There are more things wrong with it than right. If it was an exam result, it would be minus two with a note on from teacher saying "See me!". If it was an MP, it would be Douglas "ducks on my moat" Hogg.

It has so many flaws that if you put four walls around it, you'd have a block of flats.

The first thing to go kaput was the factory-fitted immobiliser, which konked out some time last year, leaving me stranded outside a shop about half a mile from home.

I tried to fix it by the side of the road but eventually abandoned my attempt at being a mechanic, and the car. Moments after I arrived home, there was a knock at the door. It was the police.

Bend

Apparently, I'd left the handbrake off and my car had rolled into the road causing high drama. Two members of the public had been forced to bend the driver's door almost in two to get in. As you do.

Remarkably, the window was still intact, so I just bent the door back and got my mechanic mate to bypass the immobiliser. Ever since, the door whistles at anything above 25mph and the window opens on its own.

It was the beginning of a trend...

A piece of trim fell off one of the back doors. I stuck it back on with No More Nails. It fell off again, leaving horrible white glue marks down the door.

The next thing to go was the heater, meaning I had to drive to work in sub-zero temperatures with all the windows down – dressed like Sir Ranulph Fiennes making an attempt on the South Pole – just so that the windows didn't steam up.

One of the indicator lights on the dash doesn't work, the rear demister is temperamental, the controls for the side-mirrors are non-existent, the main interior light acts like a nightclub strobe, the cigarette lighter is jiggered, the handbrake cover comes off in your hand if you pull it too hard, one of the back seats doesn't fold down, the clock light doesn't work, it is impossible to turn the radio off, the petrol cap jams and if I don't park it facing downhill of a night, I can't start the thing the next day because the starter motor's jiggered.

Then, the fuel gauge became bi-polar and the speedo decided it would rather be a Geiger counter, then packed in altogether.

And just days later I found plants living on my car.

I'm not talking about the moss on the rubber quarterlight, either. These are proper bona fide plants. The kind you'd pay too much for in any good garden centre. They have taken root in the gap between the front windscreen and the bonnet, where a lot of dead leaves have collected over a long period of time and rotted, forming a mulch.

Like I said, my car's been trying to tell me something. I just haven't been listening.

Being a French car, however, it's now taken direct action and basically just walked off the job. Indefinitely. So, being an English person, I'm letting it.


Save me from the bankers

Every time I see one of those bank adverts on the box, it makes me want to assume the identity of Michael Douglas in the film Falling Down.

Banks are like a bunch of AA members who decide en masse to fall off the wagon, then turn up at your kid's 10th birthday party completely wazzoodled.

Lloyds's catchphrase at the moment is 'For the Journey'. Erm, what journey? I hope they don't mean the road to ruin. The Halifax, which always tries to be clever by using the X in its name, claims to 'Always give you extra.' Extra what? Debt, grief, bank charges? Extra pain in the you-know-what? Banks, like MPs, ought to be turned into not-for-profit entities.


Share the stocks

The other day I was leafing through a book about Elland and came across a picture of that village's Elland Gaol. Outside was a poor chap with his legs in a set of stocks. The year: 1821. I think we ought to bring back stocks. What a great deterrent they would be to anyone who fell foul of the law. And a great leveller too, because not only would you be able to humiliate your Friday night yob, he could share a pair of stocks with a city banker and God knows we've enough of them to go round.