Can I just clear something up for you this morning. When the tabloid
newspapers say that Digby Jones from the CBI arrived in a “chauffeur-driven
limousine” they don’t mean he arrived in a stretched Hummer with pink
lighting and an interior full of hen-night vomit. What they mean is a large
grey saloon car, with a man in a suit at the wheel.
Of course, by referring to it as a limo the inference is that he’s squandering
cash on a ludicrous accessory. But nothing, in fact, could be further from
the truth.
Generally speaking I dislike using a chauffeur-driven car for social
engagements because I get guilty if I’m not out of the party at the
appointed hour. Time and again I’ve left a really good thrash simply because
I don’t want to keep the poor chap waiting. Also, being intrinsically mean,
I don’t want to be presented with a whopping and unexpected overtime bill.
However, last Thursday I needed to get round all of London’s radio stations to
promote my latest book/video/TV show/live event and there’s no way I could
have stuck to the vicious timetable if I’d used my own car. When you’ve got
20 minutes to get from Heart FM to Capital, and then 15 to reach Radio 2,
you really don’t have the time to find parking spaces. So I used a
“chauffeur-driven limousine”, which was in fact a Range Rover.
And I wasn’t alone. As I was ushered in to every radio station, I met Barbara
Windsor/Ronnie O’Sullivan/Jordan coming out as they too toured London
promoting their latest book/video/breast enhancement.
At this time of year I’d say that 20% of London’s traffic is made up of
authors and sports stars rushing from unheard-of radio stations on the far
end of the dial to daytime TV studios, plugging their own magnificence.
Then you have Digby Jones in his chauffeur-driven limousine, and all the MPs,
and all the tabloid editors for that matter. There are more, too. Everyone
in every commercial, every ad man, every TV executive and everyone at every
film premiere uses a large grey saloon car of some sort to move around
London. It means they don’t have to worry about the meters running out, or
standing around in the rain looking for a taxi. It makes sound financial
sense.
Although it can kill you, because you never know, until your doorbell rings,
what sort of driver you’re going to get. Some provide you with the morning
papers, never say a word and drive gently. Some yabber away. Some let you
smoke. Some, however, are psychopaths who in their spare time like to murder
people with axes. You can see them glancing at you in the rear-view mirror
and you know they’re thinking, “Hmm. I wonder what his ears would taste
like”.
Even more annoyingly, half of them have absolutely no idea where they’re
going. One I used the other day tried to drive through Leicester Square,
even though it’s been closed to traffic since the Sixties. Then you get the
guys with a smattering of Zs and Ys in their name who aren’t even sure what
red lights mean, or how roundabouts work. And you can’t explain, partly
because they only speak what sounds like Ewok and partly because they’re
listening to a radio station so obscure, even I haven’t been invited to
appear on it.
What’s worse than all this, though, is that your axe-murdering Uzbek with the
roadcraft of a small deer plainly has no idea what’s meant by an “executive”
car.
If I’d wanted a Toyota I’d have saved myself £100 and rung the local minicab
firm. What I want when I order a “chauffeur-driven limousine” is something a
bit further up the ladder than a Camry. Yes, I know that back in central
Asia such a thing is up there with a gold-plated Kalashnikov, but here,
without wishing to be snobbish, it’s crap. And why are you going up Coventry
Street, for God’s sake. And can you please turn that bloody bouzouki off.
To get to the Parkinson show the other day, where I was to promote my
new book/video/live event, I was picked up in a long-wheelbase 6 litre
12-cylinder Audi A8, which had very many buttons in the back to fiddle with
and was great. The VW Phaeton has a similar appeal, but the best car of them
all has always been a silver S-class Mercedes-Benz. It’s spacious, quietly
refined, comfortable and it’s easy to get out of without showing the waiting
paparazzi your underpants.
One car guaranteed to give the waiting cameraman a glimpse of your smalls was
the old Jaguar XJ. It was so cramped in the back that getting in and out
with any dignity whatsoever was just about impossible. This, I think, is one
of the reasons why never, in 15 years of life in television and the media,
have I ever been picked up in one.
There are other reasons too, of course. Like the driver needs a car that
works, perfectly and always, and the old XJ had a reputation for working
either badly or never. It wasn’t actually true. In recent years the big Jag
has been as reliable as an Austrian train driver’s Swiss watch but people
never knew; they thought “Jag” and they had a vision of the strike-torn
Seventies, blue smoke and electrics by Lucas, the Prince of Darkness.
Now, though, everything has changed. Last year the old Jag was voted the most
satisfying car money can buy by Top Gear viewers and now, in the latest
survey, the new one has romped home in second place, above every Lexus,
Mercedes and BMW. For reliability and customer care, Jag is only beaten by
Honda and that’s like coming second in a competition to find Britain’s
biggest queen, behind the Queen.
What’s more, the new Jaguar is a lot bigger in the back and now, to make
things better still, there’s a long-wheelbase version that is so commodious
you could host the party itself in one of the footwells. Actually it’s so
big you could probably even get Nicholas Soames in there.
Of course, there was a long-wheelbase version of the old Jag but this was a
terrible abomination, a styling hotchpotch that completely ruined the lines
of the original. The new stretched version looks, so far as I can see,
exactly the same as the normal one.
As far as value’s concerned, the standard V8 costs £60,000, which is as near
as makes no difference the same as Mercedes asks for a long-wheelbase S500.
However, you can have an all-singing, all-dancing supercharged one for just
£71,000 and that looks like the bargain of the century compared with the
equivalent Mercs.
On the comfort front, both ride on air suspension, which means neither is
quite as compliant as it would be if it had steel springs. But you need to
be concentrating to notice, and frankly if you’re in the back of a car like
this the chances are you’ll be too drunk to care.
The Jag does have two points that mark it down, though. First of all the XJ
has a ministerial air, which means that outside a glitzy film premiere it
looks like Jacques Chirac in a group photograph of world leaders. They’re
all in open-necked shirts and sports jackets. He’s in a navy-blue
double-breasted suit and highly polished brogues. What I’m saying is that it
looks a bit straight.
But worse than this is the seat upholstery, which in my test car was white
rouched leather. In Birmingham, where the car was designed, this may be
acceptable. Elsewhere it is not.
Overall, though, I think that gliding up to the door of Xfm in a stretch Jag
would give my latest book/video/live event a certain class that would be
missing if I used an S-class. So, drivers of London, it will be worth
remembering that when the time comes to change your car.
You don’t have to have the new Jag, but now there’s no reason at all why you
shouldn’t.
