Once an idiot, always an idiot?

9:39am Friday 28th March 2008

First published March 28, 2008

WE'VE all, by now, heard about the claims Jeremy Clarkson was spotted using a mobile phone while driving.

Naturally enough, it led to another round of Top Gear-bashing.

You know the sort of thing: By showing fast cars going fast on a test track they're fuelling people's desire to tear up the A12 at 130mph.

And, naturally enough again, Clarkson sidekick James May wrote a newspaper column defending the programme (well he's hardly going to join the critics, is he?).

Reading his views at weekend I was particularly taken with one particular line he took on the issue.

"People who drive like idiots do so simply because they are idiots; they're idiots in everything else they do as well, and they pervade all strata of society and all age groups," he wrote.

Well James, while I agree with pretty much everything else you said on the issue - people were, as you say, crashing cars before Top Gear was dreamed up - I think you're a bit off target on the idiot issue.

You see, I can think of quite a few people who disprove the idiot on the road = idiot all the time rule.

They are to a man (or woman) polite, well-read, good conversationalists, help grannies across the road, plenty of A-levels etc..

Get them behind the wheel of a car, though, and all that goes out of the sunroof.

High speed tailgating.

Random use (or non-use) of indicators, as though they are a fleeing fugitive deliberately trying to shake off a particularly persistent pursuer.

Unprovoked shouts and gestures at other drivers.

Braking too soon, too late, or for no good reason, as though the journey was just one long test of the reflexes.

Then, as soon as these Jekyll and Hyde characters get you to your destination, they get out of the car, the drooling and snarling stops and and the hairs on the palms of their hands disappear.

Their behaviour is nothing to do with Top Gear - it's much more primeval than that.

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