Rating

Verdict Passengers will be fine, just worry about the poor drivers

The theory of a digital camera is jolly impressive. You take a snap and then download it into your computer. And once you’ve done that the world’s your oyster. You can e-mail it to a friend, alter the size of your wife’s breasts, print it out, blow it up, cut it down. There is no end to the possibilities.

And no beginning either, because the procedure is so fantastically complicated that only the terminally underemployed could possibly find enough time. First, there’s the camera itself, which takes the shot either 10 seconds after you press the button or just after the subject has died of old age, whichever is later.

Then there’s the spaghetti bolognese of wiring you need to make it talk to your computer. And e-mail? Have you ever tried to download a photograph? It takes hours, and then when it’s finally installed, you can’t look at it unless you know the difference between a Jpeg and a PDF.

I transferred one picture from my digital camera to my laptop and the very next day bought myself a brand new Nikon F80 SLR and went back to film, which comes with better quality and the inherent thrill of getting that bundle back from Boots.

As a result of this technophobic episode, I must say that I’ve taken all this downloading music malarkey with a pinch of salt. I went shooting with a bunch of record company bosses not so long ago and only one was smiling, because he’d just bought a gospel label on the basis that Christians would be too honest to download the tunes for nothing.

The rest looked like they’d just read the Daily Mail.

“We’re finished,” they wailed. “Doomed. Our houses will be repossessed and our wives will explode.”

I tried over lunch to console them by saying I would never download a song, because it’s cheaper, quicker and more convenient to drive - to Leeds even - and buy it from HMV. But it was hopeless. And so, I’m afraid, is their industry, because in a moment of man madness the other day I bought something called an MP3 player. It’s the size and shape of a Walkman but has no moving parts, just a hard disk and a digital read-out.

Then, that night, I signed up to one of the internet’s music sites. I see from my credit card bills that it is costing me one dollar per month, which, if you do the maths, is the same as nothing.

For this I get access to just about every song ever recorded. I even managed to find tunes from the soundtrack of Manhunter that I’ve never come across in any record shop and at last I now own a copy of Flash and the Pan’s extraordinary Walking in the Rain.

So, I choose what songs I’d like to record and they’re transferred over the course of an evening to the MP3, which has enough space in its memory for 170 hours of music. That’s a week of solid, wall-to-wall listening pleasure. And my MP3 was only £150. I met someone the other day who had enough space on his more expensive iPod for the equivalent of 520 CDs. And his fitted into a slot on his car’s dash and broadcast those tracks over the airwaves. All he had to do was tune his car radio to 88.1.

That’s pretty cool, but not as cool as what I did this morning. I hooked my MP3 up to a CD burner, pressed record and sat back as a stream of free music was etched for all time, and with perfect digital quality, onto a disc. Any songs I want, in any order, with only one wire and one button to worry about. The whole process made opening a tin look complicated and breathing look expensive.

Eventually, the MP3 will kill the record industry, and then nobody will get a recording contract. But don’t think this will spell the end for music. It’s just that people in bands will have to write songs for love rather than money. You won’t find the future Stings and Nick Masons behind electric gates in Wiltshire. They’ll be behind the tills in Safeway.

And now it’s time to get motoring with the news that there are equally large changes in the offing for London’s taxi drivers. Apparently there are moves afoot to let licensed cabbies tout for business in converted people carriers and vans rather than the carefully governed, disabled-friendly traditional black cab. Needless to say the people who make the traditional taxi are not best pleased. They’ve sent me a huge document explaining why it’s vital that a taxi has a turning circle of 25ft.

And they may have a point. If cabbies had to do a three-point turn every time they needed to go the other way, all the good work done by Uncle Ken’s congestion charge would be undone in an instant.

Unfortunately, the makers of the taxi don’t stop there. They go on to say that a £22,000 Renault Espace is somehow more expensive than a £27,550 LTI TXII cab and that the sliding doors on many people carriers are liable to open of their own accord, hurling rear-seat occupants into the path of an oncoming 18-wheel truck.

