Someone reminded me about this the other day. One January, some years ago, we flew up to Manchester to visit my in-laws. This was an extremely effective exercise in time management, since the flight takes just 35 minutes. On the down side, it involved me getting up at 5.00am, which, as you will know for me, is the middle of the night. Everything was booked online, including the hire of a car from Mr Hertz, who just happens to prostitute himself on the British Airways website and we took advantage of this blatant commercialism. Before you ponder on this possible extravagance, the cost of a day’s hire of a Ford Fiesta was £35 and taxis to and from Manchester Airport would have been £45. I believe, in modern parlance, this is called a no-brainer.

When we arrived at Manchester, we duly reported to one of Mr Hertz’s lovely assistants who informed us that, sadly, they would have to change the hire car from a bright shiny used Ford Fiesta to a drab brand new top of the range Jaguar XJ loads-more-letters-of-the-alphabet 3.0 SE Automatic. We looked suitably irritated and, having completed the paperwork, sauntered nonchalantly – tutting disingenuously – towards the car park. When we were out of sight of the desk, we – well, shall I say politely, hastened.

Well, the last time I saw a dashboard like that was earlier in the day when the pilot had left the cockpit door open. We spent a good 20 minutes in the car park trying to work out what all the controls were for; I started the engine and the Instruction Manual explained that, before I could engage Drive, I had to depress the brake pedal. So I told it that George Galloway might win Celebrity Big Brother and it worked! Hurrah!

I pressed one of four buttons on the door which made my seat move forwards and I couldn’t get it to go back again. My wife found some knobs on the side of her seat and got out of the car to come round and fiddle with the ones on my side. Once my posture had ceased to resemble that of Quasimodo, I closed my door and started the engine. My wife then spent a few minutes banging on the passenger window as her door had locked itself and I didn’t know how to reverse the procedure. I eventually discovered this simply involved a slight pull on my door handle. Oh, I nearly forgot, it even had a heated steering wheel!

I would actually like one.