Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference.

It’s what non-car people don’t get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that’s all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities… You can develop a relationship with a car and that’s what non-car people don’t get… When something has foibles and won’t handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that’s how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won’t get.

I rang up Jay Kay, who's got one, and said: 'Can we borrow yours?' and he said, 'Yeah, if I can borrow your daughter, because it amounts to the same thing.'

The Americans lecture the world on democracy and then won’t let me turn the traction control off!

I mean its a weekly occurrence that somebody will complain that Top Gear was on last night - and you just sit back and wait for the complaints. But if you start to pay attention to everyones concerns, you end up with something bland and boring. So you sort of have to ignore everybody in order to do the show how we want to do it.

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding.

Now we get quite a lot of complaints that we don't feature enough affordable cars on the show so we'll kick off tonight with the cheapest Ferrari of them all!