problem anti-racist campaigners face. Extremists among them are looking for racism where it simply doesn’t exist. They are branding people racist for saying they want to vote UKIP. Or because they are flying the British flag outside their houses. And everyone is starting to find it annoying.

Anti-poverty campaigners have much the same problem when they point at a family in a council house in northern England and say earnestly, “These people are living below the poverty line.” And we’re all thinking, “Hang on a minute. We’ve just watched a report from the refugee camps in Jordan and you’re trying to tell us that this family, which has a plasma TV and access to the NHS, is impoverished. Go boil your head.”

That’s how I felt after I read about the David Lowe saga. And it’s how many felt after I was taken to the cleaners. Even in the Mirror, which broke the story, a poll showed more than 80% of its readers thought I should keep my job. That’s not because they all like me, or Top Gear. It’s because they are fed up with what they’d undoubtedly call political correctness gone mad.

I feel sorry for those old ladies who listened to David Lowe’s show. I see them sitting in their old people’s home, on their wipe-down furniture, wondering why that nice Mr Lowe isn’t on the wireless any more. “I liked him, Enid. He played proper tunes, not like the rubbish you get on other radio stations.”

How do you tell octogenarians that the “proper” tunes they speak of are racist? And that by liking them, they are racist too?

I wish the racial harmony campaigners well. They have an important job. But they need to realise that playing The Sun Has Got His Hat On is not the tip of a sinister iceberg, and that there’s a lot of ground between calling your dog Toby and being a white supremacist.

Because if they don’t, the next time they complain that a Pakistani shopkeeper has been beaten up for being a Pakistani, half the country will shrug and say, “Oh, there they go again.” And that would be a shame.
 
www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1411587.ece


www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIpkz6DOi8

[RedMoon11]

Disco Flash Dash With A Slow Waltz Engine

Published: 25 May 2014


Mini Cooper, £15,300

I’M NOT quite sure why cars have to look so brutish. And why any attempt to make them look smiley or cuddlesome always ends in catastrophic failure. The Nissan Micra is a good case in point here. “Ha!” we laughed when we first saw it. And then “Ha!” again, when the company offered it in Katie Price pink.

BMW has softened its cars a very great deal in recent years but today even the models that are powered by electricity are still designed to look as though the body has been stretched to its limits to cover the wheels and the engine. It gives the impression of a nightclub bouncer, his suit barely containing his gigantic muscles.

In fact there’s only one BMW that does not do this. The X3. And that’s why stylistically it is a sad, sweet dreamer. One of those things BMW can put down to experience. A Noddy car.

When a car is designed to look like a big cat of some sort — and many have been over the years — it’s not the feline grace that stands centre stage: it’s the haunches. Because it’s the haunches that hint at the power and the speed. That and a low, snuffly nose.

Any car that looks sweet looks wrong. Because sweet is weak. Sweet implies that it may cry soon and want to watch a romcom. And nobody wants that. Not even sweet people who watch romcoms. Like I said at the start, I don’t know why.

At this point you may be jumping up and down while pointing at the picture that accompanies today’s column. “What about the Mini?” you’ll be squeaking. Everyone likes that. Yes, I agree. But only if it’s festooned with stripes and snazzy decals and various other things that make it about as sweet as a plate of underdone beef.

Even if you’re a 22-year-old girl who works in a nail salon you are buying a Mini because deep down in your limbic system you know its predecessor won the Monte Carlo rally three times. And because it used to give much more powerful American muscle cars a bloody nose at the Crystal Palace racing circuit.

I will admit, however, that in the vast horde of motoring animals the Mini is different. It looks friendlier than all the other cars. More puppy-dog sit-up-and-beg. It’s a clever trick. But only if, like a puppy dog, it’s capable of biting your ankles . . .

Which brings me on to the new model. It’s longer, wider and a smidge taller than the already quite large previous model, which has caused many to wonder whether it can realistically be called a Mini any more. Well, you can wonder all you like, but the reason it’s bigger is because it’s almost impossible for a small car to meet the EU’s new safety requirements. The downside of living after an accident is that you can never find anywhere to park.

Actually I’m not that bothered by the increased size, but I do wonder why it doesn’t translate into extra space on the inside. The back seat is small and the boot is a joke. You open the gigantic tailgate expecting to find a Victorian’s ballroom in there. And it’s more like an After Eight box.

There’s something else too. The new Mini Cooper comes with a 1.5-litre three-cylinder engine. It’s very clever and almost certainly runs on polar bear drool, and it’s surprisingly refined. But powerful it is not. That body and that name and those stripes are all writing cheques that the engine cannot cash.

The figures suggest that all is well. They say that the body may be bigger than before but that it’s lighter. They also say there are plenty of torques and lots of juicy horsepower, but when you put your foot down it’s about as exciting as being in a deep, dreamless sleep. It steers nicely, handles well and despite the wood-hard run-flat tyres the ride is compliant as well. But there’s no point having the ability to go round a corner at two million miles per hour when the engine’s all out of ideas at 42.73535mph.

And trust me on this, you can be that accurate about the speed you’re going because the car I tested was fitted with three speedometers. There was one where you’d expect, and another — as an option — in a fighter-jock head-up display, and then another, surrounding the big, dinner plate-sized command and control centre.

Though to be honest this speedo in the middle of the dash could be all sorts of other things as well. Many things. All of which were startling and completely unfathomable. Suddenly, and for no reason, it would turn orange. Occasionally it would flash madly. And then it would go all pastel and lilac. After many days I worked out that it did this as you approached a turning you needed to make. Lilac: the internationally recognised “alert” warning colour.

“Oh no. We’re at Defcon 4. Sound the lilac alert.”

Then, whoa, what’s this? One of the orange lights to the right of the first speedometer has just gone out. What could that mean? It turns out this is part of the fuel gauge — a fuel gauge that, incidentally, is bigger than the actual fuel tank. You’ll be filling this car up a lot.


The Mini’s instrument panel and array of lights can be confusing

Hand on heart, I have never driven such a confusing car. I appreciate that it always takes time to adjust, as when you switch from a PC to a Mac, but I never did get to grips with the Mini. One button turned on the anti-collision system and then, when you pushed it again, you got a message saying you’d turned it on again.

Another engaged your iPod. But then no matter what I did with it, it wouldn’t play any of my tunes. Then you have the Sport, Mid and Eco mode switch. Play with that and you’ll do two things: go more slowly, and send the third speedo into a New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour Bridge frenzy.

I liked the old Mini. I thought it was a hoot, a clever blend between serious and not serious at all. A Steve Coogan car — half Martin Sixsmith, half Alan Partridge. One minute you were hurtling along at a million and the next you were being let off a parking ticket because, well, because it’s a Mini. This new one, though? Hmmm. Some of the cheekiness — and practicality — has gone because it’s now so big. And I really can’t get my head round the blend of that Cooper name and a three-cylinder engine. It would be like calling your 15ft single-screw cabin cruiser “Thunder Rider”.

But I can quite understand why you aren’t listening. I could explain until I’m blue in the face that the Ford Fiesta is a better car and that the Fiesta ST is one of the all-time great hot hatchbacks. But you want a Mini. I get that.

So. It’s probably best to spend a bit more and buy the Cooper S, which has a 2-litre engine and therefore plenty of oomph, or save a bit and buy either the basic One, or even a diesel. Certainly I wouldn’t bother wasting your cash on too many of the options or you’ll end up with what the company sent me: a £25,000 mobile discotheque.

Mini Cooper
Engine
1499cc, 3-cylinder
Power
134bhp @ 4500rpm
Torque
162 lb ft @ 1250rpm
Transmission
6-speed manual
Acceleration
0-62mph: 7.9sec
Top speed
130mph
Fuel
61.4mpg (combined)
CO2
107g/km
Road tax band
B (free for first year; £20 thereafter)
Price
£15,300
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
It’s not mini and it’s not a Cooper either


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1413421.ece

[RedMoon11]

A-Level Question 1: Who the Heck Cares Ed Doesn’t Know the Price of Lentils?

Published: 25 May 2014

All next week, thousands of children will turn over their exam papers and realise in a sickening, gut-wrenching heartbeat that all their hard work for the past two years has amounted to nothing. They’d been told to expect a question on the Seven Years’ War. They’d learnt all the dates and about all the people involved. But instead there’s a question about the financial implications of the French Revolution. And they don’t know anything about that.

We feel sorry for them because we’ve been there. In the only A-level exam I remembered to attend I spent the entire 90 minutes writing what I thought was an excellent essay on the impact of the trade union movement in Britain, and then, with 30 seconds to go, I turned over the paper where it said “Question 2”.

It’s a horrible feeling; the moment when you know that instead of going to university you will be a tyre fitter.

And so it goes with poor old Ed Miliband. Last week he went on breakfast television to talk about his vision for Britain. Doubtless he had learnt off by heart all the soundbites that had been dreamt up by his policy aides. He’d practised his sincere face in the mirror. And worked hard on how to drop the “t” from various words to make him sound more Thames estuary. He was ready for anything.

They could have asked him about the capital of Bulgaria and he’d have known. Or how to crush garlic properly. Or what to do if a horse gets sweet itch. But no. Instead he was asked how much his family spent each week on groceries.

After years of claiming that Conservatives were a bunch of out-of-touch Old Etonians, he knew that if he said he didn’t know he’d be called a hypocrite. Nor could he say that his wife did the shopping, because that would be even worse. And as a Labour leader he couldn’t do what Boris Johnson did and say, “Well, I know what I pay for champagne.”

Miliband was stuck. And to make everything more terrifying, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the camera’s red light was on. What’s more, its iris was moving as the director zoomed in a bit. One drop of perspiration and he’d had it. One “er” and all of his revision would have been for nothing.

Like all medium-level students he waffled for a bit before saying it could be £70 or £80, and there was a pause, presumably while the producer fed the correct answer to the interviewer. And . . . it was a disaster. Because he was claiming that somehow he was spending £20 or £30 less each week than the average family. Which seems unlikely as he lives in London where even a piece of cheese is £162.

He knew straight away that his dreams of power had been dashed on the orange and purple rocks of morning television and that the “Et tu, Brute?” he did to his brother had been in vain. But there was no time to dwell on the disaster because outside, a car was waiting to whizz him off to the next exam, which was on Swindon.

Here, on BBC Wiltshire, he’s ready. He knows the town’s croquet team were beaten in the first match of the season. He knows that local golfer David Howell is fit for the PGA championship at Wentworth. And that the name of the town means “pig hill”.

With the horror of the morning behind him he settles into his chair and the exam begins. Question 1: “Jim Grant — do you think he has done a good job?”

Ed has no clue and has to admit as much. Which is a disaster because Grant is the leader of the town’s Labour party. He’s the man Ed has come to Swindon to support.

Ed is flustered. He says that the man he’s never heard of is doing a good job as leader of the council. And that makes everything worse because he’s not the leader of the council — it is under Tory control. This is a catastrophe.

Or is it? Because you know something, Ed? I’m glad you don’t know how much you pay for your lentils and your chickpeas or whatever it is you all eat in north London. Anyone who counts the cost of their grocery bill each week is the sort of person who, when asked to share the bill in a restaurant, says, “But I didn’t have any pudding.” And we don’t want people such as that in No 10.

It’s enough that you know there’s a gap between earnings and the cost of living. And why should you have heard of Jim Grant? No one else has. Apart from Mrs Grant.

As we move into general election season there will be a lot more of this; people asking politicians damn fool questions and then reeling backwards in a pantomime display of mock incredulity when they don’t know the answer. “You want to be prime minister and you don’t know how much watercress costs!”

You may as well turn it round and ask voters about economics. “What? You’ve never heard of John Maynard Keynes and you expect to have a say in who runs this country?”

The truth is — and we all know this — that the supermarket shop costs what the supermarket shop costs. It’s more when you have to buy razor blades than when you don’t. It’s less if you’re going out a lot that week. Or if you’ve decided to grow a beard. You just hand over a debit card and that’s that.

This, though, is the problem we face with our politicians. They think it all hangs on a smile and a tie. But in their quest to appear nice and personable and ordinary, they look like freaks.

And as all the country’s A-level students know, it really doesn’t work when they answer a question that hasn’t been asked. If you’re asked about 18th-century French chancellors, it’s no good waffling on about the Seven Years’ War or the workers’ control of factories. Because if you do, you will fail and your school will drop down the league tables.

That’s both a metaphor for the Labour party. And a column for another day.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1414427.ece

[RedMoon11]

There’s a Damn Reliable Chap Beneath the Stripy Jumper

Published: 1 June 2014



SO, GOOGLE has built a driverless car and straight away we are faced with a big question. Why? Fifteen years ago I flew in the cockpit of an Airbus all the way from Chicago to London and after putting the jet on the runway the pilots didn’t touch any of the controls once. The plane took off, levelled out and then landed all by itself.

So why were the pilots there? No, really, why? Around two thirds of all plane crashes are caused by pilot error. The chap up front with the Rothmans and the smooth, comforting voice is by far the weakest link in the entire process of flying. So why not get rid of him?

Easy. Because would you get on a plane that had no humans in the cockpit? You know that if you hit a hill on your way to Greece it’ll almost certainly be his fault but despite this you trust him more than the computers that have been designed to do his job.

It’s much the same story with trains. We know from the monorails you find at various airports that technically it’s possible to do away with the trade unionist in the cab. We know this would make travel safer, and less likely to stop because of a strike. But if the Tube train pulling into your station had no driver you’d be uneasy about getting on board. I know I would.

So there’s that to worry about with Google’s car. We know it has a laser sensor on the roof that constantly monitors the car’s surroundings and we know it’s perfectly capable of not running over children or hitting a tree. But we also know from the experience we’ve all had with our laptops and our phones that electronics have an annoying habit of deciding one day to stop working.

And you won’t be able to turn your car off and on again, which is the usual cure, if it’s just had a head-on crash with a lorry and you’ve become some meat as a result.

Let’s say, though, that the electronics are foolproof. Let’s say they really will work all the time and for ever and that as a result the car will not crash at any time.

Then what? You send it in to town to do your shopping. It gets there. It finds a parking space. It shuts down and . . . see the problem. As it’s not capable of going into the shop and buying milk, you have to go with it. And if you have to go along you may as well do the driving.

In Google’s promotional film lots of very earnest Americans talk at some length about how a driverless car will give them more time in a day to do other things. But that simply isn’t the case. They won’t be able to send their car to work while they go windsurfing or rock climbing or whatever it is people dream of doing with their leisure time in America. If their car goes somewhere, they will have to go too.

I suppose you could argue that if your car was able to drive itself you could read a newspaper as it trundles along. But would you do that? I know I wouldn’t. I’d spend the entire time sweating, with my finger hovering over the emergency stop button.

There’s another problem with Google’s plan. The car itself looks like it’s the result of a school project. It’s sort of egg-shaped, which is a good shape for eggs. But not for cars. It looks stupid and I wouldn’t want to get in it even if it were raining very heavily.

I can see what the company was trying to achieve. It needed its new idea to look different from any other car so that it would be hailed as the next big thing. Even though it’s not.


Kia Soul 1.6 CRDi Connect Plus, £17,500

Which brings me neatly enough to the Kia Soul. When the first incarnation of this car went on sale in 2008 it looked unusual. Like it had come from the set of a 1970s moon-based sci-fi adventure. It was a way of saying, “Yes, I have bought a Korean car but don’t worry, I am interesting.”

Today, however, all car makers are attempting to do the same sort of thing. The roads are awash with Vauxhall Mokkas and Renault Capturs and Nissan Jukes and that stupid Ford thing, all of which are being driven about by people who have a sign on their desk that says “You don’t have to be mad to work here”. People, in other words, who are not mad at all. These cars — they’re just stripy jumpers designed to make the user look more eccentric than they really are.


The new Soul might look zany from the outside but it has a well-made interior and is good to drive

Kia decided that the new Soul still had to be a stripy jumper. But this time round it wouldn’t be made from a pleblon mixture of rayon and vulgarlour. This time there would be rather more than some silly styling. There would be some depth.

Underneath it’s fundamentally a Cee’d hatchback, and there’s nothing wrong with that; the Cee’d is a good, straightforward car. The Kia range you are offered is good and straightforward too. Diesel or petrol, manual or automatic. And the prices are low. Surprisingly low, in fact.

But as soon as you step inside, you can see immediately that it’s a serious player. My test car had contrasting stitching on the seats and the instrument binnacle. And that’s a feature that would cost you about £5m in a Ferrari. Then there are the speaker turrets that appear to have been lifted from a Bang & Olufsen catalogue. And the central sat nav screen is bigger than the televisions you would find in most council houses. This is a very nice place to be.

And wait, what’s this? I’ve just set off and things are getting better because this is also quite nice to drive. It’s not sporty in any way. If you were picking teams for a game of school football, it wouldn’t be your first choice. But nor would it be the “Oh sir, do I have to have Jenkins?” last choice either.

I understand from colleagues that the petrol engine doesn’t deliver much oomph until the valves are starting to burst through the bonnet and even then it feels gutless, but the diesel I drove was fine. A bit noisy on start-up, perhaps, but thereafter smooth and torquey and doubtless very economical to boot.

And comfort? This was a problem in the old Soul but in the new one, which has a slightly lower ride height, it’s not an issue at all.

The previous model was a bit like the sort of meal you get from one of those restaurants that doesn’t always pass its hygiene tests — the sort of place that ladles on the chilies to mask the fact that the chicken is in fact rat. You felt that the zany body had been fitted to take your mind off the fact that actually the car wasn’t very good. That isn’t the case with the new Soul.

Everyone has a stripy jumper these days. But this one feels like it won’t shrink or fall to pieces after its first wash. I liked it. And I liked driving it as I went along. It gave me something to do.

Kia Soul 1.6 CRDi Connect Plus
Engine
1582cc, 4 cylinders
Power
126bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque
192 lb ft @ 1900rpm
Transmission
6-speed manual
Acceleration
0-60mph: 10.8sec
Top speed
112mph
Fuel
56.6mpg (combined)
CO2
132g/km
Road tax band
D (free for first year; £110 thereafter)
Price
£17,500
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Restores your faith in driving

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used Kia Soul

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1415946.ece

[RedMoon11]

We’ll Always Have Paris and Polish dumplings — Until UKIP Wins the Day

Published: 1 June 2014

As the half-term bank holiday Monday dawned, it became clear that I could either spend the day looking out of the window, imagining that the clouds were lifting while the children Instagrammed pictures of their own stools — or we could go to Paris for lunch.

