Hot off the press-I thought this was funny-and I can't wait to hear the
reactions!
(For the uninitiated on this side of the pond, Jeremy Clarkson is a popular
automotive journalist-at least he's popular in my house!)
Laura G.
(The 'double barreled' Top Gear presenter is Vicki Butler-Henderson.)
Slow down, boys, and drive the women wild
GIRLS. Let's be honest this morning, shall we? You think your husband is a
useless driver. You think he's too aggressive, that he goes too fast, and that
one day he'll end up killing himself. So you want him to slow down and
grow up.
But obviously you can't just say that. To criticise a man's driving is to take
the first step on a road that winds up in the divorce courts. Tell him to slow
down and you'll be facing a future with nobody to turn to when you hear the
sound of breaking glass at four in the morning.
This week, however, while I was trying to circumnavigate Cirencester and
generally dispensing the finger to anyone that got in my way, the girl in my
passenger seat, who shall remain anonymous because she's the double->barrelled
presenter on Top Gear, announced out of nowhere that you can tell whether a man
will be a good lover by how he drives.
The effect was immediate. I slowed down to a rhythmic crawl and switched the
radio to Smooth FM, using my tongue. And then I eased the seat into its fully
reclined position and waved someone out of a side turning with a clearly
audible "No. After you."
"You should see me filling the engine with lubricant," I said, to the
background drizzle of Luther Vandross. "I never spill a drop and I always know
which receptacle takes what." Then I noticed the revs were rising and that,
really, I should change gear. But since I was being scrutinised for signs of
between-the-sheets abnormalities, the knob was a problem.
I mean, do you just grab it and shove it into the next slot as quickly as
possible, while pulling a face? Or do you caress it into third, in which case
it might appear you're the sort of chap who likes to reverse into tight spaces?
For miles, I drove along smiling at everyone while being super-careful with the
controls, until I began to think a little bit about Mori. To work out who will
win a general election, they question thousands of people. So how does one girl
manage to deduce that there's a correlation between driving and sex? To get an
accurate picture, she'd have to have the notchiest bedhead in Christendom, and
I know what life's like on Top Gear. There just isn't the time.
Well, it turns out that she is also an instructor for one of those corporate
entertainment "So you think you can drive" companies and sees hundreds of young
men trying to wrestle their cars round the track. "If they saw at the
wheel or jab at the brakes," she said, "you just know they'll be hopeless in
the sack." And obviously those that don't jab away at the brakes and saw at the
wheel go home at night with rather more than a cup.
Amid the squeals of protest about this frankly logical deduction, she went on
to explain that even the simple art of putting the seat into its correct
position is a giveaway. The men worth a second look slide it back gently
and, when they stop, they ease the handbrake up slowly, while pushing the
little button on the end.
Wow. I think this could well herald the beginning of perhaps the most
successful road safety campaign yet seen.
You see, young men have somehow got it into their heads that women find
handbrake turns attractive when, in fact, they do not. Furthermore, donutting
your Vauxhall Nova all the way down Laburnum Drive does not in any sense
constitute meaningful foreplay.
I have read hundreds of surveys in women's magazines about what women look for
in a man and usually it's a sense of humour or nice eyes. Not once have I ever
heard a girl say that what she wants, more than anything, from a man,
is an ability to do power slides. (That's because they never asked me!-LG)
It needs to be explained to Gary that, when he's doing 100mph round the bypass,
with jungle noises bouncing the doors off their hinges, his girlfriend is not
sitting there thinking, "Gosh. This man's car control is exemplary and I hope
that later he will perform similar miracles with me."
She is thinking, "Bleedin' Ada. We're going to crash and I wish this plonker
would slow down." But of course she can't say that because then she'd find
herself at the side of the road, in the rain.
We need the people who did those amazing Australian "If you drink and drive,
you're a bloody idiot" adverts to pick up the baton on this one. And I think I
have the tagline already. "A smooth ride: if you give her one, she might
let you give her one."
It'll work, this, because being seen as a good lover is the only thing in a
man's life that beats being seen as a good, fast, masterful driver. And once
the message is out there that these two things are mutually exclusive, just you
watch the speeds come down.
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