The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

I was reading about the BNP yesterday. Unlike most woolly liberals of my type, I'm not unduly disturbed by the election of a couple of BNP MEPs. It's not like they're going to have any real power, and getting them elected might actually increase the profile of the BNP to the extent that rather than people thinking they're just some vaguely patriotic organisation, their true nature emerges. Because although I have no evidence for this, I can't help thinking that most of the people who voted BNP did so as a gesture of misplaced patriotism rather than because of genuinely fascistic leanings.

The BNP's white supremacist beliefs have hardly been mentioned over the last few weeks. They've made great play of immigration from the rest of Europe and got mileage from Islamophobia, but nobody's really focused on their ludicrous views about race. And I say ludicrous not because I disagree with them, but because they're simply preposterous. I can see there's a debate to be had (a debate too complex for me, and certainly far too complex for the membership of the BNP) about the recent flurry of immigration from within the EU. Personally I think that if people have got the wherewithal to get off their backsides and travel to another country to better themselves, that's exactly the kind of people I want here, but I'm happy for people to debate it and actually feel the main parties have shied away from doing so for fear of being seen as post-imperialists. But there's no debate to be had about "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home" (which Nick Griffin updated from the previous policy of forced repatriation). I imagine almost everybody knows somebody like a colleague of mine - half Trinidadian and half Nigerian by blood, thoroughly English by birth and upbringing. If he is to be firmly encouraged (and it's pretty easy to imagine what that would be like) to return "home", to where? It's as ill-conceived as it is repellent.

Similarly, I doubt most BNP voters are aware that Nick Griffin is a long-standing Holocaust denier. Or that he thinks that when a white person has a mixed-race child, "a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed. While the BNP is not racist, it must not become multi-racist either. Our fundamental determination to secure a future for white children is restated, and an area of uncertainty is addressed and a position which is both principled and politically realistic is firmly established. We don't hate anyone, especially the mixed race children who are the most tragic victims of enforced multi-racism, but that does not mean that we accept miscegenation as moral or normal. We do not and we never will". Or that the BNP proposes that citizens should keep a rifle and ammunition in their homes. Or - and this is my favourite - it plans "to end the conflict in Ireland by welcoming Eire as well as Ulster as equal partners in a federation of the nations of the British Isles". Ha ha! I wonder if they've ever met anybody Irish. (Or perhaps I should say Eirish, since they seem to favour the archaic term which I'm told Irish people can't stand seeing used in its English version, without the accent.)

I find it hard to get too animated about the BNP though. They're a tiny minority, and - here's the thing - they're on a hiding to nothing. Britain is multi-racial, not just in its demographic but in its heart and soul now as well. Every Theo Walcott goal, every Nitin Sawhney album, every chicken tikka masala makes that more of a fact, and there's nothing the BNP can do about it.

What has happened to spammers these days? They're just not putting the work in. Look at these two efforts that have arrived in my inbox in the last few days.

Pathetic, aren't they? They don't even bother with a story about a widow and an unclaimed inheritance. Dr Malik Ali, from whom I hear on an almost daily basis, would be horrified by their lackadaisical approach to his pitiful form of conmanship.

In other news, the good people of FHM have once again asked for my opinions. This time the questions were all about alcohol. Given that I am approaching my 20th anniversary without partaking of the substance responsible for most of society's ills (yes that's right, I did write that), I am not the ideal subject for topics like:

How far do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about drinks?
• I worry about the long-term health effects of my alcohol consumption                    
• I sometimes feel pressured to drink alcohol in social situations even if I don’t really want to                    
• I enjoy getting drunk                    
• I tend to drink more alcohol in the summer months than in winter                    
• I often go to work with a hangover

I also disagreed with the statement that their website is a good place to go for a quick entertainment fix, and when asked to choose from these words to describe it - Trashy, Entertaining, Safe-for-work, Confusing, Intelligent, Cluttered, Engaging, Cool, Useful, Topical, Funny, Sexy, Informative, Amusing, Sleazy, Immature, Modern, Up-to-date, All-encompassing - I plumped for trashy, sleazy and immature. I'd like to think this will finally prompt them to kick me off their panel, but thinking about it the idiots who run FHM probably take those adjectives as badges of honour. On the other hand, I hope they will have been a little confused by my answer to the illiterate question

Which celebrity would you most like to spend an evening drinking with down the pub?

