WATCHING Top Gear is a guilty pleasure. Something pulls me in, even though the presenters are annoying twerps and the only time I come near to the sort of cars they drive is when one overtakes the old Volvo.

You see, this really isn’t the programme for me. The other week, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and the sensible one with the silly hair style and the regrettable shirts (James May, that’s the man) were talking about a new Jaguar sports car out soon.

This was said to be overpriced at £50,000-plus because it was a young man’s car and only someone in their fifties could afford that much. Well, that set me harrumphing. Here I am in my fifties and what do I drive? A 13-year-old estate with 125,000 miles on the clock, that’s what.

I’d like to see Clarkson test-drive that round his overgrown Scalextric track. In fact, I’d happily give it a go myself, although I would worry about the camera operative standing at Gambon Corner.

Those old Volvos are good cars, but they are not exactly made to corner at speed, possessing the aerodynamics of a runaway hearse.

Never mind playing rugby with cars, as Clarkson did on Sunday, how about trying to reverse into the driveway in the dark while the cat flits in and out of the rear-view mirror?

The ‘prize’ in that contest was a fist-sized dent in the off-side rear panel, a bigger blemish to join all the other blemishes.

Or what about trekking across the M62 with a car-load of amplifiers, guitars, Christmas debris, two teenagers and one 21-year-old? Or shoving a broken-down motor scooter in the back? Or any number of trips to the tip, filled with discarded greenery?

As for that nought-to-60 palaver, well the old car gets there as soon as it needs to, and carries on rising, possibly to arresting limits, but I keep at just below the 80 mark out of approximate respect for the law and the car’s venerable old engine, all 2.5 litres of ageing Swedish muscle.

Top Gear is incredibly popular and incredibly stupid, a programme to love and to hate. Perhaps it is time to tick the box marked ‘hate’ and be done with it.

But it’s well made and often amusing, just as often as it is annoying, and the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car interview with Mick Fleetwood the other week was more revealing than many a long-winded rock documentary.

All this made me think about the modes of transport I have owned. At a guess there have been six or seven bicycles (four in adulthood, with three being essentially the same bike, replaced twice after being stolen); two motorbikes (a Honda 50 in my teens, Kawasaki Z 200 a few years later); and a motley collection of second-hand cars.

The list of cars will not set Mr Clarkson’s pulse racing, but here goes: a Renault 11, an MG Midget (the closest to Top Gear territory, even if the engine did blow up), an MG Metro (good fun, went rusty), a Ford Escort GL estate (surprisingly sprightly), a Volvo 240 GLT (a sort of luxury silver tank, but a lovely thing) and the Volvo estate (functional and good for long journeys, apart from the way it swigs petrol like an alcoholic on a downhill bender). And that’s it. Only the Kawasaki and the twice-stolen bicycle have been new.

Looking back at that list of cars, I fear I may be better suited to a programme called Bottom Gear, although such a title might attract the wrong sort of attention.

So will I keep watching? Oh, almost certainly. Some guilty pleasures are too good to give up. But it does occur to me that Top Gear is a shiny hymn to the joys of motoring in which cars speed and twist down uncluttered roads, whereas in truth most motoring takes place in traffic jams, even on motorways.

Perhaps Clarkson and co should try driving through York in the rush hour or across the M62 with its endless miles of spirit-sapping roadworks.

And on that bombshell…

Follow Julian on twitter @juliancole5