It isn’t often that I feel moved to write something about cars but today is an exception. Why? Well, because yesterday we bought a new car and matters automotive are top of the mind at the moment. When I say a ‘new’ car, you should interpret this as ‘new for us’ – apart from that there isn’t anything new about it at all. In fact it’s 15 years old.

Mind you, although this ‘new’ car may be 15 years old, it’s still technologically light-years ahead of anything we’ve been used to up to now. It has electric this and that, a little computer to tell you when things are going wrong and a host of other refinements that are largely wasted on me. But this technical marvel did prompt me to cast my mind back to the first car I ever owned: a magnificent Fiat 500.

The Italian dream. And a car.

If time heals all wounds and absence makes the heart go fonder, the fact that it no longer hurts to think of the Fiat 500, and that I can even think of it almost affectionately, should suggest that my experience with this masterpiece of Italian automotive engineering was not quite as traumatic as it actually was.

I should digress at this point to say that I DON’T mean the new version of the Fiat 500, which has nothing in common with the original apart from the name. I mean, blimey, the new version even has a 1.1 litre engine and a top speed of 150 km/h!

And all in the best possible taste!

No, the car I’m talking about was called the 500 because it had a 500cc engine – and even this is a bit of Italian overstatement because it was actually 479cc, which made it, oh, about 9-and-a-bit times more powerful than a moped. Flat out, you could hope to reach the dizzy heights of 85 km/h. With the accent on hope.

Today, the Fiat 500, or Cinquecento as Fiat-lovers prefer to call it, is regarded as a ‘classic’. ‘Classic’, of course, is a polite way of saying ‘naff’. It means that the object – in this case a car – has a number of endearing quirks that were actually called design faults when the car was new, and resulted in endless frustration and annoyance. Now they are tolerated with a smile. Why? Because no one who is even remotely in his right mind would use a ‘classic’ Fiat 500 to get to work every day. It’s a fun car. A car for a sunny afternoon excursion to the shops.

A sunny afternoon.

The first Fiat 500 I owned (and a think I had 2) was vintage 1961. I bought it for £100 and it came with a large steel box full of spares. The previous owner even offered to throw in a spare engine, but as there was no room for this in the back of the car, I had to decline the offer. Looking back on it, this was a grave error.

Why did I buy a car that was so old? Was I interested in buying a ‘classic’? No. I was broke and it was the cheapest deal I could get. I was also totally ignorant when it came to cars so the idea of buying one with lots of spares seemed rather comforting. Yes, I know it was dumb. Yes, I know that buying a car with loads of spare parts thrown in should have awakened some suspicions as to its reliability. But I was young and stupid.

The sort of sign you obey when you're young a stupid.

One of the major selling points of the Fiat 500 was that it was so basic. Try selling a car on those grounds today! Would anyone buy a Ferrari if they were told “Well, it does have a light that comes on to tell you when you’re running out of fuel. No, it doesn’t actually have a petrol gauge as such. Temperature gauge? No, not really. Synchromesh? Oh, you mean changing gear without having to double de-clutch? Not exactly at this moment in time, no. It does have a heater though! Well, of course it works! It automatically takes all of the fumes straight off the top of the engine and distributes them evenly over the car interior. What more could you want? It’s lovely and warm, as long as you wear a gas-mask. Or alternatively, you can have the heater on and drive with the window open. Nice bit of cold fresh air never did anyone no harm. Radio/CD? What’s that? Never heard of it. But have you seen that lovely sunshine roof? Just take a look at that, will you? Gorgeous, innit? That’s quality, that is! Well, yes, it does leak a bit, admittedly, but you have to bear in mind that this car was designed for Italy, where it doesn’t rain so much…erm.”

And when it does rain, the Italians don't use a car anyway.

And there’s the basic point when it comes to the Fiat 500. It was designed for Italy. Moreover, it was designed for an Italy that was just emerging from the economic collapse following the Second World War. Nobody had any money. Few people could afford to buy an Alfa Romeo or a Lancia. The Fiat 500 was a true people’s car and provided ordinary Italians with mobility. And it did its job perfectly. In Italy. And it never really did much anywhere else.

I loved my Fiat 500, but I’m not so sure that it loved me. It was easy to maintain (to remove the engine, you simply supported it on a block and pushed away the car) but it was very heavy on maintenance. I think I spent more time under the car than I ever did in it.

Reverse gear.