To which I responded Richard Dawkins. Then again, they almost certainly won't have heard of him and will greet it with a neanderthal grunt.

Imagine my surprise to receive e-mail notification that my moribund weblog had been the subject of a trackback. Once I researched a little and found out what a trackback was, I was intrigued as to who had decided to link their weblog to mine. What might have been of such interest to another blogger that they felt driven to point people in my direction? One of my treatises on the nature of religious belief, perhaps? One of the posts which attempts to provide a cerebral insight into the visceral impulse of football fandom? Possibly one of my consciously over-analytical examinations of song lyrics?

It could be only one subject.

Number plates.

The link came from someone deriding the pointless and mind-numbing activity longtime readers will recognise by its acronym CNPS - Consecutive Number Plate Spotting. Now, I don't have an issue with anyone deriding CNPS. Careful readers will have already noticed me referring to it as pointless and mind-numbing, which it undeniably is. It is also compulsive, time-consuming and obsessive. I like to think of it as less of a pastime and more of an affliction, and if someone else feels inclined to agree with that assessment then I for one will not be taking issue with them.

Except. Here's the twist. The person making this judgement is an enthusiast of something even more lamentable. Something I have previously described here as inexplicable and absurd. The woman who fails to understand the call of CNPS is an aficionado of its preposterous bastardised offspring - the personalised number plate.

It's a sweet irony I think. She probably imagined that of all people, a CNPSer would understand her interest. As you'll see here, she can countenance the idea of someone spotting "interesting or unusual ones in the supermarket car park", but not someone wanting to see them in ascending order. Further down the post she expresses surprise at having found "whole blog posts" on the subject. Now, a couple of thoughts struck me here:

1) There is no such thing as an interesting number plate. They are inherently dull. They are just combinations of letters and numbers. The only way a number plate can be remotely interesting is if its number is one higher than another number plate, and even then it really isn't interesting at all.

2) Isn't it a bit rich to be taken aback by someone writing a post about CNPS when one's entire blog is devoted to personalised number plates?

Because it is. Every last post on Ms Littlemango's weblog is concerned with personalised number plates. Which I imagine is because she deals in them, but even so there seems to be a level of personal dedication to the subject which is, frankly, completely mystifying to me. Take this post for example, an account of a get-together which would make trainspotters chortle mockingly. When it comes to CNPS, at least I have the defence of awareness of the innate worthlessness of my pursuit. Something tells me the Fox family of Leicestershire with their Fox number plates are not so enlightened. Because, let me make it clear, I think personalised number plates are (with a very small number of exceptions which actually work) a witless embarrassment. In another entry Ms Littlemango refers to "gems that get snapped up quickly", citing as an example FA57 CAR. This, apparently, is supposed to say FAST CAR. But it doesn't. It says F A FIFTY SEVEN CAR. That's just what it says, unless you're illiterate (or possibly innumerate, I'm not sure) or make a conscious effort to misread it. And if you've got to make a conscious effort to misread it, what's the point? It's rubbish. As almost all of them are. And that's without even getting into the psychology of why anyone in their right mind would want to have such a number plate on their car anyway.

To summarise then, Ms Littlemango and I share an interest in number plates. Mine is sad and pathetic and I know it. Hers is sad and pathetic and she doesn't. I'm not sure which of us comes out of this worse. Is it me for pursuing something I know to be inane, or her for not knowing she is doing the same? Answers on a number plate please.