And so, three and a bit hours later, we were sitting in a cafe in the Place des Vosges, making reservations at the delightful Benoit restaurant off the Rue de Rivoli. A small walk round the Louvre later, we were back on the train and by 9pm we were back in London. It was one of the most wonderful and joyous days I’ve had in years.

And it was all so easy. Yes, the train station at London St Pancras International has various passport booths and security measures, but unlike the security measures you encounter at airports, you are not made to remove your shoes and your belt, you are not expected to unpack your computer, nobody caresses your testicles and you are allowed to pass through carrying as much toothpaste as you like.

Check-in times? Well, they suggest you should be at the station half an hour before departure but because of the adult way the French treat the terrorism threat, we made it to the Gare du Nord three minutes before the train left. And were still allowed to board.

It’s not just the rail link between London and Paris that’s easy either. My son says that on his InterRailing travels last year from Amsterdam to — actually he can’t remember where he went after that — he was never asked to show his passport once. And that at no point did stern-looking men with greatcoats and alsatians board the train demanding to see everyone’s papers.

It’s the same story on the road. You simply don’t know any more when you’ve passed from France into Belgium and the only way you know you’ve gone from Italy into Austria is because there’s no litter, or graffiti, or untidiness of any kind. It’s like you’ve gone from a Roman orgy into a Victorian lady’s underwear drawer.

I love Europe and it makes me happy that one day we will have forgotten the difficult birth and made the EU work. I long for a time when I think of myself as a European first and an Englishman second. I crave a United States of Europe with one currency, one army and one type of plug socket. And yes, I know, there will be drawbacks. We’re already seeing some of them, which is why more than a quarter of those who went to the polls in the recent European elections voted UKIP.

One of the drawbacks I notice quite often is that in South Kensington, which is a leafy part of southwest London, almost everyone is French. The whole area is awash with lovely patisseries and the pavements are rammed with women so elegant and beautiful I have to bite the back of my hand to stop myself from crying out. This is obviously so much worse than if everyone were lurching around in tracksuits looking for somewhere to vomit.

Just up the road, I know of a Polish restaurant where you can buy dainty little dumplings. And for sure this is a huge step backwards from the takeaway joint that used to be on the site. Because who wants to be served a dumpling by a charming Polish man when they could have a polystyrene tray full of slime instead?

My local off-licence is staffed entirely by French people who know everything about wine. And that’s wrong too. Because what you actually want is a fat school-leaver and a shop full of Carling Black Label.

Outside London there are real problems, of course. In the flatlands of East Anglia farmers are finding that all the traditional home-grown workers are sitting at home playing video games on gigantic televisions, and as a result they are having to employ an army of Romanians and Bulgarians.

The only upside to this is that these recent arrivals are prepared to work 27 hours a day and pay the farmer for permission to come to work, which means fruit and veg prices in the supermarket are low.

Further north we have Rotherham, a South Yorkshire town in which UKIP is now the main opposition party to Labour. Locals are said to be fed up with the number of immigrants and want to go back to the olden days.

Hmmm. I worked for three years on a Rotherham newspaper back in the late 1970s. And, I’m sorry, but back then it was pretty terrible.

There was one sandwich shop and if you discounted the council-run cafe in the bus station — which I did on a daily basis — there was not one single restaurant.

Going out for dinner meant going to the pub and buying some salt and vinegar crisps. Prawn cocktail? No, we bloody haven’t, you poof.

It was a monoculture. Everyone thought the same and did the same. When one person went on strike, everyone went on strike. They didn’t even trust me because I was from Doncaster.

Nowadays when you drive through the town it takes about five seconds to realise that it isn’t a monoculture any more. Half the cars sport foreign registration plates. There’s an eastern European delicatessen on Wellgate. Many men look like potatoes. The town has become a blend of several things. And is that a bad thing?

Well, I suppose if you think that Rotherham is your town and that all of the jobs in it are rightfully yours, then, yes; it is bad when Mr Zyscyzsky offers his services at the call centre for 32p a year and, as a result, you have to sit at home all day watching Cash in the Attic.

But look at it this way. When I worked in Rotherham almost everyone was deeply resentful of the Queen. They argued that entitlement was not a birth right. So by the same token it’s quite wrong to say Rotherham is your town just because you were born there.

I know that the EU doesn’t work now. I know the currency is a disaster and that it’s run by an army of muddle-headed fools. And I know too that they obsess about the correct size for a haddock and the proper shape of a banana. But on the upside you can go to Paris for lunch ever-so easily.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1416970.ece

[RedMoon11]

My Mum’s Final Act Of Love Was To Throw All Her Stuff Into A Skip

Published: 8 June 2014

Right in the middle of all that brouhaha about sloping bridges and Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, my mum died.

So there I was, in Russia, in the middle of a Top Gear tour, trying to organise her funeral and tell the children and sort out all the legal stuff, with the BBC moaning at me in one ear and a reporter twittering on in the other, and I knew that if I wept, which is what I wanted to do, because I was very close to my mother, the Daily Mirror would run pictures and claim they were tears of shame. It was a gruesome time.

And I knew that when I came home the BBC would still be bleating and the reporters would still be calling, and I’d have to go to her house and start sorting through her things. And where do you start with a job like that? Where did she keep her pension details, the deeds to her house, her insurance certificates? How do you cancel a Sky subscription? Did she have any shares? Premium bonds? And how do you find out if you haven’t got a sister who’s a lawyer?

Luckily, I do have a sister who’s a lawyer, but even though she could handle the paperwork, I’d still have to go through my mum’s things, and that would be a nightmare because I’m such a sentimental old sausage I even find it difficult to throw away an empty packet of fags. I think of the fun I’ve had smoking them and the people I’ve shared them with and I want to hold on to the wrapping as a keepsake, a reminder of happy times.

So what in God’s name would it be like in my mum’s house, surrounded by everything that made it hers, except her? And there’d be all those childhood memories. At some point it would be inevitable I’d find the egg cup I’d used every morning as a child and the cereal bowl with rabbits on it. That would tear my heart out.

At one stage I received a call from a middle-ranking BBC wallah saying they’d had a letter from some MPs, asking if I was going to be sacked, and I really wasn’t paying much attention because I was wondering what on earth I’d do with the mildly fire-damaged Dralon chair that my dad had bought for £4 in 1972.

Even by the standards of the time it was a truly hideous piece of furniture, and the years had not been kind to it. Any normal person would give it to charity or use it as firewood. But it was the chair my dad used to sit in. It had a cigarette burn in the arm from the time when he’d nodded off while smoking. I couldn’t possibly give it away, or burn it. And I sure as hell didn’t want it in my house. So what would I do?

There is no single thing in the house of anyone’s mother that isn’t infused with a gut-wrenching air of sentimentality. It’s not just her jewellery or her clothes. It’s the little things as well. Her kitchen scissors, her bathroom scales, her flannel. Every single thing in each and every drawer is as impossible to discard as a first teddy bear.

I would need a very big lorry to handle all the stuff I’d need to bring home. I’d also need at least two months to go through it all. And I’d need about 4,000 boxes of Kleenex.

However, here’s the thing. My mum did not die unexpectedly. She’d known for some time that the cancer was winning and had therefore had time to put her affairs in order. A job she had undertaken with some gusto.

I’d always assumed that “putting your affairs in order” meant writing a will and remembering to reclaim your lawnmower from the chap at No 42. But in the weeks since my mum’s death I’ve learnt that actually there’s a lot more to it than that.

First of all, she had left many helpful instructions about what sort of funeral she wanted. No friends. No flowers. And no mention of God or the baby Jesus. My sister and I didn’t even have to guess what music she would have liked because she’d told us: Thank You for the Music, by Abba.

All the financial stuff was in a neat box with everything clearly labelled. And she hadn’t stopped there. Before she became too weak, she’d had a massive clear-out. Pretty much everything she owned had been thrown into a skip. “It’ll save you the bother when I’m dead,” she had said.

But by far and away the best thing she did in those last few months was to sort out a lifetime of photographs, putting the ones that mattered into albums and, crucially, writing captions. So now I know that the time-faded sepia image of a stern-looking woman in a nasty hat is my great-aunt and that the blurred picture of what might be a corgi was my grandad’s dog.

Ordinarily, I’d have thrown away the endless pictures of what appear to be a building site, but thanks to my mum’s diligence, I now know it was the house in which I was born. And how it had looked when she and my dad bought it in 1957.

I don’t know how long she had worked on her downsizing and the clear-out and the organisation of her things, but it’s something we should all try to do when we know the Grim Reaper is heading our way. Because not only does it spare our loved ones from the hassle of going through every single thing we’ve ever owned but also it spares them from the grief of deciding that the horse brasses and the Lladro figurines really do have to go to the tip.

The only trouble is that there’s one thing my mum did not sort out. Back in 1971 she made my sister and me two Paddington Bears. They were the start of what became a very successful business and they were very precious, but over the years one was lost.

I maintain the sole survivor is mine. My sister insists it’s hers. And she’s the lawyer . . . so I have the cereal bowl with the rabbits on it, and the Dralon chair.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1419805.ece



imgur.com/a/4Xrq9

[trustme]

Thanks for posting that article, RedMoon11! What a lovely tribute to a much-loved mom, and how very sad that Jeremy's world was in such upheaval already when this happened. I don't know how he kept his sanity through everything, but give him a lot of credit for doing so. I would have been a wreck, I think...

[RedMoon11]

Forget The Tech: All You Need To Know Is This Spyder Flies

Published: 15 June 2014


THIS WEEKEND several thousand British men will have slipped into their Gulf-livery leather jackets and, imagining they look a bit like Steve McQueen — apart from the stomach and the beard and the face — set off in their Morgans and their MG MGBs for the Le Mans 24-hour race in northern France.

Many will have completely overdone it before the race began and this morning, having spent a bewildering night watching the occasional set of headlights tear by, will be stumbling about in a tent full of their own sick, wondering why on earth they didn’t pack any Nurofen.

I don’t get Le Mans as a spectator sport. Almost no one has heard of any of the drivers. The cars all look the same. No one has the first clue who’s winning and no one could care less. The noise is horrendous, camping is for the weak and beer that’s been in the sun all day is never going to taste very good. Plus, as it’s an 8½-mile circuit and it’s a test of endurance rather than out-and-out speed, the chances of you seeing an accident are virtually zero.

On the other side of the pit wall things are rather different. I once took part in a 24-hour race and I thought it was extremely thrilling. I did know who was winning, and out on the track I had to balance the overwhelming need to catch them up with a need to make the tyres last as long as possible. This, then, is a sport where the watching doesn’t matter. It’s all about taking part.

And at Le Mans the participant that has had more success than any other is Porsche. It has had 16 outright victories, and 103 class victories. And this year, after a 16-year absence from the main LMP1 race category, the company is back with a new driver you have heard of — the former Red Bull Formula One man Mark Webber — and a new car: the 919.

It’s a hybrid, and, no, I’m not going to laugh. Because while I am yet to be convinced that hybrid technology does much for the future of the planet’s limited resources, I will happily agree that as a tool for making a car go faster it is absolutely brilliant.

Which brings me on to the Porsche 918. Supposedly this is a road-going version of the Le Mans racer, but it’s no such thing. Both cars are testbeds for new battery technology in the same way as James Dyson’s next vacuum cleaner and the Large Hadron Collider are both tools that push the boundaries of what’s possible with volts.

The racer, for example, has a 2-litre four-cylinder petrol engine. The road car has a 4.6-litre V8. And sat nav. And air-conditioning. And electric windows. And carpets. And a removable roof.

And that’s the key to the Porsche 918 Spyder. It is not a road-going racing car. It is not a stripped-out, hunkering-down, fire-spitting monster. It is built to be used every day, everywhere, by everyone. Even though none of the 918 people who’ll buy one will have the first clue how it actually works.

Oooh, there’s a lot of tech in this thing. Batteries, as we know from our phones and our laptops, lose their potency as the weeks and the charge cycles slide by. And Porsche has had to address that, not just for the five hours a year when the car’s being used, but for the 8,700-plus hours when it isn’t. It says that as a result of its endeavours the battery pack will last seven years.

And then there’s the complexity of making the enormous V8 work in tandem with the electric motors, using the silent drive to fill in the holes when the screaming V8 is not at its best. And to send power to the front wheels when they need it. And to work out what sort of power they need.

All of the information is available to the driver on four screens. But I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be looking at any of them when you’re behind the wheel, because while fuel efficiency is a by-product of all this cleverness, the actual point is speed. Mesmerising, jaw-slackening, eye-widening, bowel-loosening speed. Neurologically impossible-to-compute speed. Laugh-out-loud speed.

I began in electric, or E-Power, mode, which delivers about the same amount of power as you get in a hot hatchback. But because the 918 weighs about 1½ tons — and the Weissach-package model I was driving was even lighter than that — and because electric power is delivered in one big lump, instantly, I was doing 62mph just 6.1 seconds after I set off.

Silently? No, actually. As the speed builds, the 918’s motors sound like a jet engine on idle. They whistle. And as you go faster still, they start to shriek. It’s a noise quite unlike anything I’ve heard in a car before and it is fabulous. If this is the future, count me in.

And then — for a complicated scientific reason — the whole back of the car exploded. Well, that’s what it sounded like. Maybe I was getting close to the end of the battery’s 18-mile range and it needed a charge. Or maybe the car somehow knew that it was on a track and that I really wanted some V8 propulsion as well. Whatever, the petrol engine had burst into life.

In many hybrids you cannot tell when this happens because the engine is small and weedy, like a mouse. You can in the Porsche, partly because of the volcanic noise but also because you are now doing about a million miles an hour. At this point I turned the knob to Sport Hybrid mode and heard the sonic boom. And then I went for the full-fat Race Hybrid setting and it felt as though I were slingshotting round the moon.

It would be handy at this point if I said I’d never experienced speed like this before in a car . . . but, of course, I have. Because I’ve driven the McLaren P1. Indeed, after doing so, I went on the television and said that if the Porsche turned out to be faster round the Top Gear test track, I would change my name to Jennifer.

That test has not happened yet, but I’m going to be honest and say I’m a bit nervous. McLaren says its car has lapped the Nürburgring in less than seven minutes but won’t give an actual time. Porsche will. With the lightweight Weissach package its 918 did a lap in 6 minutes and 57 seconds. Fourteen seconds faster at the time than the previous lap record for a road-legal car.

These are numbers. All I can go on is feel, and in a straight line I think the McLaren is more electrifying. Its throttle really does feel like a hyperspace button. It’s savage and frightening. The Porsche is fast, make no mistake, but it doesn’t have that “Oh no, I’ve trodden on a bomb” moment.

However, round the corners it’s a different story. The McLaren’s grip comes from clever management of air. It’s downforce that gives you the grip and you can’t really feel that. You have to put your trust in something you can’t see. You have to say, as you reach a corner, “I must go through here quickly or I will crash.” And that takes bottle that I lack.

The Porsche, with its four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, relies much more on mechanical grip. That’s tangible. You can feel it. And that gives you the confidence to push. So I did.

In the Chicago corner at the Top Gear track it is very easy to use the crown of the runway to push the car into a camera-friendly powerslide. I do it all the time, in every car I drive round there. But in the Porsche, when I turned in and lifted off the throttle, there was grip. And when I gave it the beans at precisely the right moment, there was more grip. It just went round at a speed that boggled my mind and hurt my neck.

One day we will put these two great cars side by side and get the Stig to see which is faster. We may even get the beautiful LaFerrari as well, even though that’s not a true hybrid.

For now all I can tell you is this. The Porsche is one of the three fastest cars in the world. It has sat nav and air-con and carpets. And driven carefully it can do 94 miles to the gallon.

Porsche 918 Spyder (Weissach pack)

Engine
4593cc, V8, plus two electric motors
Power
874bhp @ 8500rpm (combined)
Torque
943 lb ft @ 750rpm
Transmission
7-speed PDK (sequential automatic)
Acceleration
0-62mph: 2.6sec
Top speed
214mph (93mph in electric mode)
Fuel
94.1mpg (combined)
CO2
70g/km
Road tax band
A (free)
Price
€853,155 (about £688,000)
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
The fastest milk cart in the West
CRITIC'S RATING*****

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Porsches

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1421441.ece

[RedMoon11]

Roll Up And Join The Dullards Sprinkling Frozen Peas On The Trifle

Published: 15 June 2014

Since Colorado legalised the sale and consumption of cannabis, property prices have jumped, warehouse rental rates have quadrupled, tourism has boomed and the state government is reporting that it is receiving more than $5m (£3m) a month in tax from sales of the drug. On the downside, however, everyone who lives there is now very boring.

This is something that’s rarely debated in the argument for and against the legalisation of drugs. Enthusiasts say prohibition never works, that the ban causes more problems than it solves, that it’s inhumane to deny someone in pain some organic relief and that it cannot be right for a government to prevent individuals such as snowboarders from setting fire to a plant and then inhaling the smoke, if that’s what they choose to do.

Those who seek to ban the bong say that cannabis causes its enthusiasts to become mental, that it’s all the devil’s work, and that if it were legalised and available over the counter from Boots, children as young as two would soon become addicted. But they never raise the biggest problem of them all: that pot makes people incredibly dull.

Nothing fills me with so much despair as that moment at a dinner party when the architect or the adman produces some hopeless little roll-up and invites everyone to have a toke, or whatever it’s called. Mainly this is because if I go within six miles of even a tendril of cannabis smoke I become the colour of parchment. This is followed immediately by some light vomiting. And then I go into a dead faint.

And actually that’s good news because at least when I’m unconscious in the nearest lavatory I don’t have to sit at the dining table listening to everyone giggling at the salt and pepper pots. Nor do I have to watch them sprinkling frozen peas on a sherry trifle that someone’s found in the fridge. And I don’t have to join in their conversations about the guitarist Steve Hillage out of Gong or whether the ham is happy. Being at a party where you’re drunk and everyone else is stoned is even worse than being at a party where you’re not drunk at all.

