SundayTimes Columns

After the recent and very sad deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan, questions were immediately asked about the worthiness of the Warrior armoured vehicle in which they were travelling when the bomb went off. And equally immediately they were answered. The Warrior fleet in Afghanistan was upgraded last June at a cost of more than half a million quid a pop, with armour better able to deal with an explosion and improved seating to protect those inside from the shockwave. The trouble is, of course, that the men who go to war in beach footwear and skirts know full well that this has happened and are now using bigger bombs. This means the Warriors will have to be upgraded again, which will mean more explosives are needed to blow them up. It’s a problem that’s faced military commanders since the dawn of time. And it’s a problem that will never end. Each time there’s a tragedy, coroners can point the finger of blame. They can accuse defence chiefs of penny-pinching and the en...

  Once, I drove on a highway near Atlanta, in Georgia, that runs through a wood for about 16,000 miles. It is very boring. But after a quick trip to Wales last week I’ve decided that the M4 is even worse. Some say that the most boring motorway in the world is the M1, but actually it’s not dull at all. It has a history and even a hint of romance. People have written songs about it and you pass many exciting places such as Gulliver’s Kingdom and the Billing Aquadrome. You’re tempted at every junction to get off and have a snout around. Except, perhaps, junction 22. Coalville’s not that appealing. Plus the M1 makes your blood boil, especially at the moment, because almost all of it is coned off and subjected to a rigorously enforced 50mph speed limit. Driving on this section is like reading The Guardian. It gets the adrenaline going. It makes your teeth itch with impotent rage. The M4, on the other hand, is like a book with nothing written on any of the pages. You pass Bracknell and Rea...

  ou can’t really relax when it’s your daughter’s 18th birthday party and your house is rammed to bursting point with a cocktail of rampaging testosterone and vodka. Certainly you can’t just go to bed, partly because of the worry that everyone is going to get pregnant, but mostly because of the noise. So I didn’t. I stayed up all night, totally forgetting that at 11 o’clock the next morning I was due at the Emirates stadium in the nuclear-free, vegan outreaches of north London. Happily, I had booked a driver. Unhappily, he turned up in the brand-new, second-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom. At first, all was well. Buoyed by a drink-fuelled contentment that nobody had cut their head off or given birth, I slumped into the vast rear seat in a Ready Brek glow of warm fuzziness. However, about 20 minutes later this had begun to wear off. And as we reached London, I started to worry that I might die. Ten minutes after that, I was worried I might not. There was a rolling tide of nausea in my ...

  You would have thought after a hundred years of practice the human being would be quite good at driving cars. Many of us are. Double mini roundabouts. Motorway slip roads. Entrances to multi-storey car parks. We can do them all while talking on the phone, eating a sandwich and thinking about having sex with a lady. But unfortunately an equal number are completely hopeless. Day in and day out I’m presented with a vast array of people who, to put it kindly, are to driving a car what Moira Stuart is to powerboat racing. Earlier this afternoon, I drove down the Fosse Way and the person in front, in a BMW — not a Peugeot — stopped at every roundabout and set off when an imaginary stopwatch in their head dictated they’d been stationary long enough. Yesterday, on the M25, I was overtaken by a chap in a Kia Picanto who was doing — at least — 95mph. This is 90mph faster than is prudent in such a terrible car. And, to make matters worse, he was swerving from lane to lane so violently that I ...

  Buying a book to read on holiday is very much like buying a car. There’s a huge and bewildering choice and you are torn about what it is, exactly, that you want. If you are a man, you will know to avoid books called Tractors in the Ukraine and Appleblossom because it’ll be a plotless churn through the life of some dizzy bint who has lost her hat. You will not enjoy reading it and other people will laugh at you. What you want, of course, is a book in which a chisel-jawed agent called Clint Thrust attempts to find a hoard of Nazi gold while under attack from a madman’s fleet of nuclear-powered hunter-killer minisubs. But unfortunately, while this will be engrossing and wonderful, the cover will feature a girl in a bikini, a gold ingot with a swastika on it and a speedboat leaping through an explosion of some kind. This, too, will make you a laughing stock at the pool. An autobiography, then, seems to be the answer. You look wise. You look like you are interested in other people. And ...

  Almost every country has a unique detail that sets it apart from anywhere else. In France, for instance, you can’t walk for more than 100 yards without treading on a dog turd. Australia has too many dangerous animals. Germany has too much armpit hair. India needs a spring clean. And then we get to Sweden, where I spent a recent weekend. The little detail here is odd: there aren’t enough chairs. I stayed at a boutique hotel and on the first day met colleagues in the dining room. After a while we were asked to move because the table had been reserved by someone else for dinner. This was fine, except the only other available seating in the whole building was two ornamental sofas on the second-floor landing. They didn’t appeal, so we moved next door to the Grand. This is a big old- fashioned hotel and quickly we found a table with enough seating for all of us. However, each time one of us went to the bar or the lavatory, the waiter would take his or her chair away and give it to someon...

