Born to Be Riled Read online

  Last year, I had to sit and watch Nick Hancock take me to the cleaners on Room 101, a television programme where guests consign life’s little irritations to the flames of eternal hell.

  Being assassinated by someone you’ve never even met is terribly disappointing, but rather than sulk I leapt at the opportunity to take part in a new series.

  As is the way with programmes like this, you don’t get the chance to meet the host beforehand, which meant I only had the hour-long recording session to convince a man I’ve always liked and admired that my head is not entirely full of acceleration figures and comparative rear-seat legroom dimensions.

  It obviously didn’t work because, while promoting the show, Hancock said he was ‘allergic’ to people who like cars, and that my choices had been ‘boringly obvious’.

  Fine. I tried to be reasonable, but now it’s payback time because Hancock, I know, is a huge football fan. And I loathe football fans.

  I have just finished Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, and found the whole sorry saga more sad than Born Free.

  While I hero-worship Ian McCullum and Tommy Lee Jones, whose talents are boundless, these people drool over footballers who, almost without exception, are so stupid I’m amazed they can put their shorts on the right way round.

  Last week I found myself sharing a hotel with a team that, thanks to the libel laws, shall have to remain nameless. But honestly, the lobby was like Darwin’s waiting room.

  They had got it into their tiny, tiny minds that I was Jeremy Beadle and, for two hours, could only say ‘Watch out. Beadle’s about.’ At least, that’s what I think they were saying, because speech was an art form they hadn’t mastered properly.

  I noticed that they didn’t have conversations like normal people. One would walk up to a huddle of others and make some kind of farmyard noise. This would prompt the others to cluck or moo and then everyone would disperse.

  Now, we’re dealing here with a bunch of young men who, because they can kick an inflated sheep’s pancreas some considerable distance, get paid anything up to £40,000 a week. And if you give young males that sort of money, they will be tempted to spend large chunks of it on a flash set of wheels.

  Apparently, this worries Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson, who tries to veto some of the more extreme vehicular demands from his players. It seems that having paid squillions of pounds for a new player, he doesn’t sleep well at night if he thinks the guy is charging around the city centre at 180mph in a Vantage. Driving while under the influence of the Spice Girls is not illegal, but it is dangerous. And so is not being able to read STOP signs.

  Obviously no such ban is enforced at Liverpool FC, where a spokesman said the car park is ‘incredible’. Apparently, there are several of those ‘upmarket Land Rover things’ (Range Rovers I presume) and the rest are all ‘sporty Porsches’ – as opposed, I guess, to the much rarer non-sporty variety.

  This would indicate that the successful footballer is something of a petrol-head. And further research has proved this to be true. Alan Shearer has a Jaguar XK8, while Les Ferdinand has a sporty Porsche 911.

  David Seaman (a rather unfortunate name) and Ryan Giggs (who’s Welsh) have Aston Martin DB7s, and Teddy Sheringham pootles around in a Ferrari 355 Spider. John Barnes has just picked up a Mercedes SL.

  David Beckham, a man so bright he’s able to date Posh Spice, is to be found behind the wheel of a BMW M3 convertible, and Jason McAteer has a Porsche Boxster.

  Now this lot would bring Hancock out in a rash, so are there any football teams out there whose players are not interested in cars?

  It was not easy finding out because I either had to ring up clubs, and speak to people who can’t or I had to graze the Internet, a process that takes so long I’d have been better off using a carrier pigeon.

  However, I think I’ve found one – Stoke City. A delightful receptionist there called Lizzie, who speaks coherent English, furnished me with a list of players’ cars and it’s just horrific. Kevin Keen has a VW Polo while Fofi Nyamah has a Vauxhall Astra. Other cars that litter that Potters’ car park include a Ford Escort 1.8 LX, a Citroen, a Mazda 323 and a Mercedes C180 – by far and away the slowest car in the entire world.

  Obviously, this disregard for automotive niceties endears the players enormously to their number one fan – a chap called Nick Hancock. And how do I know he supports Stoke? Because he talks about little else.

