WHY are all salesman the same? Is there some sort of production line where they are manufactured to standard specifications, or do they start out as discernible individuals who are then transformed into clones through a Trinny and Susannah-style makeover process?

Maybe there is a finishing school somewhere in deepest, darkest Yorkshire - probably somewhere in the Wolds - where seemingly ordinary people are taken at the dead of night to learn the dark arts of the sales representative.

They arrive in covered trucks, blindfolded and disorientated, before being ushered into a low, grey building that doesn't appear on any maps and is all but invisible from road, sea and air.

After being shown their dorm - a room that closely resembles a Travel Lodge, only with bars at the windows - the would-be reps are then herded into the heart of the operation. Or, to be more precise, the heart attack of the operation.

The canteen. The place where dreams are made and deals are done over a full English breakfast with extra lard and a side-order of cholesterol.

These lads - and they still seem to be mainly of the male persuasion - could eat for Britain at the Olympics. In fact, they could probably eat the entire British Olympic team, using Paula Radcliffe as a toothpick.

Why they feel the need to stop at every Little Chef on their travels is not entirely clear. It could be that they are strangely drawn to the rest-stop's infamous Olympic Breakfast (see previous reference to Paula The Pipecleaner), but it is more likely to be a simple pre-programmed response set in motion at salesman school.

Other pre-programmed responses include: ruffling the hair of small boys and asking them which football team they support; asking small girls if they have a boyfriend; laughing like a drain after making a sub-standard Jimmy Cricket-style joke that everyone in the room knows they have repeated at least seven times already that day; and refusing to say exactly how much the job will cost until you have lost the will to live and will pay anything just to see them leave.

Some salesmen, of course, are the exception that proves the rule. They don't insist on showing you endless brochures filled with stuff you don't actually want or, in this thoroughly modern age, endless graphs and diagrams on their whizzy laptop that always seem to "prove" that their product is great and their competitor's is rubbish. Even if both products were manufactured in the same Chinese factory and they simply add their own branding, the facts - hey, they must be scientifically-proved facts because they are on a laptop - always prove that their packaging adds to the overall value on a sliding scale that Stephen Hawking would have trouble getting his head around.

Occasionally, you get a salesman who turns up on time, lays out your options clearly and concisely, gives you a precise delivery date and tells you exactly how much you will have to pay. Honestly, it does happen.

I had a rare sighting of not one but two of these endangered creatures just the other day. They were friendly without being ingratiating, informative without being boring and - glory be - they revealed exactly how much money I would have to part with without me having to threaten the life of one of their nearest and dearest.

I can only assume that they had been expelled from salesman school early in the first term and had escaped most of the pre-programming.

Perhaps they had been caught eating muesli behind the bike sheds or something.

Then again, perhaps not. They did, after all, both bear an uncanny physical resemblance to John Prescott - a man I certainly wouldn't buy a used Jag from.

Updated: 10:47 Monday, October 04, 2004