Many years ago I went to see George Benson at Wembley Arena. I was not a big Benson fan and had only picked up the tickets on the morning of the gig from an agency that was desperate to get shot of them. I was accompanied to the gig by a girl with whom I worked, of whom I was not particularly fond and with whom I didn't really want to be seen. As we arrived at the venue I realised that the concert was being held 'in the round' (i.e. a circular stage in the middle of the arena) and thought to myself that I hoped we wouldn't be too near the front, both so as not to be surrounded by great enthusiasts for Benson (I know how annoying it can be to be loving a gig and know that someone nearby is less thrilled), and to avoid being too visible. An usher showed us to our seats, and my heart sank progressively further as we got closer and closer to the stage. On and on we went, until finally, inevitably, we arrived at the front row. There we sat in the full glare of the spotlight, in view of thousands of people on either side of the arena, waiting for the concert to begin. I started to get a bad feeling about the way the evening was going.

The support act was Patti Austin. She's an excellent singer and a charismatic performer, and I was enjoying it fine. About halfway through her set, she initiated some audience participation. Now, I have issues with audience participation. I don't like singing along, I don't like being cajoled into action - that's just the way I am. If I go to a concert I just want to see the performers perform, I don't need to feel like I am somehow part of the event in order to enjoy myself. If anything it detracts from the entertainment. I'm not saying nobody should, from what I gather lots of people do appreciate this kind of involvement and fair play to them, but please don't oblige me to do it as well. Anyway, she asked everybody to clap along, and because I don't like clapping along I didn't. Which would have been fine if her bass player, on noticing me sitting with my arms folded, decided to stop playing, point at me, laugh and fold his arms as well. Already feeling hot from the glare of the stage lights, my temperature rose a couple of degrees further. However, I refused to submit to the pressure coming from the bassist and stayed with my arms folded, and soon enough he had to resume playing and the anti-clockwise rotating stage moved him away to my right.

Which would have been fine had the song not come to an end, the next one started and the rotation begun again - clockwise. Inexorably he returned, beat by dreadful beat, into my eyeline. I knew what was coming. I knew he wouldn't resist. And this time when he folded his arms, I'm ashamed to say I crumbled, making a feeble attempt at lightening the moment by clapping along in a comically bad way, as if I'd never done it before. It was excruciating.

By the time of the interval, my mind was in a blur of thinking both that it couldn't get any worse and that I was going to enjoy the rest of the gig any damn well way I pleased. So when George Benson finally came on and everyone around me stood up to dance, I didn't. Because I don't dance. Ever. It's just not something I do. And by now I was so fed up with the whole evening that I had no inclination to even stand up, and given that I was marooned on the front row I had no need. I could still see the stage fine by remaining seated, even though it did cross my mind that the way things had gone George Benson might stop the show and ask me what the hell I was doing. I felt a bit guilty that some of Benson's fans were probably having their evening mildly spoiled by my presence, seeing me (and, bless her, the girl alongside me who was stoically supporting me) sat there unmoved. I imagined that many of them would have loved to be, as I was, about ten feet from their hero. But they could take it up with Patti Austin's bass player - it was he who had put me in this mood. One of them, though, clearly wasn't willing to go down that route. Because halfway through a particularly upbeat number, she started poking me in the back. At first I thought someone had inadvertently bumped into me, but it happened over and over again - I could feel her reaching across from a couple of seats down in the row behind. I am so English, so reserved, and was so young - 24 at the time - that I just let her do it. I had a choice between making a scene, walking out (which would have felt like a defeat) or putting up with it. Nowadays I'd turn around and give her a piece of my mind, but back then I just sank lower in my seat, and waited for the torment to be over.

Eventually she gave up, and at some interminable point later the whole wretched concert came to an end. But to this day, even the mention of the name George Benson brings me out in goosebumps.