There was the embarrassment of being overtaken by milk-floats and the odd over-enthusiastic cyclist. The feeling of worthlessness as people in Morris Minors didn’t even bother moving over to the other side of the road to overtake you. There was the stress of having to build up enough downhill momentum to be able to go uphill on the other side. There was that sinking feeling on winter mornings when you jerked the starter lever only to hear the car cough in apology and then remain silent.

I mentioned earlier that I actually bought two Fiat 500s. This is true. I actually bought the second one in the vain belief that it might furnish enough spare parts to make the first one driveable. It didn’t. But the scrapyard had the benefit of two wrecks instead of one.

Ever wondered why they don’t build ‘classic’ cars anymore?

Tonight, millions of people across Europe – and even beyond – will be huddled in front of their TVs watching the Eurovision Song Contest. For many people, the event has become as important an annual fixture as the Cup Final, the Rose Bowl or even Christmas.

I’ll be one of them. Not because I particularly like the music – in fact I most often hate the music – but for the sheer unpredictability and predictability of the contest. The Eurovision Song Contest is unpredictable because, with very few exceptions, it’s certainly not the best song that wins. Very often it’s the song that you marked down as a complete no-hoper that sweeps up all the points, while the song you were absolutely certain would carry all before it comes nowhere at all.

Greece showing what 3,000 years of culture can do for you.

On the other hand, the contest is completely predictable in many ways. For example, you can be totally certain that all of the Scandinavian countries will dutifully vote for each other, as will all the countries of former Yugoslavia; the Greeks will give maximum points to Cyprus and vice versa. Great Britain, which dominated the contest for many years when British music was still acknowledged as the coolest around, may pick up a few points from Ireland but will otherwise do very poorly. This has nothing to do with the song, and everything to do with Iraq, which isn’t even in the contest.

Similarly, you can be fairly certain that Germany will give either 10 points or 12 points to Turkey. This is not a reflection of the military alliance of the First World War or a German fondness for kebabs. It’s simply because 2.5% of the country are of Turkish ethnicity and they all vote en masse for Turkey while the Germans themselves vote for hardly anyone – Germany has won the contest only once and that was in 1982.

1996 and the contest ends in a controversial tie for last place.

And then there are the French, God bless ‘em. In the early years of the Eurovision, they did quite well but they haven’t actually won it since 1977. Naturally, being French, they were a bit miffed at this and in 1980 they even pulled out of the contest completely for a few years declaring that it was “merde” or something equally Gallic. However, it has to be said that they have otherwise done their best to subvert the traditional Eurovision song, most notably in 1990 with Serge Gainsbourg’s song “White and Black Blues”. Gainsbourg should have known better really: a song about racial harmony is the last thing that’s going to win the Eurovision Song Contest (although it did come second).

So what is the typical Eurovision song? Well, it certainly isn’t “Waterloo”, which is a quality song however you look at it. As I see it, the Eurovision song is either a cheap exploitation of popular sentiment (Norway’s infamous “Brandenburger Tor” celebrating the downfall of the Berlin Wall, for example) or something mindlessly happy and bouncy (Spain’s highly complex exploration of post-modern angst “La la la” springs to mind).

2010 and the Spanish entry gives rise to rumours that his guitar may not be plugged in.

In fact, it’s well-known in the music world, and outside, that there is such a thing as the “Eurovision Song” – ideally a lumpen piece of Europap that will appeal in equal measure to the inhabitants of Belgrade and Bolsover. It is rarely, if ever, a reflection of current musical tastes and cuts neatly through the problem of lyrical complexity by resorting to the sort of words that most of us left behind at the age of three. This monstrosity is usually accompanied by inane dancing and costumes left over from an amateur version of Saturday Night Fever.

John Travolta

As if the musical content of the Eurovision were not bad enough, we have the presenters. Traditionally these are a man and a woman who, one hopes, are in no way representative of the population of the host country. To keep the French happy, they do everything in French and English, which gives the French-speaker a chance to show off and the English-speaker an opportunity to show why he or she could never make it in stand-up comedy. In fact if there is one thing worse than the Eurovision Song, it’s the Eurovision Joke, which was probably put together by a committee in Brussels from some spare jokes left over from the Second World War.

For many years, the only real saving grace of the Eurovision was the commentary by Terry Wogan. Terry, quite clearly enjoying the hospitality thoroughly on more than one occasion, seemed to be the one person involved in the Eurovision circus who actually knew what was going on. He knew when a song was drivel (roughly 90%) and when the presenters were complete idiots (possibly 95%). In 2001, he famously endeared himself to people everywhere by accurately calling the Danish presenters “Doctor Death and the Tooth Fairy”.