      From a road-tester’s perspective, the good thing about Audi’s RS cars is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Some are nearly as good as their rivals from BMW. Some are forgettable. Some are dire. And then we get to the car you see pictured this morning: the new RS 4 Avant. Which has just provided me with one of the worst weeks of my entire motoring life. Bad is a small word that doesn’t even begin to cover the misery. Misery that was so all-consuming that, given the choice of using this car or taking the Tube, I would head straight for the escalator. Not just would. Did. Day one involved a trip to a place called Stoke Newington that pretends to be in London but in reality is an hour north of the capital, just outside Hull. And straight away I knew there was something terribly wrong. I have driven bumpy cars in the past. My own Mercedes is extremely firm. But the RS 4 was in a different league. It was like sitting in a spin-dryer that was not only on its final ...

  Over the years, I have driven a car up to 17,200ft in the Andes. I’ve also driven to the North Pole, and over the spine of Africa, and tonight, in a Top Gear Nativity special, you will see me drive a two-seater sports car from Iraq to Bethlehem, across the Syrian desert. In short, I have proved many times that cars can do things way beyond their maker’s expectations. And yet, last week, in what the rest of the world would call a light snow flurry, I could not get a four-wheel-drive Subaru from the centre of Oxford to my house, 18 miles away. All through the winter, we’ve laughed at those images of Scottish people slithering about in their McRovers and we’ve wondered how on earth they could make such a hash of it. Well, now it’s happened to me, and you know what? It’s not funny. Buses, of course, are the problem. Buses don’t work in towns, or on country lanes, or anywhere, really, and they certainly don’t work when it’s snowing. One of the main reasons — in my mind — that Canada...

  I suppose we should get straight to the point. The Mini E that you see in the pictures this morning is absolutely brilliant. Unlike the stupid Toyota Prius, which tries to win the environmental argument by wading into battle with two power sources, the Mini is propelled entirely by its batteries. And unlike the idiotic Reva G-Wiz, it doesn’t look as though it was made from bog seats as part of a sixth-form project. It looks like a car. So you don’t feel like a pious, mealy-mouthed sandal enthusiast as you drive about. Of course, it doesn’t feel like “a car” to drive. It feels different, odd, unusual. And in some ways, dare I say it, better. You get in, push the key into the slot, same as you do in a normal Mini, press the starter button, same as you do in a normal Mini, and then swear a little bit under your breath, same as you do in a normal Mini, because it starts telling you to put your seatbelt on. Other than the beeping nanny, though, there is no noise. You have started the mo...

  For the past couple of weeks, everyone has been running around, waving their arms in the air and wondering what in God’s name possessed the Indian government to express a preference for a bunch of Frog warplanes rather than the faster, more manoeuvrable and far deadlier Eurofighter Typhoon. Some have said this is India sticking two fingers up at its former colonial masters. Some have said that France has offered to do some kind of behind-the- scenes nuclear deal as a sweetener. Some blame David Cameron, and others will undoubtedly point the finger at the Top Gear Christmas special. But I suspect the real reason the Indians look set to go with the French is this: their Rafale plane is around £20m cheaper than a Eurofighter. And it’s all very well saying that the British-backed plane has an operational ceiling of 55,000ft — 5,000 higher than the French jet — because so what? The Eurofighter was designed to hold back an invasion of western Europe. It’s designed to reach the dark blue ...

   Douglas Adams said the answer was 42. He was wrong, though. It doesn’t matter what question you are posing; the answer is always a diesel-powered Range Rover Vogue SE. What’s the best car for taking the children to school? What’s the best car for a day’s shooting? What’s the best car for a drive to Scotland? What’s the best car for a quiet drive home after work? What’s the best car for crossing Africa? What looks best in a field? Or in Knightsbridge? Range Rover. Range Rover. Range Rover. This week I drove the new and completely insane Mercedes C 63 Black Series. It is a car designed and built specifically to eat its own tyres. One set lasted just 25 minutes. I absolutely loved the madness of the thing. It’s a hoot. But for life in the real world? No. I’d rather have a Range Rover. I’m not alone, either. Just recently I was at the home of a leading light of what the Daily Mail calls the Chipping Norton set. Fourteen couples were present, and every single one of them had turned up ...

   It is extraordinary how often a room full of well-qualified adults can discuss a subject in their chosen field and arrive at a conclusion that’s completely muddle-headed and stupid. We see this a lot in politics. Only recently an MP called Keith Vaz went on television to say the immigration desks at Heathrow needed to be “personed up”. I actually went back and watched the moment again. But there was no mistaking it. This man — an MP with a first-class degree from Cambridge — had obviously been to a meeting where other sentient beings had convinced him to use words that no one else understands. Then there was the war in Iraq. Wise, clear-thinking people had access to all the information that the satellites could provide. And yet still they made a decision that was idiotic and wrong. A few years ago Coca-Cola did the same thing, albeit with less important ramifications, when it decided to make Coke taste like a used swab. BA did it with its tailfins. Gerald Ratner described   a prod...