I had a strange, unsettling encounter yesterday. I took the afternoon off and went down Cowley Road. For those of you not familiar with Oxford, Cowley Road is one of the main thoroughfares into the city and is our most multi-cultural street. I love it - I love its ethnic diversity, and I love the fact that it still has an identity, with lots of different independent shops. I don't want to buy anything from most of them, but it's so much better than the town centre, where if you don't want a cup of coffee or a mobile phone there isn't much for you. Anyway, I was approaching a zebra crossing and I could see this bloke walking towards it, but I worked out that if I sped up I could get across without inconveniencing him, and that's what I did. I was probably leaving the crossing just as he was stepping onto it. He certainly didn't have to pull back, or even change his pace. In retrospect I think he'd been striding purposefully towards it, like some pedestrians do, as if he should just be able to walk straight out like it was an extension of the pavement. But no matter, the point is I really didn't cause him any inconvenience. Nevertheless as he crossed behind me he shouted out "Prick". It annoyed me - I'd seen him, I'd judged it accordingly, there was no issue. So I called over to him, did he have a problem. He started shouting back at me, so I got off my bike and went over to the pavement where he now was. He started hurling abuse at me, and I started barking back that he hadn't even been on the crossing when I went over it. He was being pretty aggressive, swearing a lot, and I wasn't swearing but talking loudly, and it became apparent fairly quickly that it was going nowhere, so I got on my bike and left. He called something after me - something including the abuse "four-eyed", which seemed anachronistic and comical in that environment - and I made a gesture and rode off.

As I cycled further down the road, I started to get annoyed with myself. I knew it would prey on my mind for the rest of the afternoon, spoil what had been a really pleasant afternoon up to that point. I don't like losing it, I always feel like I've let myself down. And - being a bit hippy about it - I don't like being responsible for a bit more negativity and ill-feeling in the world. Plus, being a do-gooder left-wing liberal, it bothered me that he might think my having a go at him was motivated by race - he was an Asian guy, probably about 30, wearing a sort of lace hat which I guessed was indicative of some faith or other. So I thought I would go back down the other side of the road, see if I could see him, and say sorry for losing my temper. I didn't feel like I'd been at fault in any real way - not on the crossing, not really by reacting to being called a prick and defending myself - but I was genuinely sorry that I'd lost my temper. I figured that one of two things would happen - most likely he'd say something like "You're still a prick" and ignore me, or less likely he might make some grudging comment that met me halfway. I didn't care which, what mattered to me was that I got it out of my system. So I cycled back up, and did indeed see him. I beckoned him over and started to say "Look, back then (gesturing up the road to where it had happened), I'm sorry I - " and that was about as far as I got before he started yelling abuse at me. Really aggressive, threatening stuff. I was really taken aback, but thought that he could only have assumed that I'd come back for more as it were. He was moving towards me now, and thinking that he just couldn't have registered what I'd said, I repeated "No, I'm trying to say sorry - " at which point, still ranting, he pushed me hard in the chest. I was standing astride my bike, and it wasn't a 'squaring up' sort of push, it was an attempt to shove me off my bike into the road. Realising that this guy was not to be reasoned with and it was time to get out of there I made to cycle away, and at the same time a passer-by intervened and tried to hold him back, but not before he managed to punch me hard on the side of the head.

It was a genuinely shocking moment. I can't remember the last time I got hit in anger. I'm not sure it's ever happened in my adult life. To be hackneyed for a moment, it had all happened so fast - the entire incident from the crossing to the punch must have been five minutes tops - and it was really disconcerting that such a level of rage could appear from nowhere.

I cycled a few yards up the road, then stopped to get myself together. He'd hit me on the ear and it had dislodged my glasses, and I was worried that he'd bent them. As I took them off to check, four Asian lads passed me who had clearly seen the whole thing. They were young guys, maybe 20, and with the best will in the world I might, under normal circumstances, have found them a bit intimidating even had I not just had that happen to me. But here's the thing - they were all concerned, and asked how I was. I briefly explained to them what had happened, just so they knew I hadn't somehow deserved the part they'd seen. "He's got a screw loose," one of them said, which at the time I took to have been a comment on what they'd seen, but now I wonder whether the guy is known round there as a loose cannon. And here's the weird, sweet, funny, sad, I don't know what part of the whole episode. One of them said "We apologise on his behalf". I didn't know what to make of that. Did they, as I suspect, think that I would take the incident as a reason to go off and work up a grudge against the Asian community of East Oxford? (They weren't to know that I am less inclined to extrapolate an opinion of a society from the acts of an individual than anyone I know.) Did they just feel some collective sense of responsibility for their neighbourhood? I don't know, but it was a truly touching moment at the end of a weird, unnerving incident. They had no need and no reason to apologise for the thug who had hit me, but I think it was beautiful that they did. Within the space of a couple of minutes I'd been reminded that the world is full of yobbish scumbags, and then before that could take root that it is also full of decent, compassionate people.

