My first car … Danny Bhoy

MY FIRST car was a Volvo 340 in silver. It was a hand-me-down from my brother who at the time upgraded to a Volvo 340DL in silver. My parents were Volvo fanatics.

I don’t know why? I just remember my dad would always say “you can’t beat a Volvo” before crunching into first gear in his Volvo 740 sedan and navigating the tight turn between our driveway and the next-door neighbour’s fence. “Nothing fancy. Just safe and reliable,” he would say, which ironically was a review I got from The Scotsman some years later.

At the weekends I would take the old Devil’s Beef Tub road from Moffat to Edinburgh in my lovely old Volvo. It was a twisty, turny affair which it handled with confidence rather than grace. The radio didn’t work, so I often travelled with a battery-operated ghetto blaster in the passenger seat pumping out Simon and Garfunkel.

I don’t know if I am the only person that does this, but I would often talk to the car. So, if I knew we were about to face a big uphill climb, I would gently pat the steering wheel and say “Ok, this is a big one coming up now, so just relax. You know we can do this”.

I became so attached to the car, that six years later when it was finally unrepairable, I had to get a friend to take it to the scrapyard, because I couldn’t do it myself. «

Danny Bhoy’s new comedy DVD, Live At The Festival Theatre, is released tomorrow. www.dannybhoy.com