Jeremy Clarkson - Round the Bend

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2011

Copyright Jeremy Clarkson, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-71-815842-2

By the same author

Motorworld

Jeremy Clarksons Hot 100

Jeremy Clarksons Planet Dagenham

Born to be Riled

Clarkson on Cars

The World According to Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul

And Another Thing

Dont Stop Me Now

For Crying Out Loud!

Driven to Distraction

How Hard Can It Be?

For my children

The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy Clarksons Sunday Times column. Read more about the world according to Clarkson every week in the Sunday Times.

Daihatsu Materia

By now, you will have heard all about the new Apple iPhone. You will have been told its battery has the life expectancy of a veal calf, and that if you want to take a photograph, youd be better off setting up an easel and breaking out the oils.

Whats more, youll have been told by people who havent got one that it works only on O2, that it cant receive pictures via the text service and that it jams a lot.

Theres something else as well. It is able to deliver the weather forecast from San Diego and clips from YouTube of young Asian men falling off motorcycles, because it can be connected to the internet. This, however, is not easy. Certainly, you wont be able to do it. So youre going to need a little man.

It used to be that wealthy families in rural idylls would have a little man in the village who could be called upon to come round at a moments notice and remove dead pigeons from the chimney pot. Or start the car. Or free the satellite dish from the clematis.

He was the most vital cog in the community. But not any more. Because today hes been surpassed by someone far more important. The little man who will come round to fix your broken laptop.

Unfortunately, my little man, who is called Hugo, recently met with some success and is now busy installing vast intranets on industrial estates. So asking him to come round to unblock a stubborn wireless network is a bit like asking Led Zeppelin to come round and be the turn at your four-year-olds birthday party.

This is a disaster because Hugo is the only man alive who knows how my house works. He knows the systems that prevent reporters from sitting in the road outside and reading my e-mails. He knows the codes that allow my daughters laptop to speak to my phone. He knows the DNA of every socket and every inch of cable. And now he is gone.

So when my iPhone asks for an APN and a username and a password before it can hook up to something called the Edge, I have no idea what its on about. Nor do I know if I want the VPN on or off because I dont know what a VPN is. Or data roaming. And then I have to tell it whether I am WEP, WPA or WPA2.

And, of course, my new little man cant help either because all the information is locked in the mind of my old little man.

The upshot is that I cant access the internet when Im out and about, and do you know what? That is not the end of the world, because when Im on location I rarely have the time or the inclination to think, What Id like to do now is watch a Korean explode, and then maybe Ill watch a plump lady in Houston playing with herself.

Nor can I access my e-mails, which is also a good thing because nothing has ever been said in an e-mail that needed to be said at all.

And anyway, even without these facilities, the iPhone sits in the pantheon of great inventions alongside the wheel, fire and Sky+. Its one of those things that come into your life and you think, How in the name of God did I ever manage without it?

Sure, the camera, as has been suggested, cant take pictures if its too dark, too bright or something in between, but everything else is brilliant. You type out texts on a proper qwerty keyboard, and even if you make a mistake it uses witchcraft to correct the error. And then theres the telephone, which comes with big, special-needs numbers that you cant miss even if you have fingers like burst sausages. And on top of this, its an iPod.

Problems? Honestly, there arent any. Ive had mine hacked so it works on Vodafone, and Im sorry, but the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that Im a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when Im on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort.

This brings me on to an interesting idea. Why doesnt Apple make a car?

The fact of the matter is that the established car makers are timid and afraid of change. They think the mini MPV is a revolution and that the Smart car can be mentioned in the same breath as penicillin. This means they never think outside the box.

Why, for instance, does a car have a steering wheel? Or pedals? Or a dashboard? No, really. As anyone under the age of fifteen will tell you, the handset for a PlayStation can be used to steer, accelerate and brake a car. And there are still spare buttons on the handset that can be used to fire machine guns.

And, of course, without a steering wheel or a dashboard, thered be a lot more space in the cabin, and no need for expensive, weighty airbags. And thats just me, thinking off the top of my head.

I feel fairly sure that if Apple were asked to make a car, it would come up with an automotive iPod, and within weeks wed view the current alternatives in the same way that we now view the cassette tape, the LP and the 8-track. Until then, however, we will have to make do with the Daihatsu Materia.

In essence, this is a small, five-door hatchback that you can buy for 10,995. But as you can see from the pictures, it doesnt look like a small five-door hatchback. It looks like the Johnny Cab Arnold Schwarzenegger used when he was on Mars.

You may not care for the styling very much, in the same way that you may think an iPod is no match for the gloss and the joy of an album cover. But there is one big advantage. And I do mean big. Inside, the Materia is absolutely vast.

On the outside, then, you have a car that is as easy to park as a small Volkswagen. But inside, five adults can luxuriate.