Richard Hammond

Why Hammond’s got the hump

What follows isn't a well-balanced argument, nor is it an especially well-researched piece of objective journalism. It contains no statistics and no interviews with the people I am shortly to accuse of wanton vandalism. Some might say that in writing it here, I am abusing one of the many privileges extended to me in the course of my job. And they might be right. But I don't give a bugger because I am cross. Arse-clenchingly, teeth-shatteringly cross.

I sit here now, surveying the shattered remnants of my childhood dreams, and I could happily weep for the small child inside of me who is, as I write, standing with arms limp by his sides and a confused, hurt expression emblazoned on his face. Let me start right there, in my childhood. When I really was that 10-year-old boy - the one with the limp arms and the puzzled face - I was taken by my parents on our first holiday abroad.

We went to France, and there, among the many interesting things I saw - including a cake made of custard and a smashing 12-year-old girl in the next tent - I encountered a black Lamborghini Countach. I couldn't describe its shape, but one look at that collection of gleaming panels and glinting highlights and I knew I loved it more deeply even than the 12-year-old girl in the next tent. I swore to myself I would one day make that creature mine. The car, that is, not the girl. She turned out to be quite frosty.

Six years later, and the car was still buried deep in my imagination. But it was suddenly brought crashing back to me one Saturday as I worked in my local bookshop. It was the noise that did it. My head snapped up as I caught the mechanical, angry rasp of a big engine, barking its way along the high street. And then I saw, passing the window, a black Countach exactly the same as the one I had seen in France. My head bent back to my work, but my heart and soul flew through the window and after that angry black bull.

‘I have owned my Gallardo Spyder for a week. And some faceless bureaucrat in the council has already ruined it’

This apparition made no further appearances in my life. Charming though it would have been to be haunted by a ghostly black Lambo, my life turned out to be devoid of rare Italian exotica and, instead, grew cluttered with cheap Japanese motorcycles and failed attempts at becoming a radio star. Fast-forward another lengthy chunk of time, and I wrote the whole Lambo business off in a simple conversation with my father, during which I explained I had finally accepted I would never own a Lamborghini. And I considered myself mature beyond my 21 years for voicing this conviction and laying to rest this childish fixation.

And the reason for this brief autobiography? It is important to me that you appreciate the significance of the black Lambo sitting outside my house now. It's a Gallardo Spyder. Not a new one, but, hey, a black Lambo is a black Lambo, and this one is mine. From some angles, it could be the same collection of glinting panels and scything intersections that made up the black Countach I first saw in France 30 years ago. It is two years old, and I have owned it for a week. And some faceless bureaucrat in the council has already ruined it.

I drove it to the BBC today - to show it off to my friends - where the last few hundred yards to the office is littered with speed humps. The top of one of them is now decorated with a portion of the plastic undertray from beneath the beautifully pointed chin of my Lambo.

This is not the first time a piece of tarmac has shredded my wallet, dignity and happiness. I owned a Ferrari 308 GT4, and a speed hump bit a chunk out of its sump. I had to replace the rear shock absorber on a BMW R1150 GS, built to tackle the Paris-Dakar, after being told by the mechanic that it, too, had been ruined by speed humps. But these horrors are idle daydreams compared with the nightmare of hearing the bottom of my little Lambo grounding out on a speed hump.

It's taken me an hour to pluck up the courage to survey the damage. To be fair, it's just a scuff. And to be fairer still, the dealer told me that a replacement undertray is a few hundred quid, rather than the tens of millions I first thought it would be. But it is the principle of it that has turned my blood to green acid.

The speed hump in question lies across a stretch of road too short to get even a Lambo past 30mph. It will cause greater emissions as drivers pull slowly up its north face and pause to enjoy the view from its lofty peak before accelerating again. Yet it has come into my life and dented my dream, and for that I shall never, ever drive that stretch of road again without grinding my teeth to powder.

That is all. I thank you for letting me get it off my chest.