Notes From the Hard Shoulder by James May Page B

think the other bloke could be persuaded to want and then, through subliminal psychological torture, force him to buy it. Nothing too elaborate, usually, just daft T-shirts, sunglasses, that sort of thing.
    There really is no feeling more satisfying than being responsible for making a good mate look like a total pillock at his own expense. And I'm pretty good at it. My best result to date is cajoling Hammond into buying a pretty expensive wristwatch with the money he would be earning the following week from opening an orphanage or something. Soon afterwards he got me back with a brown jacket that makes me look like a driving instructor.
    But this week I've had my best game of Airport Shopping Dare ever. It wasn't actually played in an airport but a Lamborghini dealership, and this time I was with my other TV colleague, TV's Jeremy Clarkson.
    Now, Clarkson has decided he rather likes theGallardo Spider. I rather like it too; the difference, though, is that he might consider chopping in his FordGT for one. He certainly would, I decided, if I had anything to do with it.
    And that bit wasn't too difficult, because he clearly wanted one already. I could point out that his new book was selling very well (unlike mine) and that he had earned, both financially and morally, the right to a new Lamborghini. In fact making him buy the thing was clearly a job for a Shopping Dare amateur.
    So now the game took a new twist. Clearly he didn't need persuading to buy the car, but he would need to be steered, gently and subtly, into buying it in the right colour scheme. Orange, ideally, or that new '70s bathroom-suite blue they're doing. Either of these would combine quite nicely with a neutral sort of interior leather. Cream, perhaps, or maybe even plain old black.
    Jeremy, however, got it into his head that the car would look right in dark green, black, or something called black/green. This he would combine with an interior in orange perforated leather.
    And I know what he's thinking of. He's thinking of those Paul Smith brogues that are dark and accountanty on the outside but lined in lime green; respectable and restrained at a casual glance, but revealing a sense of gay chromatic abandon to anyone who gets close enough to see inside. Or maybe it's one of those dinner suits by Ted Baker: completely uniform (as a dinner suit should be) in normal use, but revealing a tantalisingly enigmatic purple lining when removed and cast aside in a moment of attempted seduction.
    But we're talking about a Lamborghini here, and this isn't how it's going to come across, in my view. I think it's going to be like a merchant banker who wears a grey suit with a 'funny' Homer Simpson tie. Or an Information Technology professional who wears a grey suit and has a sign above his desk saying, 'You don't have to be mad to work here' and so on. Or a senior hospital administrator who wears a grey suit and says, 'Leave a massage' on his answering machine.
    The whole point of a Lamborghini, as we've explained ourselves many times, is that you want one because you're not interested in buying into racing heritage or thoroughbred provenance. That's forFerrari andMaserati owners. Lamborghini is a bit of an upstart, and you have to demonstrate that you realise as much. A black one suggests that you believe in it, which would be ridiculous. Lamborghinis are a bit vulgar and as such should be celebrated openly with something like the orange. Or that bathroom-blue. But he just didn't get it.
    And this is what surprises me. Jeremy is a self-styled champion of vulgarity. I happen to know that he has a very large television set, for example, and electronic garden gates. He goes to footballers' parties and once boasted of going to London's 'biggest restaurant'. But here he is, on the verge of acquiring the automotive medallion of gauche, and he's suddenly concerned about drawing too much attention to himself.
    But no worry, because, as with most posh car showrooms, the Lamborghini one