Getting the picture on clamping

"What are they doing?" asked herself last week as we ambled down the street. She gestured over to a chap in a clamper's uniform taking a photo of an immobilised Saab with a digital camera as his partner looked on, admiringly.

"They're taking photos of that car, sweetness," said I patronisingly, ever the master of the bleedin' obvious.

"Yeah, I know," she tutted, irked. "I can see that. But why?"

"Presumably they take photos of your car so they have proof you were there," said I. "Otherwise, you could just prise off the clamp with a crowbar and drive off, only to insist when they come after you that they'd taken down the wrong registration number and you were in fact miles away in bed with their wives at the time they clamped you."

"Ah, right, that makes sense," said she, not giving it another thought.

But I, inhabiting as I do a twisted little world of my own creation, could not let it lie. Maybe the "photos for evidence" excuse is a ruse, I mused. Maybe that's just what they want us to think. Maybe there's something more sinister involved?

What if there's a whole sneaky underworld of clamping fetishists paying good money for these photos? What if there were thousands upon thousands of clampers and clamping aficionados around the world swapping them surreptitiously over the internet and on CDs, like US guards at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison?

What if those guys back there weren't clampers at all, but roaming perverts getting their kicks at the Saab-driver's expense? What if I just take a little rest here, perhaps get out of the sun, before I get carried away?

Herself, well used to the odd machinations of my brain, looked sidelong at me. "He's off again," she was thinking.

Little did she know my mind was wrestling with the spine-tinglingly gross prospect of there being a whole secret brotherhood of clamper pornographers out there, secretly building up their photographic evidence of our misery and vicariously enjoying little power-trips at the expense of the clampee.

Most of them, I thought, would be aroused by the obvious, the clamped Ferrari. This, as the ultimate example of the unattainable desire, was the clamper porn equivalent of the Pamela Anderson centrefold. Images of said vehicle being hoisted onto the back of a truck and hauled off to the pound would have them squealing in ecstasy.

But, as with regular humans, there are different strokes for different folks. The unattainable is not always sufficient for some consumers, those who get off on more esoteric delights.

Certain punters no doubt enjoy the more mature specimens, the clamper's equivalent of the Over 40s jazz mag. Difficult though it may be for you or I to comprehend, there's bound to be a roaring trade in snaps of immobilised 1987 Toyota Corollas. And the entrapped Lada or pre-makeover Skoda is surely highly prized among the more deviant of collectors.

For the S&M boys, there's the height of clamper degradation, for them a stomach-churning yet strangely captivating sight - the clamped clamper van.

And then there are the real sickos. Those whose urges are only satisfied by the basest, vilest images. Namely clamped ambulances, police cars, hearses, fire engines and the like. Ugh.

Just to think I was clamped not so many moons ago. They could well have taken photos of my misfortune. Shots of an eight-year-old Suzuki Swift, its left rear wheel engulfed by the yellow jaws of misery, could well be being enjoyed by some greasy sleazebag in a clamper's cap quivering in front of a computer screen as we speak. I suddenly feel very violated.