  Big fun at Top Gun

  If you’re one of our more level-headed readers, you might think that when it comes to no-go areas of office conversation, cars top the list here at Top Gear magazine. I mean, for 16 hours a day these guys drive cars, and in the remaining eight, write about them. The last thing they want to do over a beer or in sub-zero fag breaks is to discuss the merits of a Proton over an Escort.

  Well I’m going to tell you a little secret. They don’t talk about cars very much, but it has nothing to do with overkill. They don’t talk about cars because they are too busy talking about bloody motorbikes. The Editor rides bikes. The Assistant Editor rides bikes. The Art Director rides bikes. So does the Art Editor – and she’s a girl. I’ve just been to Barbados with the Road Test Editor, and he sat on the beach every day reading Bike magazine. I’ve given up calling in because if I do, I always forget the rules and mention the ‘c’ word. I mean, it is a car magazine; maybe the people who work on it would be interested to hear that I’ve just driven a turbocharged Ferrari F50. So I’ll say, ‘Hey everyone, I drove a turbocharged F50 yesterday,’ and, guess what… nothing happens. So I’ll tell them again, and if I’m very lucky, one will stick his head up and mumble something about it not being as fast as the Triumph T595. Then they’re off. ‘Yeah, but the chassis on a ’Blade is better.’ ‘Oh sure, but I prefer the 43mm Showa usd teles on a 916.’ And me, I’m the pork chop in a synagogue. I’ve given up arguing. Yes, yes, yes, bikes are cheaper than cars, more fun and, providing you never encounter a corner, they’re faster too. I’ve tried pointing out that round a track, where there are bends, a car will set faster lap times, but a deathly hush descends over the office as everyone sets to work with slide rules and calculators. Three minutes later, the Managing Editor will announce that, at Thruxton, his calculations have shown a T595 would, in fact, be faster than an F50.

  Well, I can now shut them up for good because I’ve just flown an F-15E, and no bike on Earth even gets close. Oh, and you’ll note I said ‘flown’ and not ‘flown in’. Even though I’ve never even held the stick in a Cessna, the US Air Force let me take the controls of a plane which cost $50 million and, in 90 minutes, used $7000-worth of fuel. You might guess that once you’re airborne there is no real sensation of speed – but this is simply not the case, a point the pilot was keen to prove. So, at 1000 feet he hit everything to slow the plane down to something like 150mph. And then, after asking me if I was ready, he lit the afterburners. And let me tell you this, Mr Sheene and Mr Fogarty: you know nothing. I wasn’t timing it, but would guess that in ten seconds we were nudging 700mph. And then, just to show what an F-15 is all about, he stuck the plane on its tail and did a vertical climb from 1000 to 18,000 feet in exactly 11 seconds. You’ve all been in lifts which make you feel funny if they’re fast, but just think what it feels like to do a 17,000-ft vertical climb in the time it takes a Mondeo to get from 0 to 60.

  There was no let-up, either, because having shown me how fast an F-15 accelerates, I was then introduced to its manoeuvrability. Put it like this – in a gentle Sunday afternoon turn it’ll dole out 10 g, and I don’t know of any bike which can do that. And nor can a bike post a 1000lb bomb through your letterbox. What’s more, in a battle between a MiG-29 and a Ducati 916, the Italian motorcycle would lose. Whereas no one has ever shot an F-15 down. Ever. But the best bit was when the pilot said, ‘You have the plane.’ I did a roll and a loop, flew in tight formation with another F-15, went for a peek at BMW’s new factory, flew over Kitty Hawk and got within a fraction of going supersonic. The plane can do Mach Two, but
only over water, and my ejection training had not covered survival in such conditions.

  I really didn’t mind, though. I honestly believe I’ve now experienced the ultimate; from this point on, everything will be a little bit tame.

  As I see it, a bike only has one advantage over a fighter-bomber. On a bike, you don’t get sick. In the plane, you do. Twice.