Cannabis fans say that the drug helps them understand complex things such as the lyrics from Genesis’s Selling England by the Pound. But I don’t believe this because I bet it’s not possible to assemble a piece of flat-packed furniture after you’ve smoked a joint. They also say it enables them to watch and enjoy various daytime television shows such as Homes under the Hammer. But they do admit that they can seem distant and forgetful — “Mmm, sorry, what were you saying?”

I just don’t get this at all. Why would you choose to take a drug that causes you to be distant and withdrawn and quietly introspective? Do you think that you are too interesting and too funny when you’re sober and that it’s better for all the other guests if you smother your exuberance under a fuggy blanket of forgetfulness?

No. In the same way that no one has ever emigrated to Australia because of the success they’ve made of their lives elsewhere, no one has ever become a regular dope smoker because they are fed up with being the life and soul of the party. No one has ever said, “I’m bright and witty and everyone loves me so I shall start using cannabis.”

Quite the reverse. It’s a boring drug to make boring people less bothered about being boring. But I want to make it absolutely plain here and now that I have no problem with people ingesting whatever takes their fancy. Cocaine out of a prostitute’s bottom, heroin through your ankles, Quaaludes for lunch — go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to talk to you afterwards.

Because let’s be absolutely clear about this. One of the main reasons we were able to win the Battle of Britain is that the pilots of the Spitfires and the Hurricanes were not distant and forgetful. One of the main reasons that America lost in Vietnam is that its troops were.

Nothing great or brilliant has ever happened as a result of weed. Concorde was not designed in a fog of forgetfulness. Nor was the Apollo space programme. “Where’s my slide rule, Hank?” “Oh sorry, Junior, I was peckish so I ate it.” Obama Barrack said that as a kid he smoked dope and inhaled frequently. “That was the point,” he joshed. Yes, mate, but I bet you don’t smoke it now. “Sorry, Mr Putin, I wasn’t listening. What were you saying?”

It is allegedly the same story with Bill Gates, although he has never admitted it. He is said to have used it when he was young but we can be fairly sure that his empire would be a bit more corner shoppish if he hadn’t stopped.

There’s a whole list of extremely successful and talented artists and musicians who have owned up to a marijuana addiction. But I suspect they produced their good work despite their habit, not because of it. Mostly the only tangible thing their drugs produced was the vomit on which they choked to death.

This naturally brings me on to alcohol. And, of course, it’s pretty much the same story. Nothing tremendous or brilliant has ever been created by a drunk. It too will make you mental and after you’ve had some you cannot drive a car or operate heavy machinery or assemble an Ikea dining table. However, unlike cannabis, drink makes people interesting and funny.

Go to a party and note the volume of the chat when you get there. Then note what it’s like after a couple of hours. People have become louder and shinier. They beam and they make expansive gestures. They forget their inhibitions, they can’t keep secrets and they want to have sex with one another.

The truth of the matter, then, is this: given the choice of spending time with a group of people who’ve just had a joint and another group who’ve just had a couple of glasses of wine, I’ll take the drinkers every time, which is why I won’t be visiting Denver any time soon. Because the Dog and Duck in Dagenham is going to be a whole lot more fun.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1422501.ece

[RedMoon11]

Naaah, Darlin’, You Just Ain’t Arthur Daley’s Type

22 June 2014



Jaguar F-type S coupé, £60,250

IF YOU were to ask me to pick one image that perfectly captures the very essence of BMW, it would be that famous shot of a 3.0 CSL “Batmobile”, all four wheels off the ground as it surged to yet another victory over the Capris and the Alfa Romeos in the 1973 European touring car championship. When you drive a BMW today, you feel that moment is at its core. You sense that behind the plushmatic gearbox and the electronic nanny there’s a finely balanced racing car wanting to get out and go airborne in the pursuit of glory.

Almost all car firms have that one nail in the wall on which all their current endeavours are hung. Aston Martin has Sean Connery leaning against his DB5 in a publicity still for the film Goldfinger. Bentley has someone with a double-barrelled name and an oily face tearing around the banking at Brooklands. Ford has that shot of its three GT40s crossing the line together at Le Mans in 1966.

Nissan? There was a photograph taken in the mid-1970s of a boatload of its Datsun-badged Cherrys being unloaded in Britain, with a caption that said something mildly patronising and Daily Express-ish about how the British motor industry was going to be torn apart by these reliable little boxes from Japan.

Naturally, we all knew that wasn’t going to happen really. And then it did. Because they really were, above all things, reliable. And they still are. There’s even a bit of that photograph in a GT-R.

Sometimes, of course, the single image that endures is something the company would prefer to forget. I bet, for instance, Mercedes would rather no one had taken that photograph of Hitler in his Series II W150. But they did, and as a result, even today, everyone knows that if you want to be seen to be in charge, you’d better have a three-pointed star on the grille of your car.

Then there’s poor old Audi. Ask me to think of a single image that sums this company up better than anything else and I see a 100 LS, in 1973, driving down the autobahn at precisely 93.2mph. I see its driver with his neat hair and his smart, well-pressed trousers. He is a cement salesman.

Audi has done many things since then. It has made the quattro and has created several amusing television commercials featuring the hangdog voice of Geoffrey Palmer. It has made sports cars and off-road cars. But the spirit of Audi lives in the outside lane of a motorway at 93.2mph. With a cement salesman at the wheel.

It’s really, really hard to shake off an image. Chevrolet put its badge on a selection of extremely nasty and unreliable little hatchbacks from Korea. It even got Sir Ferguson to drive around in one of its cars, and to be photographed doing so. And we all thought, “Yeah, right.”

Which brings me on to Jaguar. What the company wants us to think of when we think of the big cat is Johnny Dumfries coming home first in an XJR-9 at Le Mans in 1988 . . . Not ringing any bells? Really? Oh, well. So what about the company’s short-lived Formula One team and Eddie Irvine’s glorious ninth place in the 2002 drivers’ championship? No? Nothing? Um. The D-type, then. Surely you must remember that car and its hat-trick of wins in northern France. No? Oh, right. You weren’t born then. No, actually, neither was I.

As far as most people are concerned, Jaguar made only one sporty car. The E-type. And that wasn’t really sporty, as such. It was essentially a machine for David Niven to whizz about in in the south of France. It was more gin and tonic than Castrol R.

Jaguar wants us to think it’s sporty but I fear it is barking up the wrong tree because, I’m sorry, if you ask me to name the image that captures the essence of Jag, it’s Arthur Daley outside the Winchester Club. Or it’s Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday. Or it’s one of those 1960s London villains who had a heart of gold and bought their mother flowers. Monty Python never told us what Doug and Dinsdale Piranha drove — because we already knew. A Jaguar XJ.

The Jaguar XJ was a cad’s car, a vehicle for the sort of chap who needed to make a hasty getaway from time to time — it was for people who’d always had “a spot of bother with the mortgage people”, meaning their house had been repossessed. Jag drivers always remembered they’d left their wallet at home moments after the waiter had produced the bill. “I’m awfully sorry, my dear . . .” It was a car for lovable rogues.

I’ve always liked the XJ, and even today a large part of me would love to smoke round town in a V12 with pepper-pot alloys and two fuel tanks. I crave the simplicity of its three-speed automatic gearbox and the way it blurred both of its changes. And I yearn for suspension that meant you could drive at 70mph over a ploughed field and not spill a drop of your martini. Jaguar drivers loved martinis. They all knew of a club in St James’s where the barman made them just right.

I wish Jaguar would make a modern-day, reliable car that harked back to the old XJ. Supremely elegant, comfortable beyond the dreams of angels and deliciously roguish. Terry-Thomas in the sat nav and a couple of dodgy Renoirs in the boot.

Sadly, though, Jaguar seems determined to erase this period from its history, to ignore the moment that made it great. And give us instead the F-type coupé.

In essence it’s a hard-top version of the F-type convertible, launched last year. There are three models. A bottom-rung V6 that you should ignore because it will make you feel a failure. A monstrous V8 that you should also ignore, because it has an electronic differential that doesn’t like being a differential or electronic.

And then there’s the model to choose, the middle-order V6 S, which has more than enough power to make your armpits smell and a proper mechanical differential that works jolly well. Really jolly well. This is a car that delivers the sort of fun that makes you burst out laughing. It is also the second-prettiest car on the market today, after its soft-top sister.

It is, however, more practical than its sister, because it has a boot into which you can put things.

And it’s more rigid — 80% more rigid, in fact. This is wonderful when the sun is shining and the road is smooth and there are some nice tunes on the radio. But at low speeds around town, on poorly maintained roads, you do sometimes wish it were a bit more flexible. And then you wonder why on earth Jaguar has made the suspension even firmer than it is in the convertible. Ooh, it’s bumpy.

There are other niggles too. You can’t see what’s coming at oblique junctions. The seats rub against the bulkhead and squeak. And it is hard to operate the touchscreen sat nav. Mostly because it’s so bumpy.

If you don’t mind the bumpiness, the F-type coupé is worth a look because it is many things: beautiful, fast, well equipped and extremely loud. Sadly, however, the one thing it isn’t is a Jaguar.

Jaguar F-type S coupé
Engine
2995cc, V6, supercharged
Power
375bhp @ 6500rpm
Torque
339 lb ft @ 3500rpm
Transmission
8-speed automatic
Acceleration
0-62mph: 4.9sec
Top speed
171mph
Fuel
32.1mpg
CO2
209g/km
Road tax band
K (£635 for first year; thereafter £285)
Price
£60,250
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
A Jag in need of a sheepskin jacket

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1424069.ece

[RedMoon11]

This Comedy Troupe’s Lightning Wit Has Ceased To Be. This Is An Ex-Python

Published: 22 June 2014

I can’t remember much these days. Certainly I can’t remember whether I’ve told you this before, but when I was nine my dad came into my bedroom late one Sunday night, woke me up and said I had to come downstairs to watch a television programme that had just started. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus and it was, he said, “going to be important”.

Well, it didn’t look very important to me. There were some sheep in a tree and a man with three buttocks. And every so often a man in army uniform would come along and say, “Stop that. It’s silly.”

Which it was. But that didn’t stop my father waking me up every Sunday night for the rest of the show’s 13-episode run to watch it with him.

Later he took me to watch the Pythons perform their show live in Leeds, and whenever they made a film he was always first in the queue to buy tickets. And you know what? He never laughed once. He never even smiled. He watched everything they did in the way that you or I would watch a burning airliner. With a quiet, fascinated stillness.

And yet while he didn’t find Tim the Enchanter funny when he was first seen, on a rock in Scotland, blowing up mountains, he would giggle until he was fit to burst if you mentioned him the next day. Or Venezuelan beaver cheese or Mitzi Gaynor’s pine teeth or sweaty, mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry.

It’s strange. There are some films — Airplane! is the best example — at which you laugh in the cinema until you are sick, but Monty Python was not like this. Nothing the team did was funny at the time. But at school or work the next day you would laugh with your friends until your spleen came out of your nose. Python was like cheese. It matured with age . . . and then it went off, but that’s another story.

Back then, knowing everything the Pythons had ever done off by heart was a badge of honour. Being able to recite the Sthingyer poem and every word from the Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch showed that you had the wit. And I would reserve a special type of fury for those who attempted to join in and got the quotes a bit wrong. “It’s not ‘We were evicted from our lake’, you imbecile. It’s ‘hole in the ground’. Get it right or get out.”

Thanks to my dad, you simply will not find anyone alive today who loves Monty Python more than I do. You could ring me this morning and give me any quote from any show, book, record or film and I will know where it came from. And what came afterwards. And who said it. I could bore for Britain on Python and have, many times.

So you would imagine that I would have been first in line for a ticket to the Pythons’ live show next month. But I wasn’t. Partly this is because I’ll be in Budapest at the time but mostly it’s because I’d rather put out a campfire with my face.

They say you should never meet your heroes, and having met the former test pilot Chuck Yeager I’d certainly go along with that, but even more important is that you should never meet your heroes 40 years down the line. And certainly not if they were comedians.

It’s often said that comedy is performed exclusively by people whose looks and armpit aroma prevent them from getting laid. It’s reckoned that the only way the greasy and the ginger can get into a girl’s knickers is via her funny bone.

So, the reasoning goes, once you are old and your gentleman sausage is able to perform only its secondary function, there’s no point in being funny any more. That makes sense, of course, but I think there’s another reason . . .

Every talent you are given at birth fades with age. A fighter pilot loses his reactions. A footballer loses his knees. And then all his money in a failed pub venture. A model loses her battle with gravity. And comedians lose not just the will but the actual ability to be funny.

I had lunch last week with a columnist on this newspaper who shall be nameless except that his name begins with A and ends with A Gill. In the past these were quite jolly affairs with much laughter. Not any more.

“You remember that man?” I asked.

“What man?” he replied.

“That man you used to eat with at, oh, what’s that place called?”

“You mean the man who’s married to whatserface?”

“He used to live in Gloucester Road above that pub.”

“The one with the long dog?”

Later we moved on to world affairs. “What’s that country next to the one with all the refugees?”

“Egypt?”

“No, the one where thingy was in prison.”

“Burma?”

“Yes, Burma. Anyway . . . what was I talking about?”

In a whole hour we didn’t remember the name of a single thing, person, place or event. And it is hard to be sharp when you are constantly foraging about on the tip of your tongue for the reason you’d embarked on the story in the first place.

I listen to my children chatting sometimes and they’re like one of those executive toys. The ones that are see-through balls with purple lightning in them. I can’t remember what they’re called. Van de Graaff generators? No, wait, they’re the ones that make your hair go funny. Anyway, what was I saying?

Yes, I remember. It’s a constant stream of nicknames and wit. Machinegun comedy in which the belt never ends. Kids have the power of instant recall and can leap like water boatmen from an obscure episode of Family Guy to someone’s new boyfriend who’s a professional Frisbee player: “He can catch it in his teeth and while he’s doing a backflip.”

“It’s a dog sport,” said my son sullenly. I found that very funny.

I bet your children are the same, and so on July 1 take them out to dinner. Because I bet you any money it’ll be funnier than watching five old men reciting the Four Yorkshiremen sketch. And not quite getting it right.


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/article1425042.ece

[RedMoon11]

By Jimny, Even Hairdressers Will Give It The Brush-Off

Published: 29 June 2014



Suzuki SX4 S-Cross, from £14,999

A FRIEND called last week to say she needed a new car and was interested in either a Volkswagen Golf or a Touareg. Which is a bit like saying, “I need a new house but I can’t decide between a semi in Leicester and a six-bedroom Cotswold pile just outside Stow-on-the-Wold.”

And then she went on saying that secretly she wished she could afford an £80,000 Range Rover Evoque. Er, £80,000? What’s it made of? Rhodium?

I was surprised by all this. I mean, the person in question is a successful businesswoman and mum. She travels extensively and is super-bright. And yet somehow she has managed to amass no knowledge about cars at all.

She’s not interested — that much is clear. Well, I’m not interested in plants, and yet I can tell a pansy from a forget-me-not and a nettle from a giant redwood. In fact I’m not interested in lots of things. Sinead O’Connor, for instance. But I still know all the words from Nothing Compares 2 U and that her son is called Jake. As adults we pick up and absorb information even when we don’t want to. We can’t help it. I accidentally know a bit about ballet, for example.

Later my friend called from a Volkswagen dealership saying the salesman had suggested a petrol-powered Golf as it did more miles to the gallon around town than the diesel. Which, when translated into English, means, “I have a yard full of petrol- powered Golfs that I need to sell so that I can hit my monthly targets.”

So I got stern. I said she should stop dithering about and buy a Golf diesel. It’s what I tell all non-car people to buy. Because it’s just 14ft of car. So she immediately went out and ordered an Evoque. And that pretty much sums up the pointlessness of motoring journalism.

We can dribble on about handling and ceramic brakes and hybrid drives and Bluetooth connectivity and fuel economy and all the things we think matter. But when push comes to shove, most people just want a car that looks nice.

Which brings me on to the Suzuki SJ. It was introduced to the UK in 1982 and it was absolutely terrible. As a device for moving around, it was beaten by several other products, including the space hopper. It had non-power-assisted drum brakes, which is the same as saying no brakes at all, and leaf spring suspension — a technology dismissed by Fred Flintstone as “a bit old-fashioned”. The engine? Yes, it had one.

I once drove a Suzuki SJ all the way from London to Spurn Point, in Humberside, and it was so gut- wrenchingly noisy, uncomfortable, unsafe and slow that I actually volunteered to drive back to London in a Citroën 2CV.

It was an awful car but that didn’t stop it being a huge success among hairdressers, fitness instructors and nail technicians. They liked it because the roof came off and it looked a bit like the Second World War US army Jeep. Well, it did until they emblazoned the name of their play-on-words salon down the side. Hair Port. Fringe Benefits. British Hairways. You know the sort of thing.

So what caused these folk to think, “Yes, I want that”? Simple. As non-car people, they see vehicles in the same way as I see microwave ovens. They are all basically the same. But then along comes something that looks unusual and they notice it.

It’s why the Mini has been a success, and the Fiat 500 and, to a lesser extent, the Volkswagen Beetle. People said, “It has a vase!!!!” and bought one immediately. That vase was a stroke of genius, because nothing tells the world you don’t corner quickly more than a chrysanthemum on the dashboard.

With the Suzuki there was no vase. But there was a low price, so people could afford one. And then, when they took it home, they simply didn’t notice that it was terrible to drive, because it’s a car and surely all cars shake your fillings out and only stop when they hit a tree. Don’t they?

As a car, then, the SJ was lamentable. But as a marketing exercise it was a masterstroke. Because, let’s be honest, no one spots a Vauxhall Astra and says, “I have just got to have one of those.”

Anyway, that was then and this is now, and these days Suzuki is attempting to sell us something called the SX4 S-Cross. A name that would be better suited, I think, to a pushchair. The car I tested had a turbocharged 1.6-litre diesel engine that was terrible. Made by Fiat, it offered so little get-up-and-go that if I put my foot down in sixth gear at 50mph there was no discernible acceleration at all. Ooh, and it was noisy.

