Features

Because he's eight, James May likes to invent games he can play when he's not in the bath mending motorcycles or being made to practice the piano by his mother.

One of these games is called 'Airport Departure Lounge Dare'. It involves trailing through the shops, trying to make a friend or colleague buy stuff the poor gullible fool neither likes nor needs.

Apparently, Richard Hammond is a complete sucker and now has a house full of compass cuff links, digital cameras, currency converters, inflatable pillows, half a hundredweight of shortbread and God knows how many very expensive orange watches.

Me, though; I'm a lost cause. It doesn't matter how much James stands over my shoulder soothingly explaining that I look great - "very sexy" - in a pink Hermès tie, I will not buy it because I have a tie already.I also have some cuff links, some shortbread and a watch. And I do not need a currency converter because I have a head instead.

Hammond and May spend 86 per cent of their lives looking at old cars, and bits of old cars for sale on the internet, 10 per cent playing 'Airport Departure Lounge Dare' with one another and the remaining four per cent, saying "Right. I'll show you". And getting their cheque books out.

If you paid them in meat, they'd eat it, so because they're paid in money, they spend it. It's why Hammond has 10 cars including a rubbish old Land Rover and a nasty Vauxhall Firenza. And it's why May has 400 old motorbikes, all of which look like they ought to have a sidecar.

But I'm allergic to spending money. I don't mind blowing it on someone else - that's why I bought May a pair of pink aviators - but I cannot buy something if I have an example of it already.

It's why I have one tie, one hat, one coat, one pair of shoes and most importantly of all, one car. May sees this as a challenge. So, the other day, after he'd tidied his room and fed his pet cat, he started trying to talk me into a Gallardo Spyder.

"It's very you," he said. "Lambos are very now. And you can't very well spend your entire professional life extolling the virtues of the supercar if you don't have one."

I should have put my fingers in my ears and sung at the top of my voice. But I really do like the baby Lambo, so he was pushing against an open door. And as a result, I got into the car with him, and Hammond, and went to the nearest Lamborghini showroom.