  Traction control loses grip on reality

  I am a patient man but Vodafone should be advised that it’s run out. Either they build more of those relay towers or I’m coming down to their head office with a pickaxe handle and some friends.

  My mobile phone has worked 100 miles from Alice Springs in Australia and on a glacier in Iceland. It was fine on an oil tanker off South Africa, and just last week in Italy – Italy for God’s sake – I used it for an hour while driving down the autostrada and it never fizzled out once.

  But it doesn’t work in Fulham, or on the Oxford ring road, or on large chunks of the M40, or near Coventry. Which means Vodafone are charging me for a service that they are simply not providing. And that, I’m afraid, means they’re going to need some new office furniture. And some teeth.

  It’s the same story with fax machines. My first simply tore any paper that came near it into very small pieces. And my new one just does alternate sheets until it gets bored. Then it starts screwing them up and throwing them on the floor so the dog can eat them.

  It’s all a marketing thing. I have to have a fax machine because the hype says you’re a nobody if you don’t. Having a fax that doesn’t work is fine, but not having one at all is social herpes. And can you imagine going to a meeting and telling someone you don’t have a mobile? It would be worse than not having genitals.

  And now this phenomenon is creeping into the world of cars as well, in the shape of traction control.

  There are a number of different systems, but each, effectively, does the same job. If you apply too much power, sensors detect the moment when the driven wheels are about to lose traction, and issue warnings to the engine management system. It then reduces the power being despatched to the overloaded wheel, and as a result you don’t crash. The trouble is that, like mobile phones and faxes, traction control doesn’t work.

  If I put my foot down on a wet road in the Jag, it senses that something is wrong and does what we all do when we’re in a quandary. It goes for a long walk round the garden, where, after much chin-scratching, it decides that, yes, it ought to warn the bridge.

  But way before the central computer pushes the throttle pedal back where it belongs, the car is going backwards through a hedge. Electrons are fast, but once the pendulum effect of a tailslide has gotten its teeth into the equation, the result is a sure-fire certainty.

  And anyway, the usual cause of a tailslide has nothing to do with excess power. It’s when the driver realizes he’s turned into a corner too fast and backs off. This causes the weight of the car to pitch forwards, lightening the rear end and causing a spin. No power is involved and, as a result, the traction overlord is about as useful as a picnic basket.

  It can only sit there feeling dizzy as the car spins round and round. Unless, of course, the driver is a talented and brave young soul who knows how to react when the rear end makes a break for the border.

  He knows he’s going to need power to sort the problem out, but the traction control will have none of it. Any attempt to press the throttle down will be met with a metaphorical slap in the face.

  This means that good drivers tend to hurtle around with the traction control turned off. And that’s the biggest problem of them all, because everyone is a good driver. Everyone thinks they can beat the system, so everyone turns it off. Driving around with your traction control on is the same as walking down the High Street telling passers-by that you’re impotent. It is deeply, deeply uncool.

  And that’s staggering. We’re all gladly paying for something that doesn’t work, and then we’re turning it off. Why?

  Simple. Any car maker knows that traction control sounds good. It implies that the car to which it’s fitted is such an untamed monster that ordinary drivers couldn’t possibly be trusted with all the power.

  Wow. The makers themselves admit that the car is too fast. I must have one, and then I shall turn off the device meant for ordinary drivers. Men, remember, are egos covered in skin, and the car makers know this.

  But unfortunately, the boffins in the back rooms with the beards and the taped-up spectacles do not. Such has been the demand for traction control in recent months that they’ve started to improve its reaction time, believing this is what we want.

  Every time you put your foot down in the new Jag, or the Ferrari 550 for that matter, the electrons go bonkers and it feels like you’re low on petrol. The engine stutters. The ABS system cuts in and even sane people begin to wonder why on earth the damn computer won’t unleash the full potential of the car.

  So they turn it off too, and then ring up the dealer to express their concern. But unfortunately, they do so on a mobile, and the dealer is left wondering why his phone keeps ringing but there’s no one on the other end.