Suzuki has tried to mask this problem by fitting a sound-deadening engine cover and a lined dashboard, but that’s like hanging a bedsheet over the window to keep out the sound of a neighbour’s son learning to play the drums. It’d be better, I think, if Suzuki bought its diesel engines from someone else.



There were other issues too. My car was fitted with a satellite navigation screen that was like having a map of the world on the back of a stamp. And the seat was adjusted with a ratchet that seemed to offer two driving positions: flat on your back and bolt upright. And while the plastics used to make everything in the cabin would be fine in a utilitarian vehicle such as a tractor, they felt cheap and nasty here. So did the switches. And the boot wasn’t very big.

That said, some versions of the Pushchair do have what Suzuki bills as the world’s first double sliding sunroof. And that is good. You push the sort of switch that Fisher-Price would reject for not having the right quality of feel and the entire roof sort of disappears. In the nice weather we’ve had recently I rather liked that. I liked the fuel economy as well. And, er, that’s sort of it in the tick column.

For non-car people none of these things would matter at all if the SX4 S-Cross looked amazing and odd. And ... it doesn’t. It is a sort of raised, semi- four-wheel-drive school-run car similar to all the other semi-four-wheel-drive, raised school-run cars that every damn person seems to be using these days.

It’s not a bad-looking vehicle by any means, but it stands out from the crowd in the way a milk bottle stands out from the crowd at a milk bottle factory.

There is, however, some good news. Much to my surprise, Suzuki is still making an updated version of the SJ. It’s called the Jimny now, and it has beam axles at both ends, a 1.3-litre engine that produces about 1bhp and suspension that is flummoxed by absolutely everything it encounters.

But it costs just £11,995 and it’s sweet — and there’s no better way of telling the world that you don’t care about cars. And that you can cut hair.

Suzuki SX4 S-Cross Allgrip SZ5

Engine
1598cc, 4 cylinders
Power
118bhp @ 3750rpm
Torque
236 lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission
6-speed manual
Acceleration
0-62mph: 13sec
Top speed
108mph
Fuel
64.2mpg
CO2
114g/km
Road tax band
C (free for first year; £30 thereafter)
Price
£23,549
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Sounds like a tractor, goes like a pushchair

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1426768.ece

[RedMoon11]

Being Soft, I’ve Robbed My Tortoise Of Any Ambition To Go Hurdling

Published: 29 June 2014

While I was enjoying a reflective moment on my hotel balcony in South Africa last week, a vervet monkey strolled into the outdoor breakfast area sporting a pair of extremely marvellous pastel-blue testicles. He sat for a while, legs akimbo, allowing the guests to cop a good look at his package, before climbing onto one of the tables and helping himself to the contents of the sugar bowl.

Except — here’s the thing — it wasn’t the entire contents. He took only the sachets of healthy and nutritious white sugar. All the Fairtrade left-wing brown stuff and the packets of hideous Canderel sweetener were ignored.

And, of course, if you live in a fairy-tale world of princesses and unicorns, this is proof that the vervet monkey is extremely intelligent. I’m not so sure, though, because while it knows to discard sweeteners, and can open plastic sachets, and throw what it doesn’t want into the sea to stop its sexual rivals having it, it can’t write a symphony or build a steam locomotive or even read the simplest of books.

It might be intelligent compared with a wasp, or an octopus, or a dishwasher, but compared with us? No.

If it really were intelligent it would speak. It has a tongue and teeth, so it could. But all it says is, “Sceeeeeeeeeeeeee”, which, as far as I can tell, means, “Oh no, a waiter is coming with a broom handle to stop me nicking all the sugar.”

People say that dolphins are intelligent because they can allegedly be trained by the United States navy to deliver and attach explosives to the underside of an enemy aircraft carrier. But if the dolphin were truly bright he would say, “You want me to do what?” and swim off to play with his mates.

Dobbin enthusiasts are forever telling people, who are usually on the verge of falling asleep, that their horse is intelligent, but it just isn’t, or it wouldn’t let you ride round on it. If you asked even the most stupid human to give you a piggyback round some fields because you couldn’t be bothered to walk, they’d tell you to get lost.

It’s much the same story with my dog. I won’t tell you his name because I shall probably be accused of racism or homophobia or genocide, but he is capable of displaying what pass for human emotions.

He does guilt when he has misbehaved and elation when I put on a pair of wellington boots. But if he were bright he’d take himself for a walk and run free rather than allowing me to put a string round his neck and pull his head half off every time he so much as looks at a sheep. Or a lady dog.

I’m sure doggists (doggers are something different) would explain at this point that dogs can display love for their owners and that any animal that is capable of such an emotion must be intelligent. Yes, but if you woke up in the morning and you were just an inch tall I would be amazed, and I would rush about calling for doctors and CNN to come round. Your dog, on the other hand, would eat you without a moment’s hesitation.

All of this should be borne in mind during the continuing discussion in various parts of the world about animal equality. Those in favour want all creatures great and small to be treated with exactly the same respect and consideration as humans.

Through “corporate outreach” they want to see a world in which “speciesism” is as frowned upon as racism, in which it is wrong to eat a bacon sandwich, or to save a child from a fire rather than a dog just because the child is human. (If you don’t understand any of this, the BBC has a web page on the subject, naturally.)

Hmmm. I worry that in fact we are getting too soft on animals and that by doing so we are actually making them even more daft than they already are.

I have many pets, and even the most rabid animal rights activist would say that they are cared for extremely well. The horses, for instance, have burqas to shield them from the things that give them sweet itch, the pigs have a house and a shady spot in which they can recline, the dogs are fed and loved and walked often, and the tortoise is never encouraged to do things that might cause him stress, such as hurdling.

Because of all this they have no ambition at all, which means they are never forced to think for themselves. They just sit about until a human being arrives with something that half the time they didn’t even know they wanted.

You see old ladies in pet shops often buying their cats expensive toys, and food made from the most choice cuts of a dolphin. And this is actually cruel because it reduces the need for a cat to do what cats normally do: ignore you and kill songbirds.

Exactly the same sort of thing is going on in the world’s game reserves. I’m not suggesting for a moment that elephants should be left at the mercy of the poachers — quite the reverse. I’d love to organise a day when we hunt and attempt to shoot the idiots who buy the ivory, but trying to manage Dumbo’s habitat to make life easier for the poor thing is silly.

All he knows now is to eat and mate and stick his ears out when he’s frightened. If we provide him with food and ensure he never knows fear, what’s left? Very quickly all elephants would become sex maniacs.

There was some evidence in South Africa to suggest this was already happening. Because after the vervet monkey I’d been watching had gorged on all of the refined sugar, which he’d garnished with some fleas from his navel, he sat on a railing for a little while and then, having established there was absolutely nothing else to do, performed what we must call here a sex act on himself in full view of all the hotel’s guests.

I found it rather sad.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1427757.ece


 A Vervet Monkey

[RedMoon11]

It Has Wings, Missiles and Lasers ... But Only In the Designer’s Mind

Published: 6 July 2014


Mercedes-Benz S 500 L, £88,395

WHEN SOMEONE embarks on a six-year medical degree, they must surely hope that one day they will end up doing pioneering research into cardiovascular disease. Which means that every single GP must be leading a life of disappointment and regret.

I suppose it’s the same story with architects. Nobody sets off down this career path hoping and praying that they will end up at Taylor Wimpey, designing all-in-one bathroom fixtures for two-bedroom starter homes. They wanted to do a cathedral. Or a skyscraper. Not a budget bog.

I know when I applied to be a journalist I had visions of myself on the front line, dodging bullets and getting interviews with warlords. Not sitting here, week in and week out, describing the ride and handling characteristics of the latest Citroën eco-box.

Frankly, I don’t know how we all put up with it. Why, as our hopes and dreams are dashed on the shoreline of necessity, do we not simply jump off a bridge and end it all? How do we go on? Well, I’ll tell you how I go on. I remind myself that it could be worse. That instead of writing about cars, I could be designing them.

Imagine how horrible that would be. You dream as a boy of one day being commissioned to style the latest Lamborghini. In your mind it will have wings and lasers and a fire control system that allows the driver to launch Sea Dart missiles at enemy aircraft as it tears across the ocean at 250mph. Because, of course, it would be amphibious too. Duh.

And what happens? Well, you end up at Ford, designing the rear indicator lens for the next-generation Focus. And all you can hope for is that if your indicator lens is successful, you will be allowed to work on the rear-seatbelt fixing point for the Mondeo. That’s all the ambition you have left.

I was in South Africa recently and happened upon a car called the Toyota Avanza. And, having given the matter some thought, I’ve decided it’s the most dismal piece of car design in all human history. Among the features listed by Toyota in the sales blurb are “driver and front passenger sun visor”, and you know the company is scraping the barrel if it is reduced to boasting about that. “It has two sun visors! Wow.” Yes, and “mudguards” and — wait for it — “spacious door pockets”.

I’m sure it’s cheap and I’m sure it won’t go wrong very often. And I’m sure there is a market for such a thing. But let’s not forget that some poor sod had to design it. He will have known that the body was far too big for the skinny wheels, but he will have been told by his superiors in accounts that bigger wheels would be expensive and, in South Africa, unnecessary. Especially if he was planning on the extravagance of two sun visors. And spacious door pockets.

I feel much the same way when I see a Volkswagen Jetta. Aimed at people who find the Golf diesel too radical and “out there”, this four-door saloon has been wilfully toned down to the point where it is nigh-on invisible. Someone who wanted to work for Ferrari was charged with styling the boot lid. He worked long into the night, and every morning his bosses would say, “Nope. It needs to be more boring than that.” And he’d have to start all over again.

The only reason these people are not jumping off bridges on an hourly basis is that they must sort of know there is actually some demand for their work. People with adenoids and a know-it-all attitude will buy a Jetta and they will be happy with it. People in southern Africa will buy an Avanza and it will be welcomed into the family as warmly as a new baby.


It’s the same story with all the other dreary cars out there. The man who designed the Nissan Juke would have known all along it would be extremely popular among those impervious to its looks. And the man at Peugeot, after he’d been told that using four clips to fasten the air vent in place was extravagant and that one would do, would know that somewhere a geography teacher would be pleased at the cash this had saved. Right up to the time the air vent fell off.

Which brings me on to the Mercedes S 500. Because the man who was charged with the immensely complicated task of designing the engine in this car must have known that he was completely wasting his time.

I have written about the new S-class before on these pages and it probably wouldn’t hurt to run over the important features again. It can see in the dark and around corners, it can’t crash, it is extremely comfortable, it has a sat nav the size of a council-house plasma TV and it has no lightbulbs. Not even in the headlamps. It may not have the style or the panache of a Rolls-Royce Ghost or a Bentley Flying Spur, but when it comes to cleverness, the big Benz knocks them both into a cocked hat.

Here’s the thing, though. There are only two types of customer for S-classes. One is a company in London that sends them round with a driver to take Geri Halliwell to the theatre. And the other is a company in Moscow that sends them round with a driver to take Oleg out for a bit of machinegun practice.

The company that ferries Geri about buys economical S 350 diesels because it’s fairly confident that none of its customers will even realise. And the company that ferries Oleg about buys expensive 5.5-litre V8-engined S 63 AMGs because it’s fairly confident that if the driver turns up with anything less, Oleg will shoot him in the heart.

So what is the point of the petrol-powered S 500? Yes, at £88,395 it is considerably less expensive than its £119,835 sibling, the S 63 AMG. But if it’s money that’s bothering you, why not buy the £62,905 entry-level S 350 diesel, which will be much cheaper to run as well? And will hold its value better.

You may say that you don’t want the blood-and-thunder get-up-and-go of the V8 and that you don’t want the clatter of a diesel either and that the middle-ranking S 500 is perfect. But you’d be talking nonsense, because I am driven around often in a diesel S-class and it doesn’t clatter at all. In fact it is impossible to tell what sort of fuel is feeding the engine.

I have racked my brains and I simply cannot conceive of a more pointless car than the S 500. I used one just the other day to get me into London from the Top Gear test track in Surrey and it was lovely. It calmed and soothed and wafted beautifully.

But, as the man who designed the engine knows all too well, there’s another model in the range that does exactly the same thing for less money.

Mercedes-Benz S 500 L

Engine
4663cc, V8
Power
449bhp @ 5250rpm
Torque
516 lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission
7-speed automatic
Performance
0-62mph: 4.8sec
Top speed
155mph
Fuel
31.7mpg (combined)
CO2
207g/km
Road tax band
K (£635 for first year; £285 thereafter)
Price
£88,395
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Nice, but not £25,000 better than the diesel version
CRITIC'S RATING ***

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used Mercedes S-class

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1429473.ece

[RedMoon11]

No Kisses, No Bear Hugs, Please: There’s Only One Harmless Way to Say Hello

Published: 6 July 2014

Several thousand years before the baby Jesus was born, men decided that the best way of demonstrating that they had no sword-whirling intentions was to hold hands with people they met. And so the handshake greeting was born.

There were a few subtle variations. When someone shook your hand firmly, while smiling, it meant they were strong and trustworthy. If their hand felt like a piece of wet fish, it meant they had social issues and possibly a hygiene problem. And if they did a strange thing with their thumb on your knuckles it meant they played a lot of golf and had risen with suspicious speed through the police service. Or that they were Prince Michael of Kent.

Oh, and if they used their left hand to cradle the shake, while turning their upper body through 45 degrees, it meant they were a politician and that they were not listening to a single word you were saying. The swivel was performed simply to ensure that nearby photographers got a good shot of them shaking hands with whatever your name is.

We heard, of course, that Eskimos — or Inuits, as we must now call them if we work for the BBC — would greet one another by rubbing noses and we guessed that this was because it would be stupid to take their hands out of their pockets in such cold conditions.

And we heard too about strange rituals in Japan, where visiting American businessmen would attempt to bow but would in fact make themselves look completely stupid. They’d be standing there with their faces pointing backwards through their knees, and their host would be saying to his colleagues: “I think this idiot thinks he’s Olga Korbut.”

Elsewhere, though, everyone apart from Mrs Queen and Johnny Pope shook hands. And that was fine. But recently, and I’m sure you must have noticed this, every single person in the world now has their own way of saying “hello” and if you get it wrong you are at best socially inept and at worst a racialist.

I have been to South Africa many times over the years and a handshake has always been fine. Not any more. Now, when you are introduced to someone, you must take their hand, hold it steady and perform what in football would be called a marginal shoulder charge. By the time I’d finished moving down a line of dignitaries, I was extensively bruised, and had knocked one poor man over.

Apparently this is a Zulu sign of brotherly love, and should not be done on the “street”. Here, if you try to shoulder-charge someone, he will treat it as a sign of disrespect and almost certainly cut your head off. What you must do instead is take his hand in the traditional fashion, but then pivot around one another’s thumbs. It’s a bit complicated and you can end up with a dislocated wrist.

In America the handshake also seems to have gone out of the window. Here, in order to show that they are black, well-to-do young white men now form their hands into a fist and touch knuckles with one another while saying “Yo”.

But you don’t have to travel abroad to be confused because even in Britain the whole system is a complete mess.

God knows why, but when you have known a chap for some time a handshake is considered to be a bit formal. So what you do is take him in your arms and give him an almighty bear hug. The trouble is that you don’t know when in your relationship this will happen: you shake hands with someone for maybe a year and then, one day, he bats your greeting away, envelops you and spends a few moments rubbing his gentleman sausage into yours.

I have one friend who goes even further. The bastard takes me in his arms and kisses me. I’ve told him time and time again that I find this uncomfortable but it makes no difference. So now, if I see him at a party, I always spend the rest of the night in the lavatory.

Which brings me on to the modern-day problem of greeting a woman. In the past this was easy. You shook hands when you were introduced and then planted a peck on either cheek when you parted. Now, though, you sometimes encounter a girl who wants to greet you with a tender kiss on the lips, which causes problems when you meet one who actually doesn’t.

So, you home in with your head canted over and she is coming at you with her head at the same angle. It’s like two of the Red Arrows heading towards each other when they haven’t previously worked out a game plan. So you cock the other way and she follows suit and now you’re in real trouble because the gap is narrowing fast and your heads are swaying from side to side as if you are a pair of Thunderbirds puppets and you are thinking: “There is no way all this can be coincidental. You must want me to kiss you on the lips so here goes . . .” And next thing you know, she’s looking at you as though you are basically a rapist.

It was in New Zealand, however, that I really did come a cropper. To welcome me, a group of semi-naked men came barrelling into the airport arrivals lounge shrieking and waving their tongues about. This was the haka, an ancient greeting designed to let a newcomer know he was facing great strength and unshakeable unity. So when they finished, I thought it would be a good idea to respond in kind.

I racked my brains for the traditional British equivalent of the haka, and in the limited time available all I could come up with was: “You’re going home in an ambulance.” This was considered to be a tremendous insult.

So please, can we just go back to the handshake. It’s simple, it communicates a great deal, there’s no genital contact and no bruising and it’s impossible to cause offence by getting it wrong.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1430524.ece

[RedMoon11]

Give a Donkey A Dynamo And It’s Still A Donkey

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 13 July 2014


Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV GX4hs, £34,999

ACCORDING TO my colleagues on Top Gear, the new BMW M3 is a tiny bit of a letdown. They say its turbocharged engine doesn’t have the rev-hungry zing of its predecessors and that while it’s still fast and grippy, it all feels a bit studied and neutered and safe.

Hmmm. There has never been an M3 that is less than eyes-on-stalks epic. The previous model went round the Ascari racetrack in Spain a full five seconds faster than both the Audi RS 4 and the Mercedes C 63 AMG. And five seconds on a circuit such as that is about a year.

So how, all of a sudden, have the wheels come off? Well, a possible answer is to be found on page 104 of the June edition of Top Gear magazine. Because halfway down the left-hand column we learn that Carsten Breitfeld, the man in charge of BMW’s hybrid i8 project, was given the pick of the company’s brightest and best engineers. Which means that the brightest and the best have not been working on the M3.

And according to Breitfeld there’s a very good reason for this. It’s that the i8 — not the M3 — is the sports car of the future. “People will use cars in a different way, with smog-free days and ZEV [zero-emissions vehicle] zones. Remember when companies making camera film said digital wasn’t as good quality as film? Maybe it wasn’t, but people used digital photography differently. Film companies that didn’t do digital didn’t survive. Without CO2 solutions, premium car makers will not survive.”

