Born to Be Riled by Jeremy Clarkson

matters though. The point is that when I looked at my reflection in a shop window, I felt good. It is my automotive Lee Cooper and Toggi combo. The interior of the V8 may be surprisingly cramped but, despite that, this is not a car for small people. You’d look stupid driving this unless you were at least 6ft 3in and 14 stone.
    Other people who would look stupid in it include Liberal Democrats, Freemasons, folk singers, nancy-boy footballers, vicars, scoutmasters, people who like DIY or Michael Bolton, women, environmentalists and anyone who has ever been to a poetry reading.
    You can’t even think about driving this car if you like salad.
    Socialists are right out. So are people who use the words ‘toilet’, ‘nourishing’ or ‘settee’. If you read the
Daily Mail
, talk about tasty square meals and country fayre then, along with ramblers and people with limp wrists, lisps, or sticky out ears, you must buy a Datsun instead.
    Are you a new man? Do you like to help around the house? Are you proficient at changing nappies and running up a set of curtains? Have you ever read a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel? Well go and buy a Honda then, because the Aston will break your kneecaps.
    The V8 is for those of us who like our beer brown and our fags to be high on tar and low on lentils.
    What I love about this car is that while it does nothing to hide its immense power, it comes trimmed in the finest leather. The carpets are so expensive you wouldn’t fit them in your house, and the wood is lustrous enough to cause a mass fainting on
The Antiques Roadshow
.
    You mustn’t be fooled though. If you slide a Phil Collins CD into its stereo, the airbag will spring forth to punch you in the face.
    It likes Elgar and its favourite rock track is Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’, though Led Zep’s ‘Black Dog’ will do. If you treat it like a hard-drinking, hard-playing soul mate, it will reward you with a spine-tingling range of growls, and the power to knock down copper beeches as you fly by. The only trouble is that it costs £140,000 which is an awful lot of money. I have a suggestion though. To raise the funds, rob a bank. It would like that.

Caravans – A few liberal thoughts
    After much careful thought in the bath this morning, I have decided that we don’t really need an elected parliament.
    These 650 guys are concerned not with what’s good for the country or the environment, but with power. Every decision they make is based on a quest for votes.
    I remain absolutely convinced that the Labour Party’s apparent shift to the right has nothing whatsoever to do with the elected members’ beliefs. They’re just saying what they think the middle classes want them to say.
    And the Conservatives are no better. Here are a bunch of people who’d done all that was necessary by 1989. They could have just sat back and let things tick over, but no: half of them now want to privatize my shoes.
    We should replace them all with a bloke who has a bit of common sense. Every Thursday, he would pop down to Westminster so that civil servants could ask for advice.
    Should the Spanish be allowed to fish in our waters? No.
    Should Peter Blake be allowed to keep his ninety grand? No.
    Should we ban scoutmasters from keeping guns? Yes.
    Should we shoot people who let their dogs crap in the street? Yes.
    It’s all so simple. We don’t need 650 people making noises like farmyard animals five days a week, when most of the burning issues could be settled over a cup of coffee by a bloke in a cardigan.
    Certainly, if we were to introduce this new system, andI really think it’s one of my better ideas, the roads would become free from caravans.
    Should this question ever be brought before the Commons, the member for Devon North would argue forcefully that caravans form part of his constituency’s life blood, and that if they were to be banned so soon after all the cows were burned there’d be anarchy and looting on the streets of