Don't Stop Me Now
TVR T350C
Whenever an actor is asked to slip into a toga he sees it as an excuse to go all swivel-eyed and bonkers. When it comes to the Romans, no speech defect is too preposterous, no gait too far-fetched.
We’ve had Derek Jacobi with his club foot and his stutter, and Malcolm McDowell helping himself to every bride, groom and farmyard animal in Rome. Oh, and let’s not forget the one with the funny mouth who stabbed Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
If you believed everything you’ve seen about Rome on the silver screen, you’d wonder how on earth they managed to find the lavatory in the morning. Let alone work out how such a thing might be flushed and how the effluent might be carried away in a sewerage system, the like of which wasn’t to be seen in the world again for another 1,800 years.
But it is an unwritten law that all empires, whether the Borg, the British, big business, or even the BBC, are bad. Fuelled by greed and policed with violence, they wreak havoc on the pipsqueaks, raping, pillaging and forcing them to eat genetically modified suppers while watching programmes like Britain’s Worst Toilet.
So I wasn’t expecting the Romans to be portrayed in a particularly rosy light in Boudica on ITV last Sunday.
And sure enough, in boinged Nero wearing lipstick. We didn’t actually see him gnawing on a panda’s ear and then using a slave’s severed head to wipe away the goo, but the hint was there all right.
Meanwhile, back in plucky old England, Boudica was busy delivering speeches about freedom and democracy. She was the Afghan farmer whose poppies have been devastated by Monsanto. She was Nelson Mandela, William Wallace, Che Guevara and Gandhi all rolled into a one-cal, bite-sized Sunday evening, Charlie Dimmock-style glamourpuss.
Unfortunately, in real life she was none of these things. She was, in a word, British, which is just a whisker away from Brutish. The Romans may have brought peace, along with their baths and their roads, but behind the cloak of civilisation and poetry we were still a nation who loved to get our swords dirty.
When the Romans left, we reverted to type. As Simon Schama says in A History of Britain: ‘War was not a sport; it was a system. Its plunder was the glue of loyalty binding noble warriors and their men to the king. It was the land, held in return for military service that fed their bellies, it was the honour that fed their pride and it was the jewels that pandered to their vanity. It was everything.’
In other words, the Brits love a good scrap. And it’s still going on today. While the rest of the world hangs its head in despair over Iraq, Tony Blair comes out from behind the health-food counter and shouts: ‘I’m proud of what we have done.’
Most countries, except perhaps France, will fight to protect their borders or their way of life. But Britain will fight to protect someone else’s borders and someone else’s way of life. Poland. Kuwait. Korea. Don’t worry, we’ll be there, fists flying.
What’s more, we’re the only nation that likes to fight in its spare time. You’ll see more brawls on a British high street in one night than you will in the whole of Italy in an entire year.
I went out the other night with a bloke who freely admitted that he likes nothing more than to finish off the night with a fight. While chaps elsewhere in the world hone their chat-up lines, hoping to go home with a girl, he has developed a range of provocations so that he can go home with a chair leg sticking out of his arm.
Think about it. If someone in Italy says, ‘Are you looking at me?’, you’re on for some rumpy-pumpy. If someone says it in England, you’re on for a ride in an ambulance. And have you ever heard a Frenchman say, ‘Est-ce que vous upsettez mon vin?’
We are supposed to be a pot-pourri of Saxon, Goth, Roman, Norman, Celt and Viking. But actually we’re just thugs and vandals. When the Romans went home, we pulled down their buildings, ripped up their roads and settled down for 400 years of bloodshed and mayhem known as the Dark Ages. Those were the days, eh?
And they’re still going on. In Birmingham recently I encountered a group of lads pushing one of our television cameras along the street.
‘Where are you going with that?’ I asked.
‘We’re going to push it into the canal,’ they replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
Beauty and love have no place in Britain. Which is why we are responsible for the most brutal and savage car of all: the TVR. An Alfa Romeo will try to woo you with poetry. A TVR will bend you over the Aga, rip off its kilt and give you one, right there and then.
A Volkswagen will make you a lovely shepherd’s pie and light a fire to make your evening warm and cosy. Whereas a TVR will come home and bend you over the Aga again. A TVR would nick the lifeboat charity box on the bar, empty it, then shove it up your jacksie. A TVR would fight for its life, its honour, its family and, most of all, its pint.
Put a TVR on Desert Island Discs and it would take a flamethrower and a selection of hits from Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. Then it would bend Sue Lawley over the mixing desk and make animal love until it broke wind.
You don’t get paint on a TVR; it’s woad. And instead of being made from steel or aluminium, it’s wattle and daub. It’s an Iron Age fort with a Bronze Age engine. It’s Boudica, only with less femininity and more rage in its heart.
And look at the names TVRs have had over the years: Griffith, Chimaera, Cerbera – all terrifying mythological creatures with goat heads and seven sets of teeth.
That’s why I’m unnerved by the latest version, the T350C. What kind of a name is that? It makes it sound like an electric toothbrush. And while a toothbrush has a revolving head and bristles, it’s not as scary as, say, a hammerhead shark. Could this mean, then, that the new car has lost some of its bite?
Two things back this up. First of all, it’s a coupé with a boot and a hatchback, and I’m sorry but I just don’t equate the concept of TVR motoring with all this stuff. It’s like trying to imagine a Saxon despot in a cardigan.
Then there’s the handling. Push any of the other TVRs into a corner too fast, and in an instant, with no warning, you’re in a world of smoke and hate. Getting your entry speed wrong in a TVR is as dangerous as spilling a Glaswegian’s pint. But the toothbrush just understeers, like a Golf or a Focus.
There’s other stuff, too. For all the racing heritage and volume of a straight-six engine, it simply doesn’t sound as terrifying as a V8. And this is the first TVR I’ve driven in ages with a substandard interior. In recent years we’ve become used to all sorts of swoops and oddities, but in this one it just doesn’t work. It feels daft for no reason.
And yet, by some considerable margin, this is the best TVR I’ve ever driven. With its integral roll cage it feels stiffer and more together, like all four corners are working in harmony, rather than in discord. And the brakes are just astonishing.
So’s the power. You may only get 3.6 litres and no forced induction, but you end up with a better power-to-weight ratio than you get from a Lamborghini Murciélago. That means it is seriously, properly, eye-poppingly fast.
And because it doesn’t try to bite your head off every time you make a mistake, you can use more of the power for more of the time.
Finally, there’s the question of money. To get this kind of performance, you have to be looking at a Porsche GT3 for £72,000, or a Murciélago for £163,000. Even the Noble I wrote about last week is over £52,000. But the TVR is just £38,500. Plus another two if you want lift-out roof panels.
So what we have here is a TVR with all the savagery of the olde worlde coupled with the practicality of a usable boot and a soft ride. It’s an ancient Briton with Roman overtones, and as a result Alan Rickman wouldn’t be able to play it properly in a film. He’d be too mad. Think more in terms of Alan Titchmarsh – a little bit raunchy, but actually a little bit not.
Sunday 5 October 2003
Don’t Stop Me Now