Well, Mr Breitfeld, allow me to puff out my chest and draw myself up to my full height and be very clear about this. You are absolutely right.

The i8 is without doubt the car I’m most looking forward to driving this year. Partly this is because it looks like something from a Hollywood director’s vision of the 24th century, but mostly it’s because it’s said to be a Porsche 911 with the sort of fuel economy figures a Toyota Prius owner could only dream about.

This is the future. Electric-only power round town and a combination of electric and turbocharged petrol power elsewhere to give 357bhp and a top speed of 155mph. Lightweight. Four-wheel drive. More than 100mpg if you’re careful. And you can charge up the battery either from the mains or by using the petrol engine as you drive along.

The Prius was designed to rob the motorcar of every last scintilla of fun. The i8 has come along to put it back.

And it’s not alone. We already have the Porsche 918 Spyder and the McLaren P1, both of which use hybrid systems to produce power that scrambles the senses and lap times that leave you breathless, plus free parking in towns with one eye on the green vote. Both of those cars make driving every single Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin feel like competing in the Grand National on a diplodocus. They make them feel old.

So you’re obviously keen to get a slice of the action. But there’s a problem. You don’t have £620,000, so you can’t have the Porsche, or close to a million quid for the McLaren. And while you might just be able to afford an i8 — it’ll be about the same price as a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S cabriolet — its tiny back seats are too small for your children.

And of course you don’t want a Prius, because you don’t want to be seen as a sanctimonious, evangelical lunatic with a garden full of useless windmills, a bathroom full of no soap at all and a pantry stuffed to overflowing with mud and lentils.

No problem, because this morning I give you ... drum roll ... the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Yes, PHEV. Great name. Sounds as if it could be the weapons system on a Klingon Bird of Prey. Or some kind of CIA drone. “Let’s take the PHEV tonight, darling.” Mmmm. I like the sound of that.

To the casual observer it’s a crossover 4x4 urban sports activity school-run mum-mobile just like all the other crossover 4x4 urban sports activity school-run mum-mobiles. But look carefully, because it appears to have two petrol filler caps: one on either side.

Aha. Wrong. You put the petrol in the one on the left and electricity in the one on the right, because, yup, behind the suburban exterior the four-wheel-drive PHEV is pretty much identical to the Porsche 918 Spyder and the BMW i8.

You climb aboard, you select electric power and, as long as the battery is charged, which it will be if you hooked the car up to the mains overnight, you will have enough juice to do about half what Mitsubishi says is possible. That equates to just over 16 miles, and that’s fine if you are going to work or school, but not so fine if you’re going to Darlington — or Stonehenge, as my Sunday Times colleague Eleanor Mills reported in Driving two weeks ago.



No worries, though, because when the battery is flat you simply start the ordinary 2-litre petrol engine and it will take over the driving duties. Or, and this is the clever bit, you can push the “Charge” button, which causes it not only to do the propulsion but to charge the battery at the same time.

So you are using petrol to give you those 16 miles of electric running. And here’s the big question: how much petrol?

Mitsubishi doesn’t say. And it’s impossible to work out without actually being in the engine, and that’s even more impossible. But look at it this way: to cover 16 miles on the engine alone would use about four pints of petrol. Does it take four pints to charge up that battery? Probably.

There is a solution, and that’s to use the process of slowing down to charge up the cells. But if you engage this system, it feels as though you’ve hit a wall every time you lift your foot off the accelerator. It’s good for the planet, I’m sure, but it’s not good for the chap behind, because you are slowing down very rapidly ... and your bloody brake lights haven’t come on!

It’s probably best not to worry about the chap behind and to relax in the knowledge that, theoretically, your big school-run-mobile can do 148mpg. That’s not a misprint. It can also do muddy fields, tow a horse box and keep you entertained on a long run with all its many features.

There are some drawbacks, though. And the main one is this. That if you strip away all the clever-clever running gear, the Outlander isn’t a very good car. The ride is poor, the petrol engine is soulless, the styling is dreadful, the seats are hard and the performance is woeful.

Apart from that, however ...

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV GX4hs

Engine
1998cc, 4 cylinders
Motor
2 electric motors
Power
119bhp @ 4500rpm
Torque
140 lb ft @ 4500rpm
Transmission
CVT, 4-wheel drive
Performance
0-62mph: 11sec
Top speed
106mph
Fuel
148mpg (on full charge)
CO2
44g/km
Range
32½ miles (electric-only), 512 miles (hybrid)
Price
£34,999 (after government grant)
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Well, Klingons have to do the school run too
CRITIC'S RATING**

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1432356.ece

[RedMoon11]

Call Up The Old Gang, Mr T — This Paint Job Needs Attention

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 20 July 2014



BMW M4, £59,145

IT’S ALWAYS been said that technology and ideas developed in Formula One motor racing improve the cars we drive to work every day. Er, right. I see, so does your Nissan Juke have tyres that lose their ability to grip after 24 miles? Does your Toyota GT86 crash if the rear spoiler falls off? Can your Audi A3 be serviced as you drive it down the A38?

You do, of course, have antilock brakes, rain-sensing wipers, automatic headlights, inertia-reel seatbelts and a starter motor. But none of that lot — nothing that really matters — came from F1. And there’s more. If F1 really were developing technology that eventually filtered down into road cars, then you would expect Renault, Ferrari and Mercedes to be at the forefront of hybrid technology. And they’re not.

The car company that is at the forefront of hybrid technology right now is BMW, which isn’t involved in F1. Its little i3 is intriguing, and, as I mentioned last week, the car I’m most looking forward to driving this year is the i8, which by all accounts is comparable to the Porsche 911. Except that it does 134.5mpg.

My worry — and I mentioned this too — is that BMW, like every other company in the world, has a limited pool of talent. And if the brightest and the best have been drafted into the hybrid projects, we have to assume it’s the B-team that is charged with developing the car you see photographed on this page — the new M4. So does that mean it’s not as good as it could have been?

My initial reaction when the car was delivered was to feel slightly sick. That is because it had been painted in quite the most revolting colour I’ve seen. BMW calls it Austin Yellow, suggesting that it would have suited an Allegro back in the day. And it would. But Baby Diarrhoea is nearer the mark.

It’s hard really to judge a car when it is such a horrible colour. It is like trying to learn to understand the moods of a bald dog. And to make matters worse, the other colours on offer are not much better. Best, I think, to go for black.

There’s another advantage to this. If the car is black, you don’t notice quite so quickly that the stylists simply didn’t know when the time was right to step away from the drawing board. Every detail is garnished with yet more detail, and the end result is fussy. The door mirrors are especially annoying. Possibly the company has done this to make the two-door M4 coupé stand out more from the four-door M3 saloon, but I’m really not sure it was necessary.

Eventually, though, I was able to put the styling and the colour out of my mind and concentrate on the car, which — on paper at least — looks a step back from its predecessor, which was called the M3 coupé. That car had a glorious V8 that screamed and hollered as the revs rose and then howled in an orgy of what sounded like BDSM ecstasy as it neared the red line.

Well, you can forget all that. The new car is fitted with a turbocharged straight six. Turbocharging? In an M car? That’s like putting gravy on an ice cream. However, this and the electric power steering are necessary these days if a car is to meet EU emissions regulations. It’s not the end of the world, because you get even more power than you did from the old V8, and a huge spread of torque. On the downside you lose those top-end shenanigans. And the throttle response is a little more squidgy, a problem that’s made worse by a seven-speed flappy-paddle gearbox that offers no creep. Unlike a standard automatic, the car won’t move until you put your foot on the accelerator. Which makes parking a jerky bloody nightmare.

And while we are on the subject of the gearbox, I was forever being told by bongs and rude messages that I might not turn off the ignition until I had put the gear lever into Park. But as far as I could see, there was no Park. What you have to do to solve the problem is to slam the lever this way and that while swearing.

So, to recap, the colours are awful, the styling is blingtastic, the door mirrors are annoying, the gearbox is flawed, the engine is a step backwards and parking is hard. It sounds, then, as though BMW’s B-team hasn’t been able to overcome the emissions regulations, and as a result the car is not as good as the previous model. Yes, and there’s more.

The M4 is not a particularly heavy car. Much plastic and carbon fibre is used to keep the weight, and therefore the fuel consumption, down. But it feels, as you potter about, as if it weighs more than a football stadium. You really do have to manhandle the wheel, and when you run over a bump, there’s a sense it is simply being squashed.

There are, however, some good points. It’s a very easy car to use: all the command systems are as natural as breathing. It is also fitted with fabulous seats. And I loved being able to select tracks on my iPod from a list shown on the head-up display. Oh, and I nearly forgot: it is truly marvellous to drive.



Yes, the engine is different in character from the old V8, but if you sit in the big meat pie of torque rather than at the summit of the power, you find you get all the oomph you want and total control over what the rear wheels are doing. Millimetric movements of your right foot are translated instantly into shifts in how the car behaves, and you can feel it all through the steering wheel, even though it’s not really connected to the car.

The differential is fantastic, the brakes are wondrous, the antilock system is spot-on and the noise is a big bass-baritone that comes from the engine, not some laptop-activated exhaust valve.

It’s fast too. The figures don’t tell you all the story, because when you put everything in Sport Plus mode and plant your foot into the carpet, the car sets off like a disturbed shark. I honestly haven’t enjoyed driving a vehicle as much as this for months.

There was a time, of course, when the M3 was hijacked by the nation’s squash-playing dealmakers. People in braces who didn’t really know what it was; only that it made them look good. It was an accessory, like Oakley sunglasses.

Today these people are driving fast Audis and, to a certain extent, Mercedes AMGs. Which means the M3 and the M4 can be bought once more by people who simply want a seriously good car.

I just wish BMW’s A-team had been involved in its design, though. Because I feel sure the stylists would have fitted less stupid door mirrors and made certain that some of the colours at least didn’t leave you feeling physically ill.


BMW M4

Engine
2979cc, 6 cylinders in line
Power
425bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque
405 lb ft @ 1850rpm
Transmission
7-speed dual-clutch sequential/automatic
Performance
0-62mph: 4.1sec
Top speed
155mph
Fuel
34mpg
CO2
194g/km
Road tax band
J (£485 for first year; £265 thereafter)
Price
£59,145
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Not bad for the B-team

CRITIC'S RATING ****

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used BMW M4s

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1435040.ece

[RedMoon11]

What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted’s Toasters? I’ll Show You

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 20 July 2014

 

A few months ago I came here and said that most of the world’s museums are filled almost entirely with stuff that’s not very interesting. And that the only reason we pay them a visit is because we think it will make us look more brainy than we really are.

I suggested that each of the world’s most well-known museums has only one really exciting exhibit and that all of these should be brought together in Dortmund to create a visitor experience that everyone would want to see. No old coins. No broken pottery. No muddy arrowheads. Just the dinosaur from London’s Natural History Museum, the pickled baby from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, the Mona Lisa from Paris, the Bell X-1 supersonic aircraft from Washington, the shroud from Turin and so on — all under one roof.

It was a brilliant plan, but it all came a bit unstitched on a recent visit to the Croatian capital, Zagreb. It was a lovely sunny day, and I had nothing to do until the evening so I thought I’d have a little look at the market and maybe people-watch at a pavement cafe for a while.

But no. As usual, the snob gene kicked in and I realised that I couldn’t possibly come back from a trip to the former Yugoslavia and say I’d spent my only day off looking at pretty girls in the sunshine. So with a heavy heart I found myself asking the hotel concierge if there were any museums I ought to visit.

He suggested something called the Museum of Broken Relationships, and that sounded like it mightn’t be so bad. I figured it would be full of exhibits from the civil war: some guns and maps and James Blunt’s tank, perhaps. So yes. I would go and I would perch some spectacles on the end of my nose and look grown-up and interested and sensible.

It turned out, however, that the Museum of Broken Relationships had nothing to do with the war. But I’m glad I went because it was poignant, bewitching, intelligent, sad and, at times, very, very funny. It was the only museum I’ve visited where every single thing on display was utterly fabulous.

Most of the exhibits are bits of worthless tat, but each is accompanied by a brief story from a former owner about why it had mattered in a previous relationship. It could be an old boyfriend’s hat. An ex-wife’s T-shirt. There was even an axe that a cheated-on spouse had used to smash up every stick of her errant husband’s furniture.

There was also a battered pocket watch that an elderly chap had bought for his younger lover. “I thought she liked things that were old and broken,” said the accompanying text. “But it turned out she didn’t.”

All of us have, at some point, been through the breakdown of a relationship. We know how much it hurts, and how it’s the smallest mementos that can turn us into sobbing, shoulder-heaving wrecks. We all think that nobody has suffered as we are suffering now. But this museum tells us that they have.

And then it gets even more awful. One person has donated the suicide note left by his mother. I had a very lumpy throat and prickly eyes reading that one. But right next to it was a piece of electric equipment with a short accompanying note that said: “Wi-fi router: we didn’t get on.” I laughed a lot at that. I felt the man’s pain.

I also enjoyed the toaster that had been donated by someone along with a note explaining how the relationship with a girlfriend had ended, how she had taken everything and he had been able to save only the toaster, which he said was great “because now she will never be able to toast anything ever again”.

You can feel the bitterness right there. You know this is a man who even now, even after he has donated the last reminder of his girlfriend to a museum, will still be incapable of having a drink without feeling an overwhelming need to call his former lover to try to win her back and call her a bitch and slam the phone down.

I don’t doubt for a minute that anonymously donating an item that symbolised a relationship is extremely cathartic. And, of course, it will provide an element of closure — “I’ve given the bloody thing away to a museum.”

But there’s more too because I bet that every single one of the people whose stories are on display sits at home every day, praying that the former lover is in the museum reading it.

Especially the woman who could have been Anastasia Thingy from the Fifty Shades of Embarrassment books. She had donated a pair of high-heeled red shoes that had been bought for her by a dominating man who had made her do all sorts of intimate things. She must hope that one day he drops by and dies a thousand deaths as he realises it’s him she’s talking about.

Certainly, I must confess, as I moved from exhibit to exhibit, that I felt a tinge of fear that the next would be a teddy bear with a severed head and a short accompanying story about a former local newspaper reporter with an interest in cars and a very small gentleman sausage . . .

Apparently the Museum of Broken Relationships now has such a wide and varied collection of donations that it’s currently touring, and if my internet is to be believed, it’s now at the Southbank Centre in London. I haven’t had time to go but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that one of the exhibits is a battered red briefcase alongside a note from someone identified only as MG of Surrey.

“I worked in the Cabinet for four years, during which time I used this red briefcase every day. I was good at my job and loyal, and people liked me. But then one day, for no reason at all, my boss called me into his office and demoted me. My new job is to make sure that all the other employees do as they’re told. Well, if he thinks I’ll put my back into that, he’s got another thing coming, the snot-nosed little so-and-so.”

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1436166.ece

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[RedMoon11]

We Didn’t Have An Affair – and That’s All You Need To Be Told

Jeremy Clarkson  Published: 15 May 2011

The press should not be free to screw up the lives of my children. That’s why I’m pro-injunction

It had been a fairly normal day. Woke up, rowed with the kids, spoke to my mother about yet another operation she needs, made breakfast for a 10-year-old Japanese girl who’s come to stay. In the afternoon I faced up to the fact that Top Gear is being sued for libel and malicious falsehood, dealt with the fallout from recent tabloid allegations that I’d fed a pretty blonde some lettuce and at around midnight settled down to write some newspaper columns. Then my phone exploded.

Someone on Twitter had claimed that Jemima Khan had taken out a super-injunction to prevent intimate photographs of us being published. Jeremy and Jemima? Presumably the claimant has some kind of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fixation.

Now if you are going to be romantically linked with anyone, then I’d rather it was Jemima Khan than, say, Huw Edwards. But, even though I hate doing this, I’m duty-bound to say that the claim is incorrect. Although I know Jemima quite well — my wife and I had been round for dinner with her the night before — we have never been alone together. There are no intimate photographs. The end.

Naturally, Jemima was very upset. Rather too upset, I thought. She tweeted to say she was “in a bloody nightmare”. She found the very notion of being intimate with me “upsetting”. After a while I began to think, “All right, love. Steady on.” I know I’m a bit fat and my hair’s pubic and I have teeth the colour of plywood. But there’s no need to tell the world you’re feeling sick at the mere thought of being intimate with me.

At work, it got worse. My producer said the idea was comical. At this stage I began to get quite upset. If we look at Jemima’s previous loves — Imran Khan and Hugh Grant — I fit right in there.

Slap bang between the two. In my mind.

And in the mind of The Daily Telegraph, too, because the next day it ran big pictures of us on its front page, saying that we hadn’t had a fling. Which is the same as saying, “They bloody have, you know.”

The Daily Star went further. “Top Gear Jezza in sex pics fury,” screamed the front-page headline. It then said in tiny letters that the allegations were “false” and, in an editorial on page 6, that “it’s all rubbish”.

You don’t see an editorial, though, when you’re walking past a newsagent. My kids simply saw a story saying that I was caught up in a sex picture tangle. As their friends saw it too, they had a bad day.

So. Had I known about this story before midnight, would I have taken out an injunction to stop it appearing? To protect my children? Yes. In a heartbeat.

And that’s a point everyone seems to be missing in the big debate about press freedom. Yes, we want a free press but we don’t want a press that’s free to wantonly screw up the lives of my children, or Jemima’s, or yours.

I realise, of course, that injunctions, allied to Max Mosley’s drive to make the papers reveal stories to victims in advance, will pretty much put the tabloid press out of business. They’d be reduced to printing pictures of a shark leaping out of the sea. Which is what the Mirror did on Tuesday.

Deciding which of these injunctions should be granted is tricky. What’s personal and what’s not? When does a private life stop and a public image begin?

According to Charlotte Harris, a media lawyer: “There has been a terrible mis-characterisation of the people involved.” Apparently, 80% of injunctions go to the victims of blackmail, harassment and stalkers and those who suffer threats to their families. Only a tiny minority are given to footballers who have been in bed with a teenager.

