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It's doing my head in so much, I set off for the park without one crucial ingredient - my dog. I return and load Wally into the back and he doesn't think much of the seating arrangement - two, individual, full-size forward facing seats (thanks to those bores who do EU regulations) and so stands in the middle and leans from side to side like a downhill skier every time I corner. It handles like a boat, but feels reassuringly agricultural to drive.

When I brake rather unstylishly at some traffic lights, Wally nearly turns into a canine cannonball. It's then I realise what feels wrong - it smells funny. Or rather, it doesn't smell at all funny - that musty smell of dead animals, dank dogs and farmer's armpits is missing.

Tuesday
Have to work for most of the day, which sucks, with the Landie outside luring me to go and play. I keep wandering over to the window to look at it - it's got this amazing purity that makes other cars in the street look so pointlessly pretentious in comparison.

A car like the RAV4 seems tragic and wannabe next to it. One of my stable of men calls from the train and I volunteer to pick him up from King's Cross. It is rush hour and the traffic is awful - the Defender and heavy traffic is about as good a combination as a warm fish milkshake and a hangover.

The new six-speed box with its lower first gear ratio might be better for off-road control, but it's stupid here, and, boy, is that engine clattery. Thanks to the new fascia being based on a single, large moulding supported on a robust steel rail though, it doesn't squeak and rattle like a footballer's bedpost.

Forget going to the gym for a work-out, try nudging over the A40 flyover and having to execute mini-hillstarts every 10 seconds. You have to bend forwards and rootle around by your knee every time you engage the handbrake, and although the clutch load has been reduced, your left leg is still risking a cramp attack. This is proper manual labour.

I'm cross and exhausted by the time I get to King's Cross. It's a freakishly hot day and I am wearing a woollen dress. Young man collected, I head back onto the Euston Road, moaning about my sweaty armpits. "If you're so hot, why don't you take your dress off," he says. "No way. I can't, I'm not wearing anything underneath," I say. "I dare you," he says.

The nature of the Defender makes you feel ballsy and adventurous, so I take the dress off and drive along the Euston Road and all along the A40 starkers.

I decide the faster I go, the fewer people will see me so I get into the fast lane and pin it. With a weedy 122bhp and 265lb ft of torque, it packs about as much of a punch as a boy band in a bar brawl, and with a 0-62mph time of 15.8 seconds, nothing happens very quickly in a Defender. But it will cruise quite happily in sixth.

However, if you're not concentrating hard, it has a tendency to be a bit wayward, as I found out when my young man started videoing me on his mobile, and I was briefly more concerned with sucking in my stomach than watching where I was going.

And, as with older models, there is no space at all for your right arm - so it's easier with the window down and your arm resting nonchalantly on the window ledge. Or as nonchalant as it's possible to look, driving a Defender through central London stark naked.