Search Powered ByAsk.com
on
Features

Features

'Lamborghini is an upstart, and you have to demonstrate that you realise as much'
'Lamborghini is an upstart, and you have to demonstrate that you realise as much'
October 5, 2006

Features


James May dares, wins


Friends. What are they for if it isn't to try to humiliate them? Especially if the friend is JC, who's about to buy a Lambo

Regular readers will know that I'm a great fan of inventing new games with my colleague, TV's Richard Hammond. One of my favourites is called Airport Shopping Dare, and here's how to play. It's really very simple.

When you're at a departure terminal with a chum and a few hours to spare, you will, inevitably, abandon every tenet of real manhood and end up walking around the shops together.

Now you must spot something you think the other bloke could be persuaded to want and then, through subliminal psychological torture, force him to buy it. Nothing too elaborate, usually, just daft T-shirts, sunglasses, that sort of thing.

There really is no feeling more satisfying than being responsible for making a good mate look like total pillock at his own expense. And I'm pretty good at it.

My best result to date is cajoling Hammond into buying a pretty expensive wrist watch with the money he would be earning the following week from opening an orphanage or something. Soon after he got me back with a brown jacket that makes me look like a driving instructor.

But recently I had my best game of Airport Shopping Dare ever. It wasn't actually played in an airport, but a Lamborghini dealership, and this time was with my other colleague, TV's Jeremy Clarkson.

Now Clarkson has decided he rather likes the Gallardo Spyder. I rather like it too; the difference, though, is that he might consider chopping in his Ford GT for one. He certainly would, I decided, if had anything to do with it.


'There's no feeling more satisfying than being responsible for making a mate look like total pillock'

And that bit wasn't too difficult, because he clearly wanted one already. I could point out that his new book was selling very well (unlike mine) and that he had earned, both financially and morally, the right to a new Lambo. In fact, making him buy one was clearly a job for a Shopping Dare amateur.

So now the game took a new twist. Clearly, he didn't need persuading to buy the car, but he would need to be steered, gently and subtly, into buying in the right colour scheme. Orange, ideally, or that Seventies' bathroom-suite blue they're doing. Either of these would combine nicely with a neutral sort leather. Cream, perhaps, or maybe plain old black.

Jeremy, however, got it into his head that the car would look right in dark green, black, or something called black/green. This he would combine with an interior in orange perforated leather.

And I know what he's thinking of. He's thinking of those Paul smith brogues that are dark and accountanty on the outside, but lined in lime green - respectable and restrained at a casual glance, but revealing a sense of gay chromatic abandon to anyone who gets close enough to see inside.

Or maybe it's one of those dinner suits by Ted Baker completely uniform in normal use, but revealing a tantalisingly enigmatic purple lining when removed.

But we're talking about a Lambo here, and this isn't how it's going to come across, in my view. I think it's going to be redolent of a banker who wears a grey suit with a 'funny' Simpsons tie. Or an information technology professional who wears a grey suit and has a sign above his desk saying 'You don't have to be mad to work here...' and so on.


CLICK TO ENLARGE

Advertisment
Car Reviews

Car Reviews

Search road tests
Search now
Buyer's Guide
BUYING, RUNNING, SELLING

You need cash to buy a motor - our guide to finance will help




Buying a personalised plate? Check out our buyer's guide



Subscriptions
Subscribe to Top Gear, get a free TG Interactive Challenge DVD

Top Gear Interactive Challenge
Newsletter
Sign up to our newsletter and keep up to speed with Top Gear

Newsletter
Fast-track your motoring career with the help of Top Gear

Top Gear Careers
Get the Top Gear road test verdict on your next car - only £3

Road Test Reprints
The Top Gear word mark and logo are trade marks of the BBC and are used under licence
Subscribe