KEY POINTS:
Rev-heads everywhere will no doubt be rejoicing that Top Gear is back on the telly - on Prime, Sundays at 7.30pm. At least I assume that's who Top Gear is for. I don't know any rev-heads and the ones who scream up my street should be put in prison until they grow up. That is rather the point of Top Gear though: rev-heads never grow up. It is a show for lads who love cars and who admire lads who get to scream about in cars for a living.
None of which explains why I have a strange sort of fascination with the thing.
Perhaps it is because I can't believe three middle-aged lads get to make what is presumably a pretty good living out of talking about cars, giving one another stick about cars, screaming about in cars other people have paid for and so on.
It is not what you would call a show about complicated ideas. But it is lavishly and quite beautifully made. If your idea of beautiful shots is of ... roads.
Last night the lads - Jeremy, James and Richard - went in search of the best driving road in the world. Much to Jeremy's chagrin this road would not be in Britain. He is one of those typically English lads who makes you think of 20 pints of lager, a curry and a chunder of a Friday night while wearing a Union Jack. Of course he's much cannier than that.
I'm pretty sure I think he's appalling. Partly it's his voice, which is so Alpha male it's deeper than a grumpy grizzly bear's growl. You can imagine his handshake would be of the bone-crushing variety.
Helen Mirren came on and said a rude beeped-out word after Jeremy asked what she thought of "super cars". She didn't know what they were and neither did I - much of what is said on Top Gear is incomprehensible to me. Jeremy explained that a super car was, say, a Ferrari or a Lamborghini (more commonly known as a "Lambo" in Top Gear lingo). "I just think," said Dame Helen, "most guys who drive them ... when I see them, I think what a [very rude word beeped out], you know."
She doesn't actually have a car. She goes on public transport, as she explained, "like buses and tubes and trains".
"And a tramp sitting next to you vomiting over you," said Jeremy, because that's the kind of thing he would say.
Right, back to the perfect road. It couldn't be in Australia, "that's full of spiders", or in China, "they're all communists", or in South America, "they're all on drugs". It had to be somewhere is Europe and turned out to be in Italy after much faffing about and the lads swearing at one another and giving James stick for his choice of car, a stripped-down Aston Martin.
Oh dear, I appear to have learned a car term. I'd better stop watching now before I start talking like Jeremy. Which would mean saying things like, "That's why the bottom of the car is swollen, like your granny's ankles". No, I haven't got a clue what he was on about.