  This article was first published on August 10th 1997 and refers to levels of service at this time.

  Driving at the limit

  If you’d followed me around this week, you might have suspected that from time to time I was driving while under the influence of a blindfold.

  But it’s OK. I was in a Range Rover, and the damn thing just wouldn’t go in a straight line, unless, of course, I wanted to go round a corner. By normal saloon car standards, it really is absolutely hopeless and so pedestrian that I kept being overtaken by continental drift.

  Throughout August, Chipping Norton has been hosting a championship to find the World’s Slowest Driver, which is no big deal when I’m in the Jag – I just press the noisy pedal and surge past – but in the Range Rover I came home with the trophy.

  In London, things were even worse. In the cotton-thin residential streets of Fulham, where, for some extraordinary reason, everyone has an off-roader, it felt as wieldy as Pooh after a honey binge.

  And you can’t park it anywhere either. I tried to go out for dinner at the Mao Tai on the New Kings Road, but no space within a mile was even nearly big enough so I ended up in the Blue Elephant on Fulham Broadway which, as usual, fielded the rudest waiters I have ever met.

  I should have driven the Range Rover through their indoor flowerbeds, instead of a tip, but you can’t really take it off-road in case it gets all dirty.

  Strangely, I still love this enormous great brute of a car, and that’s mainly because of the driving position – you really do feel like you’re bouncing along in an automotive penthouse flat, looking down on the riff-raff.

  You should be warned, though, that they are not looking up at you. They hate you on a cellular level. They would like to feed you, and everyone you’ve ever met, into a lawnmower. In just one day, two people suggested for absolutely no reason whatsoever, that I worshipped at the altar of Onanism.

  They hated me even more than if I’d been drunk, and finally I get to the thrust of this week’s rant – drinking and driving. And specifically, this ludicrous idea of reducing the limit from 80 to 50 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. In English, that works out at a pint.

  Now look. It really isn’t fair to take away someone’s licence and therefore their job just because they had an extra big helping of sherry trifle at lunch time.

  I’ve never met anyone who is pissed at the current limit – only relaxed, and surely that’s a good thing. Certainly, I score better times on my Sega Rally Machine after a calming drink than I do after a row, or when I’ve got hay fever.

  Baroness Hayman, who is Labour’s minister for road safety, says that the decline in drink-related accident casualties has levelled off – but decreasing the limit to the point where a pipette of ginger beer makes you Myra Hindley will only increase the figures.

  Think about it. If every driver who crashes
is psychoanalysed to see if they’ve ever had a beer, just about every accident will become ‘drink-related’.

  And anyway, the figures have only tailed off because so few people drink and drive these days. In 1996, the police breathalysed more people than ever before – 780,000 – and only 13 per cent were over the limit.

  This means that 87 per cent of people who were seen driving in an erratic fashion were stone-cold sober. So, if the baroness wants to do something about road safety, this lot would surely be a better target.

  Certainly, there is no point fiddling about with the limit because this won’t give old people better eyesight, and nor will it mend the ways of the so-called ‘hardcore’ drink driver. It won’t temper youthful exuberance either.

  And to be perfectly honest, another round of tear-jerking advertisements to ruin the feeling of good cheer as we run up to Christmas will also be a huge waste of money because, frankly, most of us think the drink drive rules are a damn nuisance.

  We don’t do it because the punishment is horrific – a year or more on the bus. And on this front, I can see a big problem just around the corner. Buses are getting nicer.

  The pro-public-transport people should remember, as they campaign for more trains and comfy, air-conditioned double deckers with Jacuzzis and satellite television, that if buses suddenly become a viable alternative to the car, drink driving will go through the roof.

  We need to go the other way. Buses should come with luggage and chickens on the roof. The suspension should be replaced with scaffolding poles, and passengers should be encouraged to cook in the aisles on Primus stoves.

  And as for the trains: make them late on purpose. Even if the Fat Controller reckons one is going to reach the station on time, he should order the driver to slow down… as jerkily as possible.