So it’s all very well saying that all injunctions should be overturned now, but if they were, it would be a charter for lunatics and blackmailers to do and say pretty well whatever took their fancy. Moira Stuart likes to smash up wheelchairs. The editor of The Daily Telegraph is at the centre of a paedophile ring. Just so long as the newspaper says the victim denies the allegations, it’s all legal.

If newspapers were a bit more fair-minded, if people thought their side of the argument would be heard, instead of relegated to page 94, there would be no need for so many injunctions.

I am not a saint. And as I’m in the pay of the BBC — a publicly funded body — it might seem reasonable for newspapers to question some of my lifestyle choices. But they wouldn’t question them. They’d demand that I be sacked. They’d say I’d sparked fury and work themselves into a frothing rage. That would alarm my family and that’s why I try to keep my private life private. It’s why I’m pro-injunction.

It is said only the rich and famous can afford a gagging order. But only the rich and famous ever need one. Others say that everything anyone at the BBC does should be published. What? Sophie Raworth’s sexual fantasies? Pictures of Jeremy Paxman on the lavatory? Where do you draw the line?

I suppose we could start by drawing it just above the point where someone says on Twitter that Jeremy Clarkson and Jemima Khan have had an affair. And even though everyone knows it to be rubbish, it somehow becomes front-page news for two days.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Tech/article626485.ece#prev

[RedMoon11]

Sex, Blood, Mumbling ... It’s Guessing Game of Thrones

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 30 June 2013

Not that long ago I’d have scoffed and tutted at the beautiful and very excellent Imogen Stubbs, who said recently that younger actors have started to imitate American film stars by mumbling their lines.

Of course she would say this. Ms Stubbs learnt her craft in the theatre, where even the most tender love scene must be delivered in such a way that you can be heard at the back. “YOUR EYES ARE LIKE POOLS OF MOONLIGHT AND YOUR SWEET BREATH CARESSES ME LIKE A GENTLE SUMMER BREEZE.”

Theatre is make-believe. You have to wear make-up that’s 6in thick, you have to prance about in preposterous clothes and you have to enunciate at a volume that is heard in real life only when someone has a very bad mobile phone connection. “I’m on the train!”

American film stars can be more true to life. They can whisper, safe in the knowledge that sophisticated microphones and Dolby surround sound will make their near-silent utterances audible in the cinema. In the theatre, actors need lungs like Spinal Tap’s amplifiers because they are talking to a thousand people. In a film they’re talking to you. It’s about small movements and small sound. That’s what makes it real.

However, that said, on a long flight to Johannesburg recently I tried to watch a film called Zero Dark Thirty. Early on, there’s a meeting of spies and it’s obvious that what is being said is vital to the plot. But even though I was using expensive, noise-cancelling headphones, I could not make out a single word that anyone said. It was as though they were speaking in a language that had no consonants. So I gave up.

I am partial to Game of Thrones. But I have to watch with the subtitles turned on or I simply don’t understand who the man with the beard is, or why he is having sex or being stabbed. Much of the time the actors don’t even move their lips. It’s as though they were trained to be ventriloquists, to take diction out of the dictionary.

And it’s not just while I’m watching TV either. Often when I am interviewing someone on Top Gear, the audience bursts into peals of laughter and I have no idea why, because I simply haven’t heard what the person has just said. My elder daughter, being a teenager, speaks at 5,000 words a minute, and while I know some of those words are “like” and “I’m not even joking”, the rest, I’m afraid, are just noises. It’s like listening to a goose, most of the time.

At parties, when someone is telling me an anecdote, I have learnt to wait for their mouth to stop moving and say, “Really?” Because a well- delivered “Really?” works, no matter what they’ve just said. “My children are teenagers now.” “I have just won £700m on the lottery.” “My husband has just exploded.” “Really?” works for all of them. It’s the No 1 catch-all response for the hard-of-hearing.

Of course, you might think it’d be better if I simply owned up to my problem and asked them to speak more like Patrick Stewart when he’s on stage at the National Theatre, or the bridge of the USS Enterprise. But I’m afraid that this is not possible.

In our cruel world, deafness is like insomnia. People have no sympathy for it. My family will ride bicycles across mountain ranges and swim the largest oceans to raise money for those who have cancer and soldiers who have lost their limbs in Afghanistan. Their capacity for giving is boundless. But when I ask any of them to repeat what they’ve just said, they laugh in my face.

And I can’t complain because for years my elderly mother has struggled to keep up with fast-moving kitchen table chitchat, and I’ve found it extremely exasperating. She also says that my car phone doesn’t work properly, that the sound on her television is broken and that all Americans are inaudible, and I’ve rolled my eyes in despair.

Deafness is annoying for the sufferer, but, truth be told, it’s worse for everyone else. That’s why I’ve spent the past year or so nodding and saying, “Really?” and smiling politely and pretending I understand what’s going on in Game of Thrones.

But recently I’d had enough and decided to research the issue. So I turned to the Daily Mail, which, of course, knows exactly what’s causing it. Surprisingly, it’s not Romanian immigrants or the BBC. It’s because I eat too much. Yup. It published a story recently saying that overeating can damage the hair cells in the inner ear, causing hearing loss. Fat hair? Who knew?

Mind you, the Mail’s medical experts say that drinking one glass of wine a day is good for you and that drinking two glasses of wine a day can cause brain damage. And no doubt make you an immigrant too. So I’m not sure we can take its medical advice seriously.

It’s more likely I’m going a bit mutton because I’ve seen the Who 13 times. And because I’ve been to a rocket test in the Deep South. And because I spend half my working days being assaulted by the sound of internal combustion. And, if we’re honest, because I’m 53 and thus many years past my sell-by date.

But can something be done? To find out, I went to see a doctor, who put me in headphones and asked me to push a button each time I heard a small beep. Some sounded like baby bats giggling in the next room, and some like faraway oil tankers in the fog. It was therapeutic and rather nice.

But not as nice, it turned out, as the results. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my hearing. Pete Townshend’s G-string has had no effect. Nor has the immense wall of noise created when solid fuel is turned into a huge amount of thrust. I’m fine. My ear hair is not even slightly fat.

Which must mean that Imogen Stubbs does have a point. The reason I can’t hear what actors are saying is that they’ve all seen Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now and think that’s how it should be done.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1279854.ece

[RedMoon11]

Coming Soon: Top Hi-Vis Gear. No Stunts, No Tomfoolery, No Fun

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 16 February 2014



Last weekend I appeared on television riding a jet ski across Lake Como in northern Italy in a pair of jeans and a rather fetching white linen shirt. I was not wearing a helmet or a life jacket or any sort of high-visibility vest.

As you can imagine, this did not go down well with the BBC’s health and safety enthusiasts.

And neither were they very pleased when I simply set off before the safety boat with its squad of trained — and very expensive — divers was on hand to help out if I fell off.

I had tried to explain, using swearwords and much finger-pointing, that it was a lovely calm summer’s day and that I wasn’t going to fall off. And that even if I did I could swim. But this argument was based on a principle that they simply could not grasp: common sense.

I’m used to this, of course. Before I do anything, a man with a stern face and a lime green jacket with tubes coming out of it is forced to give me a lecture for several hours on all the things that may go wrong, and I never listen to a word he says. I’m not interested. I genuinely, actively and passionately hate health and safety.

What surprised me after the Lake Como escapade, though, was that my Twitter feed was jammed up by ordinary members of the public who said I should have been wearing safety equipment and was setting a bad example. This made me so angry, my teeth started to itch.

It’s not my job to tell people to wear stupid clothes any more than it’s my job to tell people to brush their teeth or always wear cufflinks that are smaller than your little fingernail. It is my job, on the other hand, to make jet-skiing across an Italian lake look fun. And I would have failed if I’d been dressed up like a traffic warden.

I am completely fed up with people appearing on television in brightly coloured technical clothing when there is simply no need. Only recently some idiot was filmed at the top of Nelson’s Column wearing a hard hat, and I just sat there thinking, “What do you imagine is going to land on your head up there, you moron?”

Then you have the Somerset correspondents wearing life jackets, while standing up to their ankles in a puddle.

Politicians are the worst. Whenever they appear in a factory of some kind they are always wearing a suit and a tie, which is bad enough, plus wellies, a plastic hat and a high-visibility vest. I want to put my hands round their neck and scream, “It’s a bakery, you idiot. It’s not dangerous in any way.”

I simply would not vote for any politician who appeared on television dressed up as though he were about to juggle chainsaws in the outside lane of the M4, while standing in a factory that made chair legs. Because I’d just know he had been told to put on the clobber and he hadn’t had the wit to raise an eyebrow and say: why?

There is no answer to this. Only recently an airline stewardess told me to remove my jacket from my knee before coming in to land, and when I asked — very politely — why I should do any such thing, she was stumped. As stumped, in fact, as when you ask why you can’t use a mobile phone.

High-visibility safety clothing is the result of an unholy alliance between Britain’s insurance industry and the trade unions. The insurers like it because anyone injured while not dressed from head to foot in DayGlo orange is not insured, and the unions like it because their members get a free jacket at the company’s expense.

And the whole thing is out of hand. When I was growing up, a policeman looked like a policeman. Now, in his ridiculous yellow jacket, he looks like absolutely everyone else.

“Help. I’ve been robbed.”

“Sorry, guv, I’m a scaffolder.”

So, what’s to be done? We can’t abandon the craze for high-visibility hard hats because the insurance industry would simply smile the supercilious smile of the victor, upwardly raise its corporate palms in a “what can I do?” gesture of impotence and refuse to compensate anyone who’d been injured at work.

But similarly we can’t live in a society where a man with a bronze life-saver award is castigated by mealy-mouthed busybodies for riding a jet ski across an inland lake, on a calm day, in a pair of jeans.

We need balance, and for an answer we should turn to nature, where we find that all of the most unpleasant and useless creatures come with high-visibility jackets. The wasp, for example. Its yellow-and-black traffic-officer markings are designed to tell other creatures — us included — that it is pointless, and to be avoided. Surely that’s not the signal the police want to send out.

If you wear brightly coloured orange clothes at work you are essentially saying that you are not that far removed from the monarch butterfly, a creature that tastes so awful it can make a starling sick. It’s marzipan with wings, and again I’m not sure people want to be sending out this sort of signal.

So what we need is a creature that is capable of becoming highly visible in times of emergency. And the only creature I can think of, off the top of my head, that does this is Bambi.

When Johnny Deer senses danger, it raises its white tail, which acts as a muster point for the weak and the vulnerable. And that’s what we need in society. The freedom to go about our business in normal, sober, brown clothes, but the ability to become a beacon instantly when there’s been a fire or a crash or a forklift is out of control and heading towards a massive vat of acid.

This, then, is my alternative to the ridiculous health and safety clothes we are now supposed to wear. Instead of a hi-vis jacket, a raisable tail. And instead of a hard hat, some antlers.

Of course this would make everyone look very stupid. To which I say, “Hope so. Then they might stop doing it.”

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1375607.ece

[RedMoon11]

You Betcha, Hank, This Beauty Really Can Do Corners

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 27 July 2014



Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible, £64,540

DO YOU believe that America’s involvement in Iraq was righteous and justified? Do you have an attack dog? Do you believe everyone has a right to own as many automatic weapons as they damn well please and that Obama Barrack is basically a communist? Yes? So, of course, you drive a Chevrolet Corvette.

This is not a car. It’s a statement. And what it says is that you are a staunch conservative, from a family of decent God-fearing folk, who believes in short haircuts, US beer and the American way.

Nobody has ever listened to a George Michael CD while driving a ’Vette. Or Edward Elgar. And things that have never been said to anyone who has just stepped from such a car include, “Welcome, Your Grace”, “Thank you for sparing us some of your time, Your Holiness” and “Darling, the undertaker is here”.

All of this means that Democrats who do listen to George Michael would never drive a Corvette in a million years. And that’s always been fine. Because to drive, America’s only sports car — ha-ha-ha — was much like its typical owner’s other car: a pick-up truck. Bouncy, disconnected, unwieldy and crude.

Have you ever wondered why the Corvette has never been made with its steering wheel on the correct side of the car? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because Chevrolet’s sports car division reckons that the world outside of America is full of cannibals and communists, neither of whom would appreciate their pushrod engines and leaf-spring suspension. Amen. Praise the Lord.

However, there’s a problem. I first noticed it a couple of years ago while driving the previous-generation Corvette ZR1 from San Francisco to the Nevada desert. I know, of course, that American products often seem not so bad when they’re at home — I can even tolerate Budweiser in some states — but the car really didn’t seem to be so bad. Yes, it was a big, daft old Hector, but it looked as though Chevrolet was actually trying to make it more than 1½ tons of plastic, pig iron and straight-line grunt.

And now things have got worse because there’s an all-new Corvette. It’s called the Stingray and, ahem, I really don’t know how to say this but, um, it’s excellent.

Yes, mothers still asked their children to come inside when I drove by, and cyclists sneered at me even more cruelly than usual. I felt the hatred from anyone whose IQ was greater than their hat size. And I wanted to lean out of the window and tell them all: “Look, I know you think this is crap, and that I only bought it to demonstrate my love for Garth Brooks, but, trust me, it’s tremendous.”

Corvettes have always been good-looking but this one is a masterpiece. Yes, it has four huge exhaust tailpipes and a bonnet that’s more sculpted than the Himalayas. So I’ll agree it’s childish, but what’s wrong with that? The Lamborghini Aventador is childish. The Ferrari 458 Italia is childish. The Jaguar F-type is childish. And the Stingray looks as good as any of them. Better, in fact, from some angles. It’s one of the most beautifully proportioned cars I’ve seen.

Under the skin it’s like a greatest-hits album. Because what Chevrolet has done is to take all of what’s good from the best of Europe and Japan and put it in its car. It has the same sort of unpronounceable suspension and electronic differential that you get in Ferraris, the same sort of throttle-blipping technology that you get in a Nissan 370Z, the same sort of head-up display that you get in a BMW M5 and a system that shuts down half of the cylinders when they’re not needed. The same as you get in a Bentley.

But, that said, it has some things you won’t find in any European car. The touchscreen display, for instance, will slide down at the press of a button to reveal a hidden cubbyhole that is easily big enough for a Bible and a small pistol.


Behind the Stingray’s touchscreen display is a cubbyhole big enough for a Bible and a small pistol

Naturally, behind the hi-tech exterior some things remain resolutely backward. The gearbox is mounted at the back for better weight distribution, but it comes with the traditional Corvette weak synchro crunchiness when you’re going into second or third. You also get a pushrod engine with just two valves per cylinder, because four is communist. And the body is still fibreglass because carbon fibre is a pinko plot. So, yes, it’s a Silicon Valley software geek, but it still knows how to kill a deer.

And the signature track? Well, that would be the straight-line wallop, which is fearsome even by the most demanding European standards. Get the launch just right and that mighty 6.2-litre V8 will get you past 62mph in 4.2 seconds. The top speed, according to the speedo on my car, is 330mph. I think that may be a bit optimistic — 180mph is nearer the mark.

Of course, many American cars over the years have been capable of impressive straight-line performance, but the Corvette can do something else as well. It can go round corners. Both kinds — left and right.

I’m going to make no bones about this. I drove the Stingray to, and then round, the Top Gear test track the other day, and while I admit that a clear blue sky can make any drophead seem acceptable, I absolutely loved it.

The issues were tiny. Over speed humps — which are communist — the nose graunches even if you are going slowly. And no matter what setting you select, the ride is always on the wrong side of firm. But then I guess that being a bit uncomfortable puts you closer to Jesus. Also, the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car.

But I didn’t mind because I was having too much fun. With all eight cylinders engaged, the bellow when you accelerate is intoxicating, and this is a car that behaves like a Mercedes SLS. It’s happy only when there’s 40 degrees of opposite lock up front, a grinning driver in the middle and enough smoke pouring off the rear tyres to hide a battleship.

In America the cost of a basic Stingray convertible is about £34,000. And yet somehow General Motors has decided the price here in Britain should be £64,540.

I don’t doubt that makes you very cross, because it smacks of blatant profiteering. But look at it this way. A similarly quick Ferrari will cost more than twice as much, so £64,540 for a 180mph convertible that looks this good and drives this well is still the bargain of the century. I mean, a Jaguar F-type V8 is almost £16,000 more, for heaven’s sake. And I’m sorry but it’s not as good.

There is just one thing, though. If you drive a Jaguar, you are welcome to drop round at my house any time for tea and buns. If you drive a Corvette Stingray, you are not.

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible

Engine

6162cc, V8
Power
460bhp
Torque
464 lb ft
Transmission
7-speed manual
Acceleration
0-62mph: 4.2sec
Top speed
180mph
Fuel
23.1mpg
CO2
283g/km
Road tax
M (£1,090 for first year; £500 thereafter)
Price
£64,540
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Yup. Americans can make sports cars
CRITIC'S RATING ****

Go to driving.co.uk to search for used Chevrolets


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1437757.ece

[RedMoon11]

Give Me Your Best Shot, Uncle Sam: I’m A World Champion Tickboxer

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 27 July 2014

Before being allowed into America, everyone must fill in a form stating that they have no convictions for drug smuggling, that they have never performed even the smallest bit of genocide, that they were not a Nazi in 1940s Germany and that they are not carrying any snails.

Now I can understand why the Americans might want to stop people bringing lions into their country. There’s no doubt that a fleet of big cats would cause havoc if it were to be unleashed in downtown Washington. So would a matchbox full of funnel-web spiders. But it’s snails that are singled out for particular attention. And I’ve never been quite sure why.

I appreciate, of course, that most Americans will eat only burgers and french fries and that none would countenance popping a snail into their mouth, even if it were drenched in lashings of hot and delicious garlic-infused butter. But banning snails because of a nation’s faddiness seems a bit draconian somehow. I mean, tortoises aren’t mentioned and I’ve never seen one of those on an American menu either.

It turns out that specifically the snail they are bothered about is an 8in African whopper called, rather unimaginatively, the giant African landsnail. Earlier this month two baskets carrying 67 of the monsters were discovered at Los Angeles airport, and immediately there was a guns-drawn, anthrax-protocol biohazard Defcon 1 lockdown.

