A man asked me last week what ringtone I’d selected for my new mobile phone. “Pah,” I scoffed indignantly. “The one it came with. Do I look like the sort of person who has either the time or the inclination to change the noise his phone makes?”

And then rather more hysterically: “Do I look like the sort of person who cares what people think when my mobile goes off? Do I? Do I?”

The man was a bit bemused by my ferocity but I was only just getting warmed up. “Look at my hair,” I thundered. “That’s styled by erosion and time. And have you not seen my clothes? If I haven’t changed those since 1978, what makes you think I’ve changed the ringtone on a phone I bought only yesterday?” Sadly, however, I was protesting too much. In fact I’m a compulsive fiddler, never really happy with anything for more than five minutes. Which means that secretly, and rather embarrassingly, I changed the ringtone on my old phone all the time. It was a 24 eeh eeh eehooh, and then it was the first few bars of Bryan Adams’s Summer of ’69, and now it’s a sort of soft and unobtrusive pinging noise. So soft and unobtrusive, in fact, that I only know when it’s ringing when the dogs start to bark.

There’s more. When there’s nothing on the television I rearrange the furniture in my sitting room. And since there’s never really anything on television my sofa has covered more miles than the average Boeing 747.

Sometimes I even move the sitting room to another place altogether. I’ve lived in this house for 10 years and so far it’s been in four different rooms. Tomorrow morning an architect is coming to talk about changing the shape of the kitchen and whether I can put a bog in the larder.

This fiddling is so bad that I send the children to their bedrooms at 9 o’clock every night. But it’s often gone 11 before they find them. Then there’s paint. I’ve put so many coats on the walls in the spare room that now it’s not even big enough to put up a veal for the night.

I bet you have a set route for your journey to work. I don’t. And, of course, the utter and absolute joy of this job is that I drive a different car every day. Often I’m relieved to climb out of a Lamborghini and into a Nissan Micra because in my world change is the adrenaline rush. Occasionally I even find myself looking at other people’s children . . .

And now it seems I have a kindred spirit high in the management at BMW, because they’ve changed the new Mini for absolutely no reason at all.

The last one was still hugely popular, and much loved by everyone except James May, who can’t see the appeal, because of his hair probably. So why did someone decide it needed a new engine and an interior rethink? Because he could, I suppose. I like that in a man.

And I especially like the interior lighting he’s fitted. Not long ago BMW fitted a pin-prick red bulb on the underside of the rear-view mirror that bathed the interior of the car with the soft red glow of a submarine at Defcon 3. It was without a doubt the greatest single advance in automotive technology since Cadillac introduced the starter motor.

Shortly afterwards Mercedes followed suit, but instead of a red light it went for yellow. And that was good, too. It made you feel all warm fuzzy as you drove home at night.

But the new Mini goes further because you can choose what colour light you’d like to bathe in. And better still there’s a slider knob that changes the hue on an infinite scale, from red through scarlet and then purple until it ends up vodka bar blue.

For me this is the greatest piece of in-car entertainment ever. It means I can spend 40 miles getting the colour exactly right. And then, after just five seconds, decide it’s wrong and start again.

You can also change the perspective of the satellite navigation map. You can change the dynamics of the car itself with the little sport button. And it’s very easy to station hop on the radio, which, unsurprisingly, I do a lot.

You’re even given a choice of speedometer to look at. One is small and digital. The other is circular and huge. Richard Porter, the man behind the Sniff Petrol website and the chap who writes the only jokes that ever actually work on Top Gear, claimed that he’d measured it . . . and it was bigger than his face. That would be true even if he were an elephant.

As you can tell, there is much I like about this new car. Like its predecessor, it pays homage to the original Mini, and has a genuinely classless feel as a result, but it’s loaded up with all sorts of gimmickry, too, which gives it a modern, funky feel.

The only thing I really didn’t like about the look of the Mini Cooper S I tried was the power bulge on the bonnet, which doesn’t actually do anything. Though I understand it will in future, suggesting that a more powerful engine is planned.

For now, the most powerful engine you can have is the 1.6 turbo — pretty much the same engine that’s fitted to Peugeot’s lacklustre 207. But in the Mini it’s great. Torquey when you can’t be bothered to change gear and zingy when you can. It’s surprisingly economical as well. The old Cooper S would do 32mpg. This manages 40.

The only drawback is that there’s so much power the front wheels get all squirmy when you push too hard out of a bend. It’s no big deal, but I wish it wasn’t there. It means you need two hands on the wheel and that’s hard when you’ve just decided purple's all wrong and Virgin is playing another two hours of back-to-back ads for stuff you don’t want.

I also grew rather tired of the traction control, which if it were human would be king of the Health and Safety Executive, a high visibility control freak whose job was to make sure you never tripped over anything. Mostly, I turned it off.

Then on again. I must also say while I’m being negative that the rear legroom is suitable only for amputees and the boot is not even big enough for a mouse’s pants. And some of the stuff on the new model is just downright irritating.

You have to put the key fob in a slot before you press the starter button, but the slot is behind the steering wheel where it cannot be seen. And even when you’re fully familiar with the whereabouts of all the controls they still cannot be found. Every single time I wanted to lower the window I ended up lowering the temperature by mistake. Although this did mean I could spend the next hour putting it up and down and then up again until it was just wrong.

The biggest drawback with this car, though, is the price. If you want a car of this type, a not very commodious small city car that’s fun to behold and zesty to drive, the Suzuki Swift Sport is yours for £11,499. The Mini Cooper S is a whopping £15,995. And if you go a bit mad with the options list you can easily be faced with a bill for more than £20,000. That’s way too much.

As a result, I’d probably buy the Suzuki. And then, after five minutes, wish I had the Mini instead.

Vital statistics

Model Mini Cooper S

Engine 1598cc, four cylinders

Power 175bhp @ 5500rpm

Torque 177 lb ft @ 1600rpm

Transmission Six-speed manual

Fuel 40.9mpg (combined cycle)

CO2 164g/km

Acceleration 0-62mph: 7.1sec

Top speed 140mph

Price £15,995

Rating 4/5

Verdict Classy, classless, but not cheap

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