"I like to party" sang Oliver Cheatham in his relentlessly played illiterate hit Make Luv a few years back, which I still hear with aggravating frequency. "I like to party" he began, "everybody does". And that's what always bothered me about it. Because I don't like to party. I don't like large congregations of people, I don't like alcohol, I don't like music being played merely as a background to inane blether, I don't like music being played so loud that it's impossible to maintain a conversation without screaming, in fact the only way I like the combination of music and people is when all of them are sitting down listening to it, and that's not a party, it's a concert. So by any conventional interpretation of the word party, I don't like to. That doesn't stop Oliver Cheatham blithely including me in his all-encompassing assessment of the entirety of mankind though. It's one of the great disconnects of modern society, people's inability to appreciate that their own experience can not serve as a template for all of humanity. If everybody were able to empathise more then we would find the increased level of understanding between different groups of people leading to more peace and tranquility around the world. But that's not what Oliver Cheatham wants. Oh no, for Oliver Cheatham everybody had damn well better like to party or else. He's essentially a funky fundamentalist, determined to impose his worldview on those of us who happen not to share it.

Apart from which, if everybody likes to party, why is he telling us anyway? What kind of insight is that with which to open a song? He might as well be singing "I breathe in oxygen, everybody does". In fact the song would be greatly enhanced if when he sang "I like to party" a massed crowd of backing vocalists responded with "Well DUH, Oliver". Because everybody does.

I was reading an article recently about the popularity of certain names, which in turn took me to the website of the Office for National Statistics. It intrigues me how some names drift into and out of usage. When I was at school, you'd no more have found a kid in my class called Jack than you would Percy or Reginald, and yet now it's been the most popular name for boys for a decade or more. Then again the boys' list makes for odd reading throughout. I have a son called Gabriel, which has crept up from 100 in 2004 to 92 in 2007. That still makes it less popular than Taylor, Hayden, Ashton, Bailey and Harley (the top London advertising agency) which come in at 88, 81, 76, 70 and 69 respectively. Bailey? Who calls a baby Bailey? Is there some celebrity of whom I'm unaware called that? My own name, on the other hand, which was third in popularity in 1964 (the nearest statistic I could find, four years before I was born but close enough to get a general idea) has recently drifted out from 74 in 2003 to 99 now. I like that - it increases the odds that my kids might pick it as an unusual middle name for their children. But what kind of world are we living in when names like Michael and Charles are less popular than Jayden (32)? Jayden?! What kind of stupid, made up, ludicrous name is that? (If you're reading this and your name is Jayden - and there are a lot of you, albeit probably all under five - please feel free to answer that.)

Part of the reason Gabriel may be sluggish is that, inexplicably, people struggle with it. You'd be amazed how many people - and I'm not talking a handful here but lots of people - can neither pronounce it nor spell it properly. He gets cards addressed to Gabrielle, from people who know him and know he is a boy, and it's pronounced like that all the time (football followers may have heard idiot commentators do the same with Gabriel Agbonlahor, who as an Englishman of Nigerian-Scottish descent I bet pronounces it the way I do). I just don't understand it. What's so hard about it? Nobody seems to struggle with Peter Gabriel! If only we'd gone with an old Biblical name.

My daughter, however, has a name which hasn't been in the top 100 in the last five years. It's a nice, normal name, one everybody knows, neither old-fashioned nor modern, and yet it seems nobody's using it. You'd imagine you'd have to call a child Sprocket or Fizzpop to not get into the top 100. It puts her below Lacey, Harriet, Skye, Maddison, Matilda, Georgia and Leah (which always looks to me like it should be pronounced to rhyme with yeah). Mind you, the name I wanted to call her - Rachel - has dropped out of the top 100 as well. There are now more Lexies and Shannons than Rachels coming into the world. It's enough to make you read the Daily Mail.