Dame Terry Wogan having a good smile.

So why, you may ask, do I continue to watch the Eurovision Song Contest in spite of apparently detesting it? Well, I watched it as a child and loved it; I spent many years not watching it at all because it was uncool and I didn’t have a TV anyway; and in the mid-nineties I rediscovered it as the perfect kitsch entertainment that it so obviously is. It’s as much a contest as the Grand National is a boat race and the word “song” should not be taken too literally, but it remains riveting and at times hilarious entertainment. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Of all of the insects in the world, there are none quite as lovably stupid as the bumble bee. On what do I base this statement? Well, for starters, this is an insect that gets up early in the morning, while all other insects are quietly snoring under their duvets, on the principle that the early bird gets the worm. Not that the bumble bee is a bird, and it certainly doesn’t eat worms, but it’s clearly an insect in which the work-ethic is deeply rooted. No, the bumble bee feeds on pollen and nectar, which come from flowers, which are open for business all day from sunrise to sunset. Is there a shortage of flowers? No, not particularly. But the bumble bee gets up early anyway, just in case there might be.

Cor! Lovely bit o' pollen in 'ere!

The bumble bee also appears to be very short-sighted. Assuming that it’s mostly interested in flowers, why does it spend so much time buzzing around me? I don’t look remotely like a flower - not even in my best moments. It’s also, as far as I can see, very interested in various sorts of garden furniture.

Considering that the bumble bee is so work-oriented, why is it so fat? It’s so fat that it can hardly lift itself, never mind buzz effectively. Are we talking about the couch-potato of the insect world? Is the only reason why it gets up so early that it wants to get the tedious business of working over with as quickly as possible so that it can lounge on the sofa scratching its fuzz, watching reality TV and eating pizzas? Is this the chav of the insect world?

Oi! Who are you lookin' at?

But what really defines the bumble bee as stupid – if lovably stupid – is its total inability to come to terms with windows. Now there are many insects out there, some of them much smaller, that seem to have no difficulty with a window. Okay, I admit that there’s the daddy-longlegs that even has problems with a wall but most insects seem to recognise glass when they see it and try a work-around. Not so the lovable bumble bee that simply smacks into the window repeatedly in the hope that it will eventually dissolve. It will continue to do this until either the glass does indeed dissolve or it drops dead of exhaustion…

The bumble bee's arch-enemy: Southwark.

Not that this stops bumble bees from trying every means possible to gain entrance to your house. In the summer, it’s wise to leave no gap open to the outside world because as sure as oeufs are oeufs the bumble bee will find its way through. And what will it do when it gets its way through? Yep, smack into the windows until they dissolve or it dies of exhaustion. Not a wise career move for a couch-potato, I think you’ll agree.

The bumble bee lives in a nest with other bumble bees. However, lacking the architectural skills and social organisation of the honey bee, much less the ant, he has never managed to build anything that will house more than about fifty bees at a time. Not that the bumble bee would actually want to live together with more than fifty other bumble bees anyway. In fact, if it were possible to live entirely alone or, at the very least with the wife and couple of kids, the average bumble bee would leap at the chance.

Female bumble bee - click for actual size.

You see, the bumble bee is essentially a loner. You never see a couple of bumble bees pass the time of day with each other, let alone sit down for an in-depth conversation. This may explain why they repeatedly smack into windows – because no other bumble bee has ever bothered to explain that it’s a waste of time. On the other hand, because no bumble bee has ever explained the facts of life to another bumble bee, every day is probably a voyage of discovery, with totally new things to explore and enjoy. And because the bumble bee has a poor memory – as in no memory at all – the totally new things of yesterday will certainly be the totally new things of today and tomorrow too.

I imagine that living in a bumble bee’s nest is probably like living in an old people’s home but having to get up unreasonably early and go out to work every day. You return home in the evening to sit with other bumble bees, chewing your gums and saying nothing. Occasionally, one of your fellow bees will have an unfortunate encounter with a window and not return to the nest but no one seems to notice.

A hive on a day out to Blackpool.

In fact, apart from a deeply rooted work ethic, there’s not a lot that gets a bumble bee excited at all. The main object of its life is to find flowers, by a slow process of elimination, and then extract the nectar. It has a sting, but can’t really be bothered to use it.

