Some say... what is all the fuss about?
September 2010 |
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Fortunately there is a lovely road that leads away from that particular circuit that fills all the right criteria, complete with a little hump over a bridge where it’s possible to get airborne if you approach it at the right speed.
Unfortunately my journey home was ruined by some blithering idiot who obviously didn’t know what the accelerator pedal was for and was apparently unaware that his car had more than 2 gears. Seriously, he drove the whole way along this road between 32 and 35 miles per hour. Occasionally he reached 40 before he realised he was barely 20 miles per hour off the actual speed limit and slowed down again.
I spent what seemed like an eternity behind this incompetent old fool who insisted on slowing down further at even the slightest kink in the road. He braked every time a car came in the opposite direction. He never once used his indicator when turning but just braked sharply, forcing me and the 6,000 other cars behind to come to a complete standstill while he tried to force his arthritis-ridden hands to turn the steering wheel.
By the time we got to a duel carriageway a queue about 8 miles long had formed behind this idiot. Surely he must have been aware of the fact he was holding everybody up, which makes him extremely selfish. Having said that, the chances of him realising what the rear view mirror is for are slim. This just makes him an idiot.
People like this should be banned from driving. Then they should be given a damn good kicking because these are the morons who cause accidents not, as all these road safety Nazis will have us believe, 17 year old blokes from Basildon called Daz.
Speed is not the killer. Dangerous driving is the problem and these are not the same things. Dangerous and careless driving is a result of people being unaware or just not in control of what they are doing. You can be driving at the speed of sound and be perfectly safe. People who drive slowly and brake at imaginary objects on the road are obviously not aware of what they are doing and are therefore dangerous.
There is nothing more dangerous that bumbling down a country road at zero miles per hour and being completely oblivious to your surroundings. You are an unnecessary hazard; a slow moving obstacle. People have to swerve to avoid your random braking and lack of signalling. People have to try and get past you because they know if they stay behind you they will either crash into the back of you or simply die of old age before they reach their destination. Both of these result in the same action being taken: The car attempting to overtake needing to drive on the wrong side of the road and crashing headlong into an oncoming vehicle.
This brings me, with no relevance whatsoever, onto the subject of a really annoying motor racing related topic that has hit the news recently: The outing of Stig. Again.
Now let me state from the outset that I’ve known who the Stig is for years. It is an open secret in the motor racing community. Even those with a vague connection to the industry know. People often ask me who he is and it always baffles me why they are so keen to know. Firstly it’s really not a big deal. Secondly the name won’t mean anything to them because he is in no way famous and thirdly it would be a bit like telling a 3 or 4 year old that Santa Claws doesn’t exist. Whilst it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, it would completely ruin the mystique.
Part of the fun about the Stig is that his identity is secret. The intrigue is part of the humour. Everyone knows it is a normal bloke under the white suit. Everyone knows that he doesn’t really have webbed buttocks. He never really threw a microwave oven at a tramp either. All the introductions given to him are purely to get a laugh out of the audience.
Like Santa Claws, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, the truth will inevitably come out at some stage. The original Stig deliberately revealed his identity in his autobiography because he wanted more credit for the role and needed the publicity. The new Stig is doing the same. He’s been the anonymous character for 7 years now and feels he deserves more money and, like his black predecessor, needs the publicity because he is not very well known.
He has already "accidentally" left his white racing suit and helmet on display so a visiting builder could see it and then he went into an art framing shop and "accidentally" let on who he was to the shop proprietor. This latest controversy has come about because he wants to release an autobiography and the BBC are, quite rightly, attempting to veto this because it violates the terms of his non-disclosure agreement.
So how did these events get into the media? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who the (quite literally) masked villain is who squealed to the press. It’s the same tactic racing drivers and other sports personalities take to try and get a point across. They use the media as a vessel to let the target of their frustration know how upset they are without having to talk to them personally. I can certainly understand his frustration but I don’t see what he hopes to achieve by his actions. Who’s going to want to read his autobiography anyway? I can tell you now he has achieved very little.
When that short bloke with white teeth crashed his car on the show a few years back, the Stig's real identity was published on the investigation as a test driver "who works closely with the Top Gear team". His identity was also revealed quite publicly a year ago when he walked into that art framing place. If people look hard enough, it's not difficult to find out who he is but why would anyone want to? Most people are still convinced Michael Schumacher is the Stig, which just goes to prove how gullible some people are.
The fact is that Stiggy has just signed his own death warrant. He will inevitably be fired off an aircraft carrier or burnt to a crisp behind a Boeing 747 on Dunsfold Aerodrome in the next series of Top Gear and replaced by a pink Stig or something equally amusing like that. Perhaps Herr Schumacher will decide to stop embarrassing himself in Formula 1 and take on the role for real.
It doesn’t matter because there are plenty of racing drivers ready to take his place. People make the assumption that it is only the one driver who plays the Stig anyway and I know this is not necessarily true. There could be several people who play him. Hell, it could even be me. Of course I would never be stupid enough to admit that even if it was true. Which of course it isn't. Or is it?
So I would like to point out to anyone who saw a frustrated racing driver dressed in mainly white racing overalls heading away from a race circuit on an old airfield recently that I was frustrated because I had just had a very bad race and was stuck behind some old fart doing 30 miles per hour who ruined my journey home. Any connection to the above subject is purely coincidental. You can read all about it in my forthcoming autobiography.