[Don't worry, nothing is enough to make me read the Daily Mail.]

I cycled past one of those atheist buses the other day. I expect you know the ones I mean - they've got an advert on the side which says "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".

I'm rather bemused by this wording. Maybe it's just me, but it has an air of smugness about it. Little annoys me more than smug Christians, but smug atheists can count themselves amongst that elite. The great failing of so many atheists is their sense that they have come to their belief system as a result of superior intellect - the irony being that even the most cursory application of that intellect will reveal that mental acuity has little bearing on religious conviction. For every George W. Bush there is a Nelson Mandela. I don't know what inspires religious conviction in people, but I know for sure that it isn't a lack of intellectual rigour.

I think what bothers me most about the atheist bus slogan is the implication that Christians spend their time worrying. That while atheists are happy-go-lucky souls who skip through life knowing that it is brief and must be relished while it lasts, Christians are constantly looking over their shoulder and fretting that what they do now will impact on their future spiritual fate. Needless to say, this is far from the truth. If anything, it's my experience that those without faith find life more burdensome than their pious brethren. Unlike many resolute agnostics, I suspect, I have the advantage here of living with a Christian, whose social life gives me a window onto that (to me) mystifying world. Last summer I went to a wedding at which I would hazard a guess 98% of the guests were committed Christians. Weddings are generally fun occasions, of course, but I've never been amongst people who showed such genuine and heartfelt warmth for each other. There was an overwhelming spirit of joy in the room, unqualified, unbidden and utterly devoid of cynicism (apart from inside my head, where it naturally stayed). And that is typical of the approach that I witness from Christians. You could hardly meet a group of people less inclined to worry. That is not to say they are facile or shallow, they simply brim over with the richness and value of life, wringing every last drop of worth out of it. I think they're all a bit nuts, but it's hard not to envy their ebullience.

I should add that I have no problem with the atheist campaign in principle, not at all. As I've stated elsewhere here, I practise within my own household a policy of mutual religious tolerance. I just think they could have chosen their slogan more judiciously.

I'm not really one for New Year's Resolutions, but I figure one entry a week here won't kill me, so that's my aim. And here's the first one.

I am, broadly speaking, enthusiastic about television. At its best it enriches and stimulates, and it affords an opportunity to see comedy and sport which would otherwise be both practically and fiscally beyond me. Of course most of it, the vast majority in fact, is worthless. Most of the Freeview channels are a complete waste of time for all but the dimmest amongst us. But it is not those channels that incur my most passionate loathing. No, that honour belongs to one of the elder statesmen of British broadcasting.

ITV.

I loathe ITV. I hate it even more than Channel 4, and that's saying something. I loathe ITV not because of the endless brainless pap it pours forth, not because of Jeremy Kyle, This Morning, Loose Women, an evening schedule which is a relentless barrage of moronic soap operas. No, I loathe it because I have to pay for it.

Every time another Daily Mail article spews forth its agenda-laden bile about the BBC and the licence fee, I despair of the fallacy trotted out by advocates of ITV that it is "free to air". No it isn't. ITV is paid for by advertising, and advertisers pay for adverts from their profits, and they make their profits from me. I suppose it is feasible to shop without going to a supermarket, and get my energy from the sun, and in a thousand other ways avoid using products and companies which fund ITV. But in the first place it would be a logistical nightmare, and in the second place, in an age of globalisation, when gargantuan multinationals have a thousand fingers in pies you never would have imagined interested them, a complete nightmare to research. No, the sad reality of it is that I pay for ITV whether I like it or not, and unlike the BBC whose services I use every day - even disregarding television I make numerous visits to the sport section of their website, and download six of their podcasts (if you haven't tried Adam & Joe, you're missing out) - I go weeks on end without watching anything on ITV. Other than Harry Hill and 'Dexter', both of which have stumbled onto Britain's most conservative broadcaster from the more inventive and adventurous channels which spawned them, it's just the Champions League. Apart, that is, from the ten minutes or so every morning which make me want to put my head through a window.