This seems excessive because the monthly web magazine Weekend Gardener has many suggestions for getting rid of snails. You can leave a saucer of beer in the garden, into which they will climb and then drown. Or you can put them in a bucket of salty water. If neither of those appeals, the experts say it is effective if you “throw them into the street” or “stamp on them”.

It all sounds very simple. But although the American homeland security is extremely well versed in how to assemble a Glock 9mm pistol in the dark while uploading the schematics of a terrorist’s lair to an agent’s personal digital assistant,it is obviously a bit nervous about stamping on an 8in snail.

As a result, the creatures were taken at great speed to the sort of incinerator normally used for the disposal of hazardous chemicals and burnt alive. It all sounds like an episode of the TV show 24, and I guess you must now be wondering what sort of damage these snails would have done if they’d been allowed out of the airport and into the population.

Well, according to the US government, they need to eat almost constantly to provide calcium for their shells, and if they can’t find a farmer’s field, they will happily eat your house. What’s more, they lay about 1,200 eggs a year and if touched can give you meningitis.

It all sounds very frightening but the truth is no snail has ever given any American meningitis. And while the mighty molluscs do have healthy appetites, the only part of your house they will eat are the stucco and the bits of plasterboard that aren’t already in your dog. And that brings us back to the original question. Why are they singled out for special attention on a US customs form?

Well, here’s the thing. Way before you land in America, the authorities already know pretty much everything about you. They know where and when you were born. They know if you have a criminal conviction. They have your fingerprints and a map of your eyeball, and all your medical history is just a couple of clicks away.

But having established that you’re not a despot with a backpack

full of horror, they can’t just let you walk in. Because then you’d smell a rat. You’d know they had been spying on you. Therefore, there has to be someone with a serious face standing at a counter, looking official and collecting forms that he knows are completely useless.

Which means that somebody at some point had to sit down and dream up the questions. And I cannot even begin to imagine how much of a laugh that was.

“Hank, you are not seriously going to ask them if they are carrying snails?”

“Sure am, Wilbur.”

“Are you for real? Are you really going to ask people like Sir Branson and Sir Sugar if they have any snails in their briefcase?”

“Yup. And get this, I’m going to ask everyone — even nine-year-old girls — if they were ever a camp commandant in Nazi Germany in 1942. And finally I shall ask if they have ever, at any point in their lives, been in a field.”

Absolutely no effort was made, at all, to make any of the questions seem reasonable or give anyone a sense the answers might matter at all. I mean, one thing they want to know is if you have ever been on a farm. On my last visit I wrote “no” and even though I then told the grumpy man at the desk that I was a farmer, I was still allowed through.

I should point out at this stage that it’s not just the Americans who are playing this game. I arrived in Australia recently on a flight from Johannesburg and was asked on the form if I’d been in Africa at any point in the past three months. I wrote “no” and was waved through with a cheery smile and the usual observations about my poor underarm hygiene and general uselessness at cricket.

As a result, I never fill forms in properly these days. It means getting out of my seat on the plane, rummaging around in the overhead locker for my spectacles and then translating all the information they already have on my passport into a series of boxes a spider would call tiny.

I therefore make up a passport number, invent an address where I’ll be staying and tick “no” to all the guff about currency and plants. Because I know that long before I’ve collected my luggage and left the airport, all my hard work will be in the bin.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1438837.ece

GIANT AFRICAN LAND SNAIL 

[RedMoon11]

Heathrow’s A Hole. Our New Runway Must Be At London Hogwarts

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 3 August 2014

As we know, first impressions count. If someone greets you with a weak, drooping handshake, you know immediately you will not like them. They can stand there, telling you that they work for Nasa and Médecins sans Frontières and once saved a party of disabled schoolchildren from a rampaging tiger, but it won’t matter because you’ll be thinking, “Yes, but your hand is like a bit of wet cod, which means that deep down there’s something wrong with you.”

Halitosis is another problem. And so are dirty fingernails, beige shoes, culottes, Princess Anne hair and that white gooey stuff that some people get at the corners of their mouth. Oh, and for reasons I can’t explain, I’m especially troubled by people who have thin lips. They can appear to be amusing and kind, but I’ll have already decided that actually they are not.

The writers of American box-set television drama are aware of the importance of first impressions, which is why at the start Breaking Bad contained casual sex and nudity. The same with Dexter. The same with Orange Is the New Black.

Estate agents get it too, which is why even a lopsided and damp wreck will go for more than the asking price if prospective buyers are greeted with the smell of fresh bread as they walk through the door.

Unfortunately, countries don’t seem to have cottoned on. If you are greeted at the airport by a cheery and welcoming immigration official, you will think, “I’m going to enjoy it here.” Whereas in America, with its sullen and rude attitude, you always emerge onto the taxi rank thinking you’re not.

Here in Britain, however, the problem is far more fundamental. Because, as journeys go, the drive from Heathrow into London is right up there with the handcuffed shuffle prisoners are forced to make on the green mile. West Drayton. Osterley Park. Brentford. A rickety bridge that was erected as a temporary measure 40-odd years ago. Then Hammersmith. Nobody is going to emerge from a ride such as that thinking, “Mmmm. I’m going to love it here.”

And things are even worse if visitors land at Gatwick, because a management team that couldn’t be trusted to run a greengrocer’s has ensured there aren’t enough baggage handlers, which means nobody’s suitcase arrives on the carousel until it’s time to fly home.

If you are foreign and you are told you have been waiting for your bag for two days because staff won’t work at weekends, you are going to think the whole of Britain is crap. And that’s before you learn London Gatwick is nowhere near London.

The situation is even more dire for people arriving in Britain by boat. They may be looking forward to their holiday, visiting the Shambles in York and Warwick Castle and London. But first they must get out of what they’ve been told is the Garden of England — Kent.

We must assume that if they’re in a car, they arrived in Calais via a super-smooth but expensive-to-use French autoroute. So they will probably be quite pleased to find out that Britain’s motorways are free. Until they actually use one.

My God, the M20 is bumpy. Progress would be more smooth if they’d simply left it as a field. But eventually, with double vision and a disintegrating ribcage, they are directed onto the M25 — where things, unbelievably, get even worse. Happily, however, they will not realise this, because traffic here is moving at the same speed as tectonic drift. After an hour they will be geologically closer to their start point in Europe than London.

But then Maman and Papa will turn to the back seat and tell their children — who by this stage have started to shave and have periods — that they are now turning off the M25 and going into London. Trafalgar Square. Big Ben. Tower Bridge. The Queen. Everyone is excited.

It says on the map that the road they’ve chosen to travel into London goes past golf clubs and woods and commons, and it all sounds very wonderful and Harry Potterish, but mostly it’s an ocean of pebbledash interspersed with the occasional parade of shops where you can get a loan or have your nails trimmed. But that’s about it.

What if you want to stop for something to eat? Well, unless you fancy a kebab, you can’t. It’s rubbish. This is Surrey. It’s supposed to be pretty and tranquil and expensive. But, honestly, the journey from Leatherhead to Long Ditton, past Surbiton and the Chessington World of Many Traffic Cones, is as featureless and as boring as a journey from Venus to one of Jupiter’s outer moons.

I realise, of course, that it’s much the same story with most of the world’s cities. But they have built motorways that penetrate deep into the centre so visitors don’t have to see them. On the way into London from the south, though, there are no motorways. You are forced to pass through the underbelly, and that’s like seeing someone’s bowel and lower colon before you meet them for real. “Yes, I appreciate you are witty and wise and well travelled but I can’t concentrate on any of that because I have seen your digestive system.”

This is something that should be borne in mind as we continue to hunt for ways of increasing the number of planes that can land at our overcrowded airports. It’s all very well looking for sites where there’s a limited impact on newts and bats and where residents will suffer the least.

But towering above these requirements should be the first impression visitors get after they’ve landed. That’s why the new airport must be built near Stratford-upon-Avon. Passengers arrive in Anne Hathaway’s cottage and are then transported on a Harry Potter steam train down through the Cotswolds, alongside the Thames and into London past Windsor Castle.

Think about it. When visitors arrive at your house, you don’t ask them in via the coal chute and the cellar.


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1441809.ece

[RedMoon11]

We’re Going Nowhere Fast But, Boy, It’s a Wild Ride

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 10 August 2014


BMW i8, £99,845

WE ARE too dependent on oil. Everybody knows that. And everybody knows the long-term solution is hydrogen. But governments don’t like long-term solutions. They like fixes to happen by tomorrow afternoon because then they will still be in office. So they have leapt onto the available-now hybrid bandwagon, offering discounts and other incentives to people who buy Toyota Priuses and the like. I find it infuriating.

I do not believe that the solution to our energy crisis is to be found by developing a car that has a normal petrol engine as well as an electric motor that has to be powered by an extremely heavy bank of batteries. Using conspicuous consumption to solve the global problem of conspicuous consumption is muddle-headed and foolish.

And the simple fact of the matter is this: the new range of plug-in hybrids that can be charged via a 13-amp socket in your garage are going to send demand for electricity through the roof, which will be a problem for cities such as London that are facing power shortages and the threat of brownouts even now.

Still. This is where we are, so instead of moaning, let’s move on to have a look at what is easily this year’s most eagerly awaited new boy, the most talked-about car in years — the BMW i8.

Let me give you the headline figures so you can see why everyone is rocking backwards a little bit on their heels. It accelerates from 0 to 62mph in 4.4 seconds. Like all high-performance BMWs, it is limited to a top speed of 155mph. And yet, thanks to its hybrid power train, it can do 135mpg. You read that correctly. One hundred and thirty-five miles to the gallon.

I could bang on at this point about how a hydrogen-fuel-cell car could do 1,000mph while using no fuel at all, but that would be churlish, so let’s get back to the i8, which looks as though it’s come from the pages of an Isaac Asimov novel, can hang onto the shirt-tails of a Porsche 911 and costs about the same to run as a wheelbarrow.

There are two power sources. At the back, driving the rear wheels, there’s a British-built three-cylinder 1.5-litre turbocharged unit that despite its smallness produces 228 brake horsepower. Then, at the front, driving the front wheels, there’s an electric motor that produces a colossal 184 lb ft of torque from the moment you turn it on.

So you have a torquey motor driving the front wheels and a whizzy little turbo driving those at the rear, and frankly that sounds a recipe for disaster. Either the car will spin round and round in increasingly dizzying circles, or it will split in half. Which means, you may imagine, that to drive this car you need to be the genetic twin of Buck Rogers.

Not so. All you need is to leave your short skirt at home, because climbing under the swan-wing doors and over the wide sill is a manoeuvre in which much dignity can be lost. Once you are behind the wheel, though, all seems to be fairly normal. There’s a normal sat nav system, normal heater controls and normal cupholders.

Only if you concentrate do you realise that everything feels a little lighter and a little thinner than in a traditional BMW. It feels a bit like the Alfa Romeo 4C in there. Borderline flimsy. But this is necessary, because in a car with a bank of batteries every effort must be made to keep the weight down. Even the windscreen is thin.

So you fire it up and nothing happens. Well, the lights come on and the dash wakes up, but there’s no noise. Mildly perplexed, you slot the gearlever into Drive and you’re off. And that’s it. Despite the car’s huge complexity, you drive it in the same way you drive any other one. That is a colossal achievement.

It does not feel like a normal vehicle. though. It weighs about 1½ tons but it feels lighter than a feather. It feels spookily light. It feels — and I have spent several minutes thinking about this — magnificent. And so far we are still in town, using caterpillar silent drive most of the time. Only when you need a burst of speed does the petrol engine at the back fire up to help out. You don’t really know this has happened.

But then I was out of town, on the long sweeper onto the bottom of the M1, and I moved the gearlever over to the left to engage Sport mode and floored it. Ooh, it shifts. And grips. And that little engine makes quite the most intoxicating sound this side of a Ferrari V12.

Speaking of which. Up near junction 9 I encountered an immaculate Ferrari 275 GTS and we drove side by side for a while. My favourite Ferrari of them all and this bright new dawn, and I was wondering, “Hmmm. Which would I prefer?” The BMW is that good.

There are some things I need to mention. If you drive in the default Comfort mode, the batteries are being charged only very slowly, and as a result, if you ask for the eDrive setting, or electric drive, you often get a message saying there isn’t enough juice.


BMW i8

In Sport mode it’s a different story. Energy is fed to the cells every time you lift off the throttle and every time you brake. But unlike in the hybrid Mitsubishi I tested recently, you can’t feel this happening. The braking feels normal. It feels brilliant. Nearly as brilliant as the steering, which is nervous and flighty but still the best electric setup I’ve found.

That said, after a longish run I still had only 10 miles of electric range available. BMW says that if you charge it up from the mains, you’ll get 25. Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. But even 15 would be good enough for most people’s commute.

What we have here, then, is a car that runs silently on electric power when you just have to go to work. But that becomes a Porsche 911 when you are in the mood. This is a sport hybrid, but unlike other sport hybrids — the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder, for example — it does not cost eleven hundred and seventy thirteen million pounds.

It is so fabulously clever that it would be easy to overlook a couple of things that in a normal car would be considered big black marks. The windows don’t go all the way down, so you can’t rest your arm on the door as you go along, the boot is stupidly small and the rear three-quarter visibility is dangerously woeful. It must also be said that the back seats are completely useless and the ride is just on the wrong side of jiggly. As a car, then, it still needs a bit of work. But as an achievement? Wow.

Toyota had just about convinced the world that if you wanted a hybrid you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the concept of fun. But with the i8 BMW has shown this ain’t necessarily so. I still believe that with hybrids we are going down the wrong road. But with an i8, going in completely the wrong direction is at least wonderfully enjoyable.

BMW i8
Engine/Motor
1499cc, 3 cylinders, turbo, plus electric
Power
357bhp
Torque
420 lb ft (total)
Transmission
6-speed auto
Performance
0-62mph: 4.4sec
Top speed
155mph
Fuel
135mpg
CO2
49g/km
Range
22 miles (electric only) / 310 miles (hybrid)
Price
£99,845
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Green as a Prius, desirable as a Ferrari
CRITIC'S RATING ****


BMW i8

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used BMW

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1443753.ece

[Wyvern]

I actually saw an i8 on Park Lane today. Staggering looking thing. Normally I would have grabbed my camera, but I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor until it was too late.

[RedMoon11]

Oh, barman, my pint of pitbull has gone all warm and fluffy

‘In short, this new car may be safer and more economical than the Focus I bought. But as a driver’s car it’s not in the same league’

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 1 May 2011


There’s no getting away from the fact the new Focus is a looker. With its black-painted sills, it appears sleek and slinky, more like a coupé than a family hatchback

In the olden days most people who needed a family car bought a simple hatchback. A Ford Escort, perhaps, or, if they were feeling racy, a Volkswagen Golf. Not any more. Now, ordinary won’t do. Simple is dreary. The Hush Puppy has been ousted to make way for the clown shoe: the SUV. The crossover. The funky little retro bomb with scorpions on the bonnet and chequerboard door mirrors.

I wonder why. When I finish work today I shall potter over to the house and pour myself a glass of Château Léoube, the pink sort. It’s what I drink before supper. And during supper. And afterwards as well, usually. Wine is simple. It’s easy. And a bottle contains exactly the right amount for a single evening.

Beer is good, too. The Ford Escort of beverages. On a really hot day, when you’ve been busy outside, you don’t think, “Oooh. What I really need now to quench my thirst is a banana daiquiri.” You always want a beer: not the sort James May likes, with twigs in it, but a Peroni, in a glass with condensation dripping down the outside.

One of the things I hate most in life is when people come round to my house and ask for a gin and tonic. That’s four ingredients I must go and find. The gin, the tonic, the ice and the lemon. We never have a lemon in the house: why would you? And if we do, it invariably was picked before the Boer war and has the texture and juiciness of a marble.

And then there’s the ice tray, which either contains no ice at all, or it does but it’s one big lump that will not, even with the assistance of a hammer, come out of the container. To get round this we recently installed a fridge that dispenses ice at the touch of a button. In theory this is brilliant, but what happens in fact is that you hold the glass under the nozzle and you get water instead. So you start again, and now it delivers enough ice to keep a Spanish trawler at sea for several months.

The first time this happened I attempted to clear up the mess with a vacuum cleaner, and now I have a message for you all: do not do this. Because Henry burped a bit and then broke.

Seriously, going to someone’s house and asking for a gin and tonic is like asking for a shepherd’s pie. And you wouldn’t do that because you know it’d be a nuisance. Especially if your wife has asked for a vodka and cranberry juice, with just a hint of lime. We don’t have any cranberry juice, or lime. Or vodka, usually. Because the kids’ friends have drunk it all.

It’s always best, for convenience, then, to keep your drinking preferences simple. Yes, on a lazy Sunday morning it’s possible to spend an hour or so making a super-complicated bloody mary, but, no, in a packed City pub it is not acceptable to shout from the back, “Four Pimm’s, please, with all the trimmings.”

And now, in a link so tenuous a spider would call it flimsy, we shall move on to the modern-day equivalent of a pint of stout. The new Ford Focus. The car you didn’t buy because you fancied a Fiat Harvey Wallbanger or a Citroën Shirley Temple instead.

Ten years ago I bought a Ford Focus, and I still have it today. Occasionally I use it and I am always amazed by what a joyous thing it is to drive. Thanks to independent rear suspension, an expensive solution to a problem no one in the world has ever noticed, it is an attack dog in the corners. The engine’s good, too. And, as we know, it can carry just as many people and dogs as a big 4x4. More, in fact, because our ancient labrador can no longer leap up into the Range Rover, whereas she can get into the back of the Ford.

The best thing about the Focus, though, is the amount of times it’s broken down. Have a guess. No. Because in 10 years it hasn’t gone wrong once. Every single thing still works. It’s a five-star car, that.

But what of the new model? Well, there’s no getting away from the fact it’s a looker. With its black-painted sills, it appears sleek and slinky, more like a coupé than a family hatchback.