The message is simple. If cabbies are allowed to start using whatever takes their fancy, millions will be mangled in a juggernaut dance of death, whereas in the past 15 years - and this is true - only five people have died in the back of a black cab, four of boredom and one because he set himself on fire.

Then there’s the question of tradition. It’s pointed out that losing the black cab from the streets of London would be like replacing the bobby on the beat with half a dozen thugs in a Sherpa van and the truncheon with a Heckler & Koch sub-machinegun. It’d never happen. Even though it has.

For me the most important part of a taxi’s appeal is the man behind the wheel. Unlike anywhere else in the world he didn’t arrive in the driver’s seat that morning having spent the night crossing eastern Europe in the back of a truck. He also knows where he’s going and, as a little icing on the cake, he has been vetted to make sure he’s not a criminal.

Oh I know cabbies are the butt of everyone’s jokes and I know some of them do go on a bit about foreigners and Tony Blair and how they could have had a million pounds but chose instead to be a taxi driver. And I know they won’t take you south of the river after 10 and that they’re permanently tuned to Radio Nazi, but would you really want to swap them for a surly Swiss or a foul-mouthed New Yorker or one of those maniacs they use in Milan? Really?

Frankly, you could put a London cabbie in a three-wheeler and it’d still be a welcome sight on a cold, foggy, wet night in November. It’s the man that counts. Not his wheels. And my respect for what they do was eased up a notch when I spent a couple of days driving a new Ford-powered TXII.

Holy mother of Mary and sweet Jesus. If you thought cabs were uncomfortable in the back you should try the front.

The car I was lent had soft blue leather seating with yellow piping, full Wilton carpets and a wood-look dashboard. It was just like a taxi driver’s lounge in fact, except that the ashtray was plastic rather than onyx. But there was one thing missing. Space.

A taxi driver will spend upwards of 2,500 hours a year in his cab, and I’m sorry but if you had to work in such cramped conditions you’d think very carefully about murdering your boss.

I had to perform the most ungainly manoeuvre to get my left leg between the seat and the steering wheel and then there was nowhere to put it, no space at all between the brake pedal and the centre console. I now know what it feels like to be a piece of hermetically sealed cheese.

Then there are the noises. The central locking clanks into place every time you take your foot off the brake, which in London is every six seconds, and if you’ve ever wondered why taxis don’t indicate I now have the answer. Inside, when you turn the indicators on, the car beeps, a soaring descant to the angry bass growl of the engine. It’s a modern 2.4 litre Duratorq unit and yet if the very first example of internal combustion had sounded like this Karl Benz would have given up.

I’ve tried hard to think of a way to sum up the driving experience, and this is the best I can come up with. Imagine being tied in a sack and pushed into the most vicious boulder-strewn rapids on the Colorado River while listening to rap music at full volume through a set of headphones that were wired into the mains.

It’s incredible that cabbies can do this and still remember where Roland Gardens is and how best it can be approached from the arse end of Hackney.

And we haven’t got to the steering yet. I had always assumed that taxis weaved when on the motorway because this increases the distance travelled and therefore the fare. But no, they weave because every time you try to get some blood into your leg and prevent the onset of gangrene, the steering wheel moves a bit and, wehay, suddenly you’re on your way to Gatwick rather than Heathrow.

If I were to make a list of the most uncomfortable and bolshie cars I’ve ever tried, the cab would slot neatly into second place behind the notoriously small and difficult Lamborghini Countach. If I were a cab driver I promise you this: I’d go to work on the Tube.

The idea of using people carriers and vans later came to nothing as the Public Carriage Office decided to retain strict conditions on vehicle suitability, which only the black cab met

Price when tested (April 2003) £27,550

Model discontinued

Engine 2402cc, four cylinders

Power 90bhp @ 4000rpm

Torque 148 lb ft @ 1700rpm

Transmission Four-speed automatic

Fuel/CO2 36.2mpg (combined) / 243g/km

Top speed 83mph

0-60mph: n/a