Driven to distraction

Emissions: No doubt many of you will have had a good self-righteous giggle at that silly wench in north Wales whose face was plastered all over newspapers and TV programmes last month after she got snapped by a British police speed camera doing her make-up while driving.

Donna Maddock, for that was her name, was photographed steering with her knees, doing her eyebrows with one hand and holding a mirror in the other, all the while tootling down one of Britain's most dangerous roads at around 50km/h. Mirror, signal, applicate . . .

The 22-year-old, who later claimed she was having a "blonde moment", has gone from being a part-time model to a full-time model of nonsense in one sweep of her mascara brush. In the photos, she is looking directly into the camera lens with a glare so sullen it would crack paint.

She'd probably have stuck her tongue out if she hadn't just done her lippy.

Donna - whose finest moment prior to this was posing in a Burberry-print bikini in a Chav Babes calender (along the lines of Slappers Monthly, for those of you who are lucky enough to not know what a Chav is) - is a real classy article by all accounts.

Not only is she obviously a dimwit, she got banned for drink driving shortly after the photos were taken. Not such a model of a citizen, after all. She subsequently admitted that she was in the process of getting dolled up for an illicit tryst with her boyfriend, who lives with his partner and child, when she was nicked. "It's something all women do. I can't see what the fuss is about," she said. "All my friends think it's hilarious and have admitted to me they have done exactly the same. They've just never been caught."

Cretin though Donna may be, she has a point. There's no condoning what she did, but for all the vitriol thrown her way, you'd think she'd welded samurai swords to each of her wheels and mounted an anti-tank gun on her roof before driving into a primary school playground and attacking those within with great vengence and furious anger.

People do a lot worse than slap on a bit of mascara every day. I once saw a van driver in the process of making himself a sandwich as he weaved his way through traffic on the Naas dual carriageway, all the while having an animated rant on his mobile phone . He had a knife, butter and a sliced pan on the dashboard. The whole works. Finding myself stopped alongside him at the lights, I considered rolling down the window to ask him if he'd make me one. For the laugh, like. I soon changed my mind. He looked the type who'd happily have sliced off my ears and added them to his lunch.

An extreme example of lunacy at the wheel, perhaps. But, ask yourself, are you completely innocent? Have you never done anything stupid while driving one or no-handed?

Hands up if you've never eaten a chocolate bar, drank a coffee, read a newspaper, done a crossword, smoked a fag, blabbered like a drunk chimp on your mobile, rearranged your thong, shaved your armpits, done a bit of deep-shaft mining in your nostrils, ogled the fine ladies in the Chav Babes calendar or plotted global domination on your laptop while driving.

I'm not seeing any hands. All too busy casting the first stone, I'm guessing.