Mine is the last generation, I suspect, to remember a time when at certain hours of the day there was literally nothing on television. In the morning you might get a bit of Open University, but that was it. There would be nothing on all day. Apart from weekends, everything stopped at about midnight. On BBC1 you even got the national anthem (about which I will moan another time). I can remember the birth of breakfast TV and thinking, even as a 14 year old, "this is the thin end of the wedge". What a prescient teenager I was. Anyway, television at breakfast time has always felt vaguely wrong to me, and it hasn't felt any less wrong as over the last couple of years my wife has insisted on inflicting upon me the witless banality that is GMTV. Is there a more dispiriting way to start the day than being reminded of how thick people are? I think not. The High Priestess of Moron TV, the woman who simply by appearing on my screen could make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in hypertensile anxiety, was Fiona Phillips. And there is the happy ending to this entry - the use of the past tense. Because Fiona Phillips, a woman with the journalistic prowess and intellectual rigour of a cantaloupe, has gone. She has left GMTV. Everybody breathe a sigh of relief and move on with a smile on their face.

A little while ago I mentioned the occasional e-mails I get from the FHM Panel asking me about various aspects of modern life. Generally these involve facets of recreational society - downloading rock music, going to clubs, mobile phones - about which I have little or nothing to offer. Yesterday afternoon they outdid themselves. They asked me all about cars.

Question 1 asked whether I drive and own a car. I said no. Question 2 asked whether I planned to buy a car in the next 12 months. I said no. At this point you might imagine that any survey worth bothering with would decide I wasn't the man for the job, and give up the ghost. But no, it wanted me to rank the following cars - Peugeot, Porsche, Skoda, Smart, Suzuki, Vauxhall, Volkswagen, Audi, Citroen, Hyundai, Jaguar, Kia, Lexus, Mazda - according to their reliability, environmental friendliness and image. Given that I couldn't distinguish a Hyundai from a bucket of frogs, this may be the least well-informed survey ever compiled in the history of man. Having ranked them, giving a whole new benchmark to the term arbitrary, I was then asked "Using a 5 point scale where 1 means Awful and 5 means Brilliant, please rate the following car brands in terms of your overall opinion. Again, it doesn’t matter how much you know about these brands, it’s simply your impressions we are interested in." Well, if it doesn't matter how much I know about them - which in every case is an identical amount, "they're cars" - then my impressions are as valid as anybody's. A flurry of random clicking and it appeared that I found Porsches and Jaguars to be Awful, while Audis were Brilliant.

Then it started asking me about car adverts I've seen. Now, anyone who watches commercial television ever at any point has seen car adverts. But just like the beer adverts, I register quite quickly that they're not aimed at me so I don't really focus on them. I know that the car in front is a Toyota, although I think that hasn't been on for a while. There used to be some adverts on with Papa and Nicole, for some French car presumably, but I couldn't tell you which one. In fact the only bit of current car advertising I could definitely name is the Mini which sits on the roof of the office block adjacent to the Cowley BMW plant, and that's only because I cycle past it every day. I doubt whether most ad agencies would consider placing a car upon flat-roofed office blocks as a judicious long-term strategy.

"Brands often sponsor events, programmes, venues, teams, etc. (For example, Arsenal football club is sponsored by Emirates; the X Factor is sponsored by Carphone Warehouse etc.)", it said. "Thinking about sponsorship for car brands you may have seen in the past few months, please indicate the specific brands for which you recall sponsorship, and what was being sponsored". Blimey. Surely some football team must be sponsored by a car, but I can't think of one. Or some TV programme, something, somewhere... I really hadn't realised quite to what extent I ignore all this drivel. I'm mildly pleased with myself for my imperviousness to advertising which could have no possible impact on me even if I were conscious of it.

All this, supposedly, will get me entry into a draw to win one of five £100 Amazon vouchers. Something tells me that my name might fall prey to an "inadvertent" slipped finger on a delete key.