EMISSIONS:A ridiculous survey got me thinking who my ideal celebrity driving instructor would be
ANOTHER ONE of those blatant bits of self-promotion masquerading as important surveys was doing the rounds recently. Churned out by a British driving school, it asked motorists who would be their ideal instructor.
Top of the list was The World’s Favourite Man™, president Barack Obama. I can see why. Obama is charming, unflappable and diplomatic – all good character traits for a tutor. But I imagine the three heavily armed CIA agents in the back seat, the flotilla of police cars and the snipers on the rooftops shadowing your every move might get distracting after a while.
Second was Stephen Fry. The problem with him is you’d be too busy guffawing along with his endless stream of witty anecdotes and swooning at the base of his fountain of fascinating facts to do any actual driving. Not only that, he’d have to stop every 20 feet to update his movements on Twitter.
Third favourite was Roger Moore, who’d also be rubbish – he’d just drive your car into a lake while firing a bazooka out the sunroof. Then he’d calmly get out and mooch off with your girlfriend.
Anyway, this ridiculous survey got me thinking which celebrity, were I in the onerous position of having to learn to drive again, I’d like in the seat beside me.
For a millisecond I thought Bertie might be good for a giggle. But you’d never get a straight answer to your questions and end up twice as baffled getting out of the car as you were getting in.
Cowen? He’d just keep trying to bully you into driving down a dead end.
Kenny and Gilmore would be too busy patting themselves on the back to teach you anything. Gormley would refuse to even show you how to turn the engine on and Joan Burton would drone you to death. And while Joe Higgins is an honest, committed chap with more integrity in his dandruff than most of the Dáil put together, he’d only ever let you go left.
If you had George Lee in the passenger seat polluting the inside of the car with smugness, you’d crash into a wall just to shut him up. Ditto for Bono.
Perhaps Michael O’Leary? I like a straight-talking man who doesn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. The lessons would be dirt cheap. Until, that is, he charges you €15 to use the seatbelt, another tenner to roll down the window and a fiver every time you change gears. He’d also cram 17 other people into your car to piggyback on the lesson and leave you 40 miles from your house when it’s over.
Not having much luck with the living, I turned to the dead.
The obvious choice was yer only man, Myles na Gopaleen. He’d have you in stitches, for a start. But, as with Bertie, I decided on reflection that he’d indubitably be a raving disaster. Mainly because the second he shoehorned himself into the passenger seat, he’d whip out the hipflask and start gruffly lambasting you for driving a car because, as all Gaels know, the only truly Gaelic form of transportation in all of Gaeldom is the bicycle.
Once you were suitably shamed into silence, he’d embark on a lengthy tirade about how all non-Gaels are dirty pus-scrabbling gombeens, before inventing some brilliant gizmo to make the car drive itself. And then he’d force it to bring him to the pub.
So I’ve decided my ideal driving instructor would be Samuel Beckett. If nothing else, at least you know he’d be patient.
And if you made a hash of your driving test, you’d have no fear of a Mylesean withering put-down when you went back to him with the bad news. For he’d simply look at you with that impish wry smile of his, peer over his glasses and say: “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
