Originally Posted by Jeremy Clarkson

To begin with I was mildly irritated, mostly by my children in the back who wondered out loud and quite often if we were going to miss the plane. “Miss the plane?” I sneered. “At this rate we’ll probably miss the end of the world.”

But after 15 minutes the irritation had become rage. “Why,” I shouted, “doesn’t he just commit suicide.”

After half an hour I was incandescent. If I’d had a knife and fork I’d have forced his car to the side of the road and eaten him.

Finally we reached the motorway, and as I tore past I noted he was a hundred and forty twelve, a walnut-faced osteoporotic and grey shadow of his former self. I should have felt remorse that I’d harboured such unkind thoughts about a man who’d served his country in the Crimea and in the Spanish war of succession, and probably at Hastings too. But instead I gave serious consideration to ramming his Peugeot into a bridge parapet.