So next time that you see a bumble bee smacking into one of your windows, do spare a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves, and gently help it on its way. But before you do so, be sure to explain to it thoroughly exactly what glass is. You won’t get a word of thanks, of course.

I invented Tomism on a beach in Greece about nine years ago when I first met the delightful woman who, four years later, proved herself lunatic enough to marry me. She’s Norwegian. Like many Norwegians, she has a name that is almost impossible to pronounce correctly by anyone who isn’t Norwegian – and even by some who are.

I’m sure there are many of us who have met a person to whom we are really very much attracted but whose name we have difficulty in remembering. That’s bad enough, but it’s much worse when you do remember the name – well, sort of – but are unable to pronounce it. So, I solved the problem by calling her Tom. And so that she wouldn’t feel that I was picking on her, and also to cover up for the fact that I couldn’t pronounce her name, I called everyone else Tom too.

A beach. Well, just a beach really. Not in Greece or anything.

Unexpectedly, this caught on. I guess there were other people on the beach with a similar problem. For the rest of the holiday, quite a large number of people called each other Tom on a more or less regular basis. Unwittingly I had stumbled upon a revolutionary idea and one that I feel will certainly have a massive impact on society as a whole: Tomism.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Tomism is just about calling everyone Tom. Well, actually it is but it’s the effects of Tomism that are important and not the name. The name might just as well be Dick, Harry or even Lucinda and the overall effect would be fairly similar. But not the same. You see Tom is a name that it is not only impossible to mispronounce but also very egalitarian – you find Toms at all levels of society. Admittedly not many of them are women but that will soon change.

A real Tom.

Call everyone Tom and you confer on them a shared responsibility. This responsibility may be positive or negative. In other words, you are taking an active share in humanity’s successes but also its failures. Who painted the Mona Lisa? Tom. Who started the Second World War? Also Tom. Who ended the Second World War? A load of Toms.

However, Tomism not only means that you’ll suddenly excel in general knowledge quizzes but also that we’ll finally have the answers to all of those nagging questions that have plagued us for generations. Who invented the wheel? Who invented sliced bread? Who was the first person to set foot on the American continent? Who will be the first person to set foot on Mars? You see, you can simplify history and predict the future at the same time.

Tom.

In an economic sense, Tomism will solve the problem of world poverty. Just got an unexpectedly large bill that you don’t know how to pay? Simply find the richest Tom in the neighbourhood and pop it in his post box! Wars of conquest will become a thing of the past. After all, why go to the trouble of invading a country that you already own?

But it’s in the question of religion that Tomism really comes into its own. Who created the world? Tom did. Let’s not go into how long it took him or how he did it – the name is the most important thing. If all adherents of every religion in the world worship a deity, or multiple deities, called Tom, there’s absolutely no point in arguing about who’s got it right. They’ve all got it right. Naturally the leader of the forces of evil is also called Tom which will shed a new light on Manichaeism.

On a more mundane, practical level, we shall finally see the end of name-dropping. “As I was saying to Tom the other day…” will lose its force entirely.

Tom.

As with any good idea, there are, of course, one or two slight drawbacks. Such as “Where’s Tom?” for example. This question now shifts from the geographical to the philosophical; the correct answer being “Who do you actually mean by Tom?” But, as you can see, it now encourages us to describe that person in more depth. Paradoxically Tomism now presents us with a lot more information about the person in question, such as “The female Tom with the squint who was born in 1977, lives in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, and had two kids with the Tom who worked in the builder’s yard and another with the Tom who was Undersecretary of State for Education in Tom’s last government”. Beats Sharon Philips every day.

Crime, of course, will virtually disappear. We have already successfully dispensed with the profit motive by popping unwanted bills in rich Tom’s letter-box and anyone wishing to gain notoriety will be doomed to disappointment. Crimes of passion become pretty meaningless when your partner has been having an affair with…you. Naturally there will be the odd fully dysfunctional Tom but it’s not a perfect world. Yet.

Another Tom.

And the more you think about it, the more benefits to Tomism there are. Want to go on holiday? No problem. All the tickets are made out to Tom, as are all the passports. Want to be an Olympic Gold Medal Winner? Forget about the training – you already are one. You can win an Oscar, be a best-selling writer (after all, every writer is now a best-selling writer) and even win Mastermind by answering questions on “Famous people”.

And finally, when you meet someone new on holiday, you no longer need to rack your brain to remember their name, much less pronounce it. We’re all Toms. Easy.