Cutting up rough

Emissions: This column was originally conceived as a rant about the new übertest regulations that mean not only will you have to be able prove you can manoeuvre your way around a roundabout, but also negotiate what's under your bonnet to get a driving licence.

I was going to moan and gripe about how I - a complete cretin who doesn't know the difference between a sparkplug and a shock absorber, between battery acid and windscreen washing fluid - was going to be apoplectic with anxiety as my driving test approached, about how trepidation would be gnawing into my very soul until the day when I would be asked to not only reverse around a corner without killing a wheelie bin - as is my wont - but to explain how my trusty old banger works without being allowed to say "on blind faith".

I also planned to rail against the new measures that will make it more difficult for your decrepit old second-hand motor to pass the NCT than to win the Paris-Dakar rally. I anticipated whinging about how increasingly large wedges of my moolah were going to be twisted from my grubby paws to ensure that my car's headlights could zone in with inch-perfect accuracy, cruise-missile style, on an object 11 miles away. Because, as we all know, that's essential. And not a scam. Oh no.

I intended to carp on about all that and more, until I stumbled across the website of a man who made me instantly forget such trivialities and nearly puke with self-loathing at my inadequacy. I speak, of course, of the Nietzschean pinnacle of perfect manhood that is Angle Grinder Man.

With straggly, 1970s Heavy Metal-fan locks flowing across his pinched, bug-eyed visage, this British urban warrior plies his trade attired head to toe in a baby-blue Lycra bodysuit, tastefully accessorised with matching gold lamé cuffs, belt, boots and kneepads. And - as if the rest wasn't enough to catapult him into the galaxies of sartorial superiority inhabited by the likes of CJ Haughey in full squire regalia or Pat Kenny in Louis Copeland - his gold pants are on the outside.

What an utterly divine specimen of homo sapiens is he! (A brief perusal of www.anglegrinderman.co.uk reveals an area portraying our hero in various states of undress, his modesty and my ego protected only by the strategic positioning of the gilded powertool from whence he derives his moniker. Having just had my lunch, I left this particular joy to the ladies. And the sex offenders.)

Obviously this man's Adonis-like physique and chiselled jawline are not sufficient in themselves to warrant his inclusion in this column, which is ostensibly devoted to motoring matters, after all. It's what he does with his tool that is of interest - he uses it to cut wheel clamps off people's cars.

His is a moral crusade; he is an altruistically inspired subversive and defender of the little people against the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being that is the traffic police.

Based near London, AGM is a mere phonecall away from any entrapped motorist with a sense of adventure. His fee? There is none. His reward? The pleasure of anarchy in action, of thumbing a nose at a system that allows jumped-up twerps in peaked caps and tin badges hold cars to ransom and extort cash from their owners.

He claims to have freed dozens of cars already, and, despite the obvious legal ramifications of his actions, has no apparent intention of stopping. Does this fearless revolutionary shrink in the face of the inevitable wrath of Clamperman should he be caught in flagrante with his metallic chopper?

"I don't mind - it's a public service, " he says, modestly. "And I like wearing the costume." You don't say.

So filled with admiration was I, that I imagined his example should be followed here. But then my spirits sank as I realised his Irish equivalent already exists. He's a 16-year-old thug in a Celtic jersey who'll charge you €50 for the privilege of watching him prise off the clamp with a rusty crowbar before he robs your car at syringe-point.