Perhaps the epiphany came at the weekend, when I caught myself earnestly speculating on the identity of The Stig, and whether it was or hadn't once been Damon Hill under that white helmet. At which point I realised, with a despairing lurch of self-knowledge, that I was well and truly beaten.

Top Gear, the motoring show turned cultural phenomenon, really had taken over my life.

It is true that for some time now - I can date the moment to the birth of the Freeview channel Dave, with its nightly repeats of Top Gear - I've felt married to Jeremy Clarkson. I'm also in what you might call a fairly intimate relationship with the other two, Hammond and May. But Jeremy; I feel especially close to him. His voice greets me as I come home from work, and chunters away while I prepare supper. His likes, dislikes, vivid expressions and outrageous prejudices are as well known to me as those of the other man I call my husband.

I can tell when Jeremy is bored, when he's happy, when he's pretending, and when he's choosing his words very, very deliberately so as not to get into trouble with the BBC's thought police. I miss him when he's not there. And only very occasionally, after a really bad day, do I cry: “Please turn that bloody man off before I scream.”

Every mother with a son; or rather, every woman who shares a house with a male of any age who likes to watch Top Gear - and that's most of us - will know how I feel. A whole generation of strong, sensible, feminist-minded working mothers, who are not interested in cars, who are too busy to watch television and who under normal circumstances would regard Jeremy Clarkson as an unreconstructed twit, are hopelessly trapped in the web that the BBC Two show has woven. How has this happened? We've been brainwashed by a TV station called, of all things, Dave. We're as addicted to Top Gear as our menfolk, and it maddens us to admit it. Some of us - and this is genuinely embarrassing - even bought Richard Hammond's autobiography for our sons at Christmas, and then ended up reading it ourselves. And surprisingly moving in parts it was, too.

Lots of energy - and probably several academic theses - has already been dedicated to analysing Top Gear's success, much of it based on a sociological deconstruction of our love affair with the internal combustion engine. I actually don't think it's anything to do with that. Cars are an effective common denominator, but they are essentially a cypher.

Top Gear is simply about the survival of blokeishness in a feminised world. It's about prime-time gender revenge and anti-authoritarianism and male camaraderie It's about the inner schoolboy in every man; and a nostalgia for the kind of power that men aren't allowed any more. It's the story of the little guy, dominated by his wife, and told to slow down as he's driving the Astra to Asda, who watches Top Gear and whispers “Yes!” under his breath as the three comic musketeers proceed across the land, doing insanely silly things their mothers would never have let them do, and generally dissing girlieness, women's cars and political correctness.

Now captured by Dave - the name is a thesis in itself - Top Gear in its endless rerun form is now rather brilliantly defining the essence of mild, heroic, misogynistic, right-wing British blokeishness.

Note, too, that none of Top Gear's three presenters is female, or are ever likely to be so. Note the self-deprecating nature of the three; their endearing lack of pomposity, their ability to fall flat on their faces and laugh at themselves. This is classic arrested-development, blokey stuff; these are men whom every other man on the planet, with the possible exception of Martin Amis, would like to go to the pub with. And quite a lot of women would like to join them.

You will remember the episode - I think I've watched it 935 times - in which Richard Hammond, driving some ludicrously powerful supercar, certainly more Zonda than Honda, races an RAF Eurofighter. The car goes a mile along the runway and back again; the jet goes a mile up into the sky and comes down again. Hammond, characteristically, loses. But how many memories does that evoke in little boys who once played with their toys, the Dinky car in one hand, the Airfix fighter in the other, racing the two machines around their bedroom?

If you doubt the ability of Top Gear to cross over into real life, consider this. As I recounted in The Times on Saturday, there is now a flourishing business hiring out supercars - Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Aston Martins, not to mention Zonda, Koenigseggs and Spykers, to middling wealthy people who want to be like the boys on Top Gear for a weekend. In March, in a case of life imitating art, there is even a charity race along the runway at RAF Leuchars between fighters from 43 Squadron and the aforementioned cars. The real winner, methinks, will be the fragile male ego. And why not?

Also in Saturday's paper, funnily enough, was a telling article on romantic fiction, in which one of the senior editors from Mills & Boon defended her product. “Our millions of readers are not stupid. They are simply women who want to escape to somewhere lovely. Escapism is absolutely key,” she said.

Precisely! Harmless refuges for different genders! What romance is to women, so Top Gear is to men - a chance to escape to somewhere lovely and not be criticised. A place where reality is suspended, the torque is magnificent, the talk even better and the responsibility zero.

My secret fantasy is that one day the two genres should collide, and Jeremy Clarkson be filmed as the tall, sneering Regency hero in the tight pantalons, test-driving his four-in-hand racing curricle at high speed. I know, only 4bhp. Not a patch on a Bugatti Veyron. But think of the viewing figures, boys, think of the viewing figures.

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