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warriors and their men to the king. It was the land, held in return for military service that fed their bellies, it was the honour that fed their pride and it was the jewels that pandered to their vanity. It was everything.’
    In other words, the Brits love a good scrap. And it’s still going on today. While the rest of the world hangs its head in despair over Iraq, Tony Blair comes out from behind the health-food counter and shouts: ‘I’m proud of what we have done.’
    Most countries, except perhaps France, will fight toprotect their borders or their way of life. But Britain will fight to protect someone else’s borders and someone else’s way of life. Poland. Kuwait. Korea. Don’t worry, we’ll be there, fists flying.
    What’s more, we’re the only nation that likes to fight in its spare time. You’ll see more brawls on a British high street in one night than you will in the whole of Italy in an entire year.
    I went out the other night with a bloke who freely admitted that he likes nothing more than to finish off the night with a fight. While chaps elsewhere in the world hone their chat-up lines, hoping to go home with a girl, he has developed a range of provocations so that he can go home with a chair leg sticking out of his arm.
    Think about it. If someone in Italy says, ‘Are you looking at me?’, you’re on for some rumpy-pumpy. If someone says it in England, you’re on for a ride in an ambulance. And have you ever heard a Frenchman say, ‘Est-ce que vous upsettez mon vin?’
    We are supposed to be a pot-pourri of Saxon, Goth, Roman, Norman, Celt and Viking. But actually we’re just thugs and vandals. When the Romans went home, we pulled down their buildings, ripped up their roads and settled down for 400 years of bloodshed and mayhem known as the Dark Ages. Those were the days, eh?
    And they’re still going on. In Birmingham recently I encountered a group of lads pushing one of our television cameras along the street.
    ‘Where are you going with that?’ I asked.
    ‘We’re going to push it into the canal,’ they replied, asthough it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
    Beauty and love have no place in Britain. Which is why we are responsible for the most brutal and savage car of all: the TVR. An Alfa Romeo will try to woo you with poetry. A TVR will bend you over the Aga, rip off its kilt and give you one, right there and then.
    A Volkswagen will make you a lovely shepherd’s pie and light a fire to make your evening warm and cosy. Whereas a TVR will come home and bend you over the Aga again. A TVR would nick the lifeboat charity box on the bar, empty it, then shove it up your jacksie. A TVR would fight for its life, its honour, its family and, most of all, its pint.
    Put a TVR on
Desert Island Discs
and it would take a flamethrower and a selection of hits from Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. Then it would bend Sue Lawley over the mixing desk and make animal love until it broke wind.
    You don’t get paint on a TVR; it’s woad. And instead of being made from steel or aluminium, it’s wattle and daub. It’s an Iron Age fort with a Bronze Age engine. It’s Boudica, only with less femininity and more rage in its heart.
    And look at the names TVRs have had over the years: Griffith, Chimaera, Cerbera – all terrifying mythological creatures with goat heads and seven sets of teeth.
    That’s why I’m unnerved by the latest version, the T350C. What kind of a name is that? It makes it sound like an electric toothbrush. And while a toothbrush has a revolving head and bristles, it’s not as scary as, say, ahammerhead shark. Could this mean, then, that the new car has lost some of its bite?
    Two things back this up. First of all, it’s a coupé with a boot and a hatchback, and I’m sorry but I just don’t equate the concept of TVR motoring with all this stuff. It’s like trying to imagine a Saxon despot in a cardigan.
    Then there’s the handling. Push any of the other TVRs