Inside, it’s a button-fest. There are millions of them on every flat surface; so many in fact that it takes several hours to find the one that starts the engine


It’s a turbocharged 1.6 that, even in sixth gear, provides a genuinely surprising chunk of grunt. And what’s even more surprising is that it is very economical as well

Ford Focus Titanium 1.6 Ecoboost

Price
£19,750
Engine
1596cc, 4 cylinders
Acceleration
0-62mph: 8.6sec
Top speed
130mph
Release date
On sale now
Clarkson's verdict
A lukewarm pint

CRITIC'S RATING ***

Power 148bhp @ 5700rpm
Torque 177 lb ft @ 1600rpm
Transmission 6-speed manual
Fuel 47.1mpg
CO2 139g/km
Road tax band E (£115 for first year)
Height 1461mm
Width 2010mm
Length 4358mm

The engine is called the Ecoboost, but don’t be fooled into thinking it runs on lentils and has an output that’s measured in flower power

However, even here there’s a problem, because today you’d have to be a swivel-eyed lunatic to buy a car that runs on petrol. Or a billionaire

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article614475.ece

[RedMoon11]

Dear MPs: Weather Hot, People Being Buried Alive. Wish You Were Fixing It

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 17 August 2014

Last week there was a story in one of the tabloids saying that the BBC had offered me a new £12m contract even though I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan and I spend most evenings erecting burning crosses on Lenny Henry’s front lawn.

Obviously, this is laughable because it’s August, which means no one at the BBC is drawing up contracts, or doing much of anything at all. Half the senior management is staying at agreeable farmhouses in Tuscany with Polly Toynbee and Alan Rusbridger and the other half is in Edinburgh at some kind of warm wine and canapé festival.

Furthermore, no one read the story because everyone is currently on a beach, trying to clear away half an inch of spurted Piz Buin from the screen on their Kindle ebook reader. And come to think of it, no one with any sort of journalistic qualification could have written it either, because hacks — they’re all away as well.

We always used to laugh at the French for upping sticks and moving to Biarritz for the whole month of August and we wondered how Italy could continue to operate as an actual country when for four weeks no one did anything at all. But now we are just as bad.

We learnt recently that more people in Britain have jobs than at any time in history — and what? We are supposed to be surprised by this? I’m not, because every job now needs two people to do it. One for when the other is on holiday.

I was in Italy last week — working, amazingly — and the Amalfi coast was full to overflowing with everyone you need in Britain to take out your teeth, mend your computer, empty your bins and fix your sprained ankle. And then in Tuscany, behind the constant background noise of strimmers and lonely dogs, you could just about make out the sound of various mildly left-wing journalists helping themselves to another plate of arugula before questioning the man from the BBC about why he gives any airtime at all to those brutes from Israel.

Rome? Well, there were several thousand Americans pointing at the Colosseum and wondering how the Roman empire had put up such an enormous amount of scaffolding but that was about it. You wanted lunch somewhere? Forget it. The restaurant was shut.

I’m in London now and I feel like the Omega Man. And it’s all very well saying that traffic is light but there’s nowhere to go. Nobody’s having a party. Nobody is suggesting we go out for a drink. Nobody’s having a meeting. And I can’t stay in either, because all there is on the television is news from the only people who do seem to be doing any work at the moment — the Israeli army and those Islamist fanatics in northern Iraq.

I was in that part of the world a couple of years ago and it was beautiful. The cities of Dohuk and Erbil were quiet and graceful and the countryside in between had an aura of peace and serenity. And now? People are having their legs chopped off and their shoulders dislocated before being hanged from lampposts. And women and children are apparently being buried alive.

And thousands have been trapped on a mountain, homeless and starving in the savage heat, simply because several hundred years ago someone in their village chose a different religion from someone in the next village.

And what are we doing about all this in the West? The Americans have dropped some bombs on . . . we’re not quite sure what. The French have sent a couple of hand grenades. And we’re handing out bottles of water, and offering to send a few guns to the Kurds — if they ask for them. And that’s about it.

There seems to be a sense in the West that the days when we could march into the Muslim hinterlands and sort everything out are well and truly over.

I mean, we don’t even have the will these days to secure a field in eastern Ukraine, even though this is a friendly state, in Europe, and the field in question was being held by nothing more terrifying than six greengrocers with AK-47s and a plumber whose head was buried in the instruction manual for a rocket launcher that had a best-before date of 1967.

But surely, you’re thinking, while the public has no stomach for a scrap, our leaders must be capable of rising above the apathy and doing what’s right. So why are we only sending water and making half-hearted offers of weapons? Why not send military advisers to help whip the Kurdish army into some kind of shape?

Ah, well, here’s the thing. If we just send water and blankets, it’s a humanitarian project. If we send in the military, to do anything vaguely militaryish, we’d need parliamentary approval and it’s August, so guess what: parliament’s on holiday.

It was on holiday this time last year when the Syrian rebels were calling for help. And MPs were so annoyed about being told to put down their Jack Reacher books and come back to work, they voted not to do anything at all — wisely, with hindsight.

Who knows? It may be wise on this occasion to sit on our hands and allow time and history to take their course. But I would at least like to think that Westminster was full of people in the know advising our elected leaders on the situation and the implications, so an informed decision could be reached.

Because it’s well over 40C on that mountain in Iraq. There’s no food. The Islamist fanatics are coming and they have a cruel streak as wide as their tanks. They will show no mercy and as a result all the stranded refugees cannot simply hang on until September when MPs get back to work.

Of course, at this point, the MPs will be jumping up and down , saying that they can’t be expected to sacrifice their holiday every time there’s a crisis — and I agree. People need a break. But do we need four weeks? If you think so, drop me a line. But don’t expect any kind of reply, because I shall be in St Tropez until the middle of September.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/jeremyclarkson/article1447390.ece

[RedMoon11]

Beneath the Salesman’s Suit Lurks a Right Little Raver

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 24 August 2014


Vauxhall Astra SRI CDTI 1.6 ecoFlex, £22,335

IN THE past couple of weeks I’ve been filming my annual Christmas-time DVD. This has two benefits. First, it contributes greatly to my kitchen extension, and second, it means I get to spend a couple of weeks in Italy, driving an awful lot of other people’s very expensive cars extremely quickly, round corners, while shouting.

Often I have been shouting at myself because sometimes the experience of going quickly round a corner in the Italian sunshine has demonstrated a flaw that didn’t reveal itself when I drove the same car here in the UK for a review on these pages.

I was, you may recall, much taken with the BMW M4 coupé when I wrote about it here a month back. I stand by that review. It did everything I asked of it very well. But at the Mugello racetrack in Tuscany, I asked it to do a big skid when going round a corner and it was absolutely hopeless.

In the past, BMW’s M cars were extremely good at doing big skids. They were beautifully balanced, which, coupled with excellent steering and many brake horsepowers, meant you could get the back end to step out of line and stay there until the end of time — or at least until the tyres burst.

However, the new M4 has electric power steering, which means it feels much like the cars do on a PlayStation game. Artificial. Detached. Oh sure, you can still whip the back end out, no problem at all, but keep it there? Hmm.

If you put the steering in its Comfort mode you have about two chances in 10. But in the Sport Plus setting, the option designed to be used on a track? No. Engage that and you are either going to spin, or emerge onto the straight with the car zigzagging as though it’s being attacked by a helicopter gunship. This means there’s a new conclusion for the M4. If you are a normal person and you drive normally, it is good, but if you are a drift enthusiast you’d be better off running. In shoes with margarine soles.


Vauxhall Astra SRI CDTI 1.6 ecoFlex

After I waved goodbye to the BMW I stepped into the Alfa Romeo 4C, a car about which I raved when I reviewed it last October. Sadly, though, at the Vallelunga circuit, just outside Rome, I discovered I hadn’t raved hard enough. Yes, it blew a turbo pipe, and had to spend half an hour in the hospital but apart from that, it was absolutely sensational. It was like motoring unplugged. Grippy, communicative, pretty, fast, economical, practical and an Alfa Romeo.

Today, back in London, I worry about the car I drove because I fear it will now be in the hands of another man. Who may be treating it badly in some way. I think I may be a little bit in love.

Which is more than can be said for the Volkswagen Golf R. It’s everything I said it was several months ago — well made, discreet, fast and extremely sensible. But it’s something else as well: a teeny bit boring. And I must confess that while I was driving it in convoy with a Mercedes A 45 AMG I grew weary quite quickly with not being able to keep up.

I like the Golf R. I think it’s well judged. But on the road from Naples to Positano it didn’t light my fire. Perhaps because I was still pining for the little Alfa.

I’m sure restaurant reviewers go through this. They eat a wonderful dinner. Say in print that it was marvellous. And then, when they go back to the place with friends a few weeks later, everything tastes like it’s been made from wood shavings and sick.

So do I feel bad? Not really. I review cars here, on the road mostly, for people who live here and drive on the road. So who cares how a car feels on a racetrack in Italy?

And so, with a clear conscience, we move on to the Vauxhall Astra diesel, and straight away we must ask a question. Hands up if you pine for this car and dream of the day when you can say to your friends, “Yes, I have made it. I have today ordered a Vauxhall Astra diesel.” Anyone? Anyone?

This is the biggest problem with the Astra. You don’t want one. And if your company gives you one as a repmobile, you will almost certainly spend the evening looking in the local paper for an employer that provides its staff with something else.

That’s why we chose the Astra as Top Gear’s Reasonably Priced Car. The whole point of this segment in the show is we’d put big-name stars in the sort of vehicle that is so reasonable and inoffensive that even reasonable people would rather drive something else. All the cars we’ve used in the past have fitted this bill well: the Suzuki Liana, the Chevrolet Lacetti and the Kia Cee-apostrophe-d. They were all perfectly good at nothing in particular.

I was the one who campaigned hard for the Vauxhall. I jumped up and down in the office saying, “Come on, everyone. Imagine. Brian Ferry in his white tux. In an Astra. It’d be perfect.”

But keen viewers of the show will have noticed a problem. The Astra is actually a bit too good. Where its predecessors understeered and ran out of revs, it grips and goes. I watch it every week coming round Gambon Corner and think, “That thing has the roll of a racing car.”

There’s more. The current generation is good-looking and if you push and pull at all the bits of trim, you will quickly learn that it’s well made too. And, of course, it’s reasonably priced.

The car that was sent to me for testing was an SRI and back in the 1980s this was the handle given to all of the nation’s overperforming sales reps. They weren’t the boss — they didn’t have a GT or GTE — but they were doing OK and as a reward, they were given a sporty fuel-injected hatchback.

Things have changed. Because the SRI I had been given was fitted with a diesel engine. I thought that was a bit odd for, ooh, about five minutes. Then I put my foot down and it was like diving into a lake of torque. It’s a big lake too, with more torques in it than you get from an equivalent Volkswagen or Renault. And that means you never really need to change gear. It’ll always pull no matter what the revs. And it’ll pull hard. This is a very good engine. Economical as well.

There is, of course, one drawback. Today, if you buy a diesel, people with smelly armpits, and teeth even worse than mine, will leap out at the lights and call you a child killer. I’m not sure why but they’ve got it into their heads that because diesel-powered buses and lorries produce particulates — soot — from the exhaust, diesel-powered cars must do the same. And they do. But filters on cars such the Astra mean that 99% of these particulates never see the light of day.

There’s talk that because of the eco-lunacy, diesel will soon be taxed at a higher level than petrol, and His Borisness has already said that by 2020 the owners of most existing diesel-powered cars will have to pay double the congestion charge to come into London.

The solution, you might think, is to buy a petrol-powered Astra, but if you do this, people with poor personal hygiene will leap out at the lights and call you a polar bear murderer.

You can’t win whatever you do so just buy what suits you best. That won’t be an Astra, of course, because it’s an Astra. Which is odd because, actually, it’d probably suit you very well indeed.



 

Vauxhall Astra SRI CDTI 1.6 ecoFlex

Vauxhall Astra SRI CDTI 1.6 ecoFlex

Engine
1598cc, 1.6 CDTI
Power
134bhp @ 3500rpm
Torque
236 lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission
6-speed manual
Acceleration
0-60 mph: 9.7sec
Top speed
125mph
Fuel
72.4mpg
CO2
104g/km
Road tax
Band B (Nothing for first year; £20 thereafter)
Price
£22,335
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Too good to be Reasonably Priced Car

CRITIC'S RATING ****

Go to driving.co.uk to search for a used Vauxhall Astra

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1449146.ece

[RedMoon11]

The Pay Freeze Was Bad Enough, Boss. This Is The Last Straw

Jeremy Clarkson Published: 31 August 2014


Don’t be fooled by the ‘AMG Line’ designation: the C 220 is not a fire-breathing monster

Mercedes C 220 BlueTec AMG Line, £34,355

CAMILLA LONG, who writes in the glossy end of The Sunday Times, went on Twitter recently and asked if there was anything more tragic than the spectacle of a man in the front passenger seat of a chauffeur-driven car. Yes, there is, actually. It’s the spectacle of a new father travelling in the back seat of a car with the baby while his wife drives. Nothing says, “For me, life is over,” more succinctly than that.

Camilla does, however, raise an interesting point. Why is it normal to sit in the back whenever the driver is paid for help? It’s less comfortable back there and more cramped. The view is not as good. And you are more likely to feel queasy. It would be easy to suggest that people choose to sit back there because it makes them look important. That if they’ve hired a driver, they damn well want people to know it. But is it, I wonder, that simple?

Could it be, perhaps, that the sort of person that employs a chauffeur is the sort that likes a bowl of chicken soup and spotted dick at lunchtime, the sort that gets his “special lady friend” to dress him up in nappies and check him for nits?

Could it be he likes to travel round in the back of a car because it reminds him of his childhood? Is he sitting back there, hidden from view behind the C-pillar, sucking his thumb?

Of course you may argue that this is nonsense, because perfectly normal people choose to sit in the back of the 14-year-old Toyota Avensis minicab that has just picked them up at six in the morning to take them, on completely the wrong road, via six petrol stations, to the airport.

On the face of it this is even more ridiculous, because what are you trying to say from your pleblon perch in the back? That you have a chauffeur? Really? So why, if you can afford that, do you have him drive you about in a sagging and slightly smoky former repmobile? And why has he just pulled up at a seventh petrol station to put yet another 50p-worth of diesel in the tank?

You would sit in the front with a friend. And with your wife. And with a colleague. So why get in the back of a minicab? Why sit there, in a puddle of sick, ankle-deep in used condoms?

Possibly it’s because you don’t want people to think that the car is yours. Or that you even have friends with such a heap. But mostly, I suspect, it’s because you know the driver is going to crash into something fairly soon, and it’s safer back there. Also, if you are in the back, he is less likely to mistake your inner thigh for the gearlever. Or talk to you.

I shall be honest with you. I am picked up fairly frequently by a wide selection of minicabs and executive cars and I always get in the back. Unless the car in question is a new-looking black C-class Mercedes.

A new-looking black C-class Mercedes is plainly not a minicab. It says that the driver knows where he is going and that there are more than two fumes in the fuel tank. But crucially it says that you — the guy who’s hired him — are right at the bottom of the management food chain.

No. Don’t argue. You are. You’ve gone to a company that offers a fleet of Mercs and you’ve booked the cheapest. And if you think, as you sit there in the back with your knees round your ears, that you are fooling anyone, you are an idiot and you will be at the bottom of the management food chain for the rest of your life. Nothing says, “I’m a nobody,” more clearly than climbing from the back of a chauffeur-driven C-class.



But because the country is awash with people who simply don’t realise this, all the big cities are crammed with new-looking black C-class Mercs with telltale private hire licences in the window and executive air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror. In fact I was extremely surprised when a new-looking C-class turned up at my house for a test this week and it wasn’t supplied with a man in a cheap suit behind the wheel and the pockets behind the front seats stuffed with copies of Hello! magazine from 2011.

It was called — deep breath — the C 220 BlueTec AMG Line, and that’s a great name. Because it means the chauffeur-driven-car companies can say to their customers, “We are able to take you to your important meeting in a C 220 BlueTec AMG Line saloon”, and — once the blood has returned to your legs — your colleagues and customers will think you are very important.

Do not be fooled by any of it, though. “AMG” means hundreds of snorting horsepower and an exhaust note from all the noisy bits of the Bible. “AMG Line” means sporty seats, a smaller-than-usual steering wheel and some questionable spoilers and skirts. Oh, and I nearly forgot. Some floor mats with “AMG” written on them.

You also get a Garmin Map Pilot sat nav as standard, but almost all the drivers of this car would choose instead to use a tatty-looking TomTom that is connected by 7,000 miles of wire to the cigarette lighter.

To drive? Well, it doesn’t matter, because you’ll never have to do that. But, for the record, the 2.1-litre common rail turbodiesel is a gem. It pulls well in every gear and is so smooth that you really do struggle to tell which sort of fuel it’s using.

I’m not sure about the steering, though. It all feels very sudden. And I’m very not sure about the ride. Hysterically, you can set up the suspension to be sporty — no one will ever do that — but even in Comfort mode it can be caught out. Most of the time all is well, but a sudden pothole causes a great deal of juddering, and this is not helped by inflexible, run-flat tyres.

To find out what it might be like as a long-distance companion, I decided to drive from my flat in London to Scotland. But pretty soon, despite my best endeavours, it was moored up in the short-term car park at Heathrow and I was in the arrivals hall with a sign saying, “Mr Wong”.

It had used very little fuel in getting there. And attractive lease plans are available. That’s all any potential customers need to know.

And you? Well, take this as a friendly piece of advice from me. If you are Mr Wong and you do find that the company has sent a C 220 BlueTec AMG Line saloon to pick you up, send your boss a letter of resignation, and then sit in the front and chat to the driver as if he’s your best mate.

Because that’s the critical point Camilla Long needs to understand. In most chauffeur-driven cars it is strange and even tragic to travel in the front. But in a C-class it’s most definitely the other way round.




Mercedes-Benz C 220 BlueTec AMG Line

Engine
2143cc, 4 cylinders, diesel
Power
168bhp @ 3000rpm
Torque
245 lb ft @ 1400rpm
Transmission
7-speed auto
Acceleration
0-62mph: 7.4sec
Top speed
145mph
Fuel
65.7mpg
CO2
113g/km
Road tax
C (free for first year; £30 thereafter)
Price
£34,355
Release date
On sale now
Verdict
Sit in the front and all will be well

CRITIC'S RATING ***




www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/clarkson/article1451793.ece