Now that no panty liner company can afford to display its wares in the commercial breaks, the government and various other bodies have stepped in to fill the void with a range of exciting new public information films.

Quite how they arrive at the selected topics, I have absolutely no idea but in recent months we’ve been told not to sneeze in lifts, to look more carefully for motorbikists and, weirdly, how to determine whether someone is having a stroke. Why a stroke? Why not bird flu or a heart attack or syphilis? And why can’t I sneeze in a lift? If that’s where I am when the need arises, what am I supposed to do? Keep my mouth closed and pinch my nose? That’d blow my eyes out.

Oh, and if motorcyclists want people to spot them at junctions, here’s an idea. Buy a car.

Of course, there is nothing new in any of this hectoring. In my youth I remember being told by Harold Wilson not to put a rug on a shiny floor, and by Rolf Harris to learn to swim. But the sheer volume of finger-wagging today is incredible.

We are constantly being told not to smoke, not to eat too much salt, not to drink and drive, not to ignore our tax returns, not to play with fireworks, not to stay in third gear and not to spend all day watching television when we could be up in our loft with a mile of lagging.

Then, this morning, while reading the handbook for the new Fiat Qubo, I discovered that behind the scenes, things are even worse.

It’s like any normal handbook for a car. Written for tribes in the Amazon, and Martians, there is advice on how to start the engine and what the speedometer does, but buried away in the middle of a fascinating passage on how to use the seats, I discovered a little nugget that said the car is equipped with a “European On Board Diagnosis” system.

It sounds harmless. A little light comes on to tell owners when an emission-related component is wearing out. But then it goes on to say, casually, that a log of the engine operation is kept ... and can be “accessed by traffic police”.

I’m probably worrying unnecessarily but does this mean Dixon of Dock Green can now hook a laptop up to your engine management system and see how fast you have been travelling?

If it does, the good news is that if you have a Fiat Qubo, Jim Bergerac can dig about in the wiring as much as he likes, because he’s going to find that since you bought the car you have never broken the speed limit once. This is because it’d be like trying to break the speed limit while riding a cow.

The Qubo is a van. Oh, they’ve tried to liven it up with fancy green paint and triangular windows and they plainly got a room full of men in polo-necked jumpers to think up the name. But it is still a van.

I have no problem with this. The Citroën Berlingo is a van and as a family car it works rather well.

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