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.Take Paula Yates.I suspect she’s a silly two-timing bird who ditched her husband and children for a fling with a hirsute Australian who looks like he needs a good bath.This is a line most newspapers are free to take.But in Hello! we get her side of the story, which isn’t quite the same.And nor, frankly, do I find it rings very true.Bob Geldof deserves better.And you, the reader, deserve better than what Autocar has in store.They may get the stories first, but if you want opinions rather than public relations puff, stick with the Beeb.Kids in carsSo what’s the daftest lyric you ever heard? I always go for Mink Deville’s immortal ‘He caught a plane and he got on it.’Or what about McCartney’s magnificent ‘In this ever changing world in which we live in’?Ten years ago, some would undoubtedly have cited Mungo Jerry’s ‘Have a drink.Have a drive.Go out and see what you can find.’But not any more.The war has been won.Nobody in their right mind even thinks about drinking and driving any more.Oh sure, we need the occasional prod and at Christmas time victims are wheeled out to get the message across a bit more.The police step up their vigilance but the hit rate is miserable.They pull over anything that moves, and in some regions only 8 per cent of drivers are found to be watching the world go by through haze-coloured spectacles.Britain’s drivers are about the safest in the world.Well done.Let’s hop on a bus, go down the pub and get rat-faced.But no.The thought police decided that a new menace must be dreamed up.No one is drinking and driving any more so let’s point our big guns at… eenie, meenie, minie, mo… people who drive around talking into mobile phones.Unfortunately, Nokia and Ericsson and all the other mobile phone manufacturers were too quick.Before the government could get into its stride on this one, the boffins came up with the new digital phone… which doesn’t work.Today, my airbag is better at communicating messages than my phone so I simply talk into that.This may look funny but it’s not against the law.So the eenie meenie game began all over again and settled on people with bad tempers.Yes, you.You keep losing your rag while behind the wheel and you are therefore suffering from road rage.Then it was E and then it was joy-riders and then it was youngsters who’d just passed their test and were driving at 80 on motorways.Then it was old people whose reaction times were measured in light years.In recent years, the thought police have had a go at just about everyone.No one is safe.But, astonishingly, they’ve missed what is easily the biggest menace the roads have ever seen.It tends to affect sensible, mature people in their early thirties.Law-abiding citizens who read the Daily Mail and vote Conservative.Never mind drink driving.Never mind E.Never mind mobile phones or speeding or road rage.I’m talking about… children.According to the RAC, 91 per cent of parents admit that they have been distracted by children while driving, and 7 per cent have crashed as result.They list the top five distractions as children crying, kicking the back of the seat, fighting, throwing toys and pulling hair.And they give us case studies to contemplate.Rebecca, aged three, threw a toy which jammed under the brake pedal.Jake, aged five, kept climbing into the front seat and changing gear.Antonia, aged four, had a mint imperial stuck up her nose.Let me add some of my own observations.Emily, my two-year-old, can produce such vigorous and sustained bouts of vomiting that the entire car is full of sick in three minutes.Finlo, who’s my boy child, can cry so loudly that the front windscreen regularly shatters.Only last week he perforated his nanny’s ear-drum.I freely admit that his 400-decibel chants drive me to distraction.In Antibes the other day I leapt from the car while it was still moving and buried my head in the sea, telling my wife that I wouldn’t come out again until he’d shut up.Let me tell you this.In a country with no drink driving laws, I have driven a car while so drunk I couldn’t talk without dribbling.I have driven while bursting for a pee.I have done 90 while attempting to talk on the phone.And after 40 aborted attempts to get through, I suffered from road rage so badly that I pulled the steering wheel out of the dash.But on each occasion I was a lily-white angel compared to how I am when driving around with the children.I know of one woman who turned round to slap one of her kids while driving down a motorway in a Range Rover.She veered off course and, in trying to straighten up again, rolled the car into a bridge parapet.So what can be done? It’s no good giving them toys because in a car the most harmless Fisher Price drawing kit becomes more deadly than a thermonuclear missile.It’s no good giving them nothing either, because they then scream with boredom, and don’t try taping up their mouths with duct tape.This doesn’t work.I’ve tried it.Noddy cassettes shut them up for a bit, but how many times can you hear that infernal signature tune before you start to foam at the mouth? Frankly, I’d rather let them scream.I’d rather listen to Radio One even.It’s taken a couple of years to work it out but my wife and I now use heroin.Before we go anywhere we slip a little smack into their peanut butter sandwiches and they’re good as gold.You might think us a little irresponsible but the goverment doesn’t.Drug smugglers now get let out of prison after just one year, leaving more cells free for people who drive without due care and attention.Brummie cuisine is not very goodThis week, I shall herald the arrival of the British Motor Show with an even bigger sigh than usual.Now don’t get me wrong.I love the whole glitzy shebang.I love the old cars.I love the new cars.I love the dancing girls.I love the kids running round collecting brochures.It’s a billion-dollar party thrown by a multi-billion-dollar industry.And this year, the girls should be even prettier and the metal even more gleamy because 1996 is the hundredth year of car production in Britain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]