My first car … Dorothy Paul

MY FIRST car was a blue Mini Minor. I was 21 and had just passed my test. I was on The One O’Clock Gang at the time, which was a daily live television show so I thought I was very well off.

The first day I was out in it I went shopping with my mother, who was thrilled to bits that I was driving a car. We parked in a lane, I said “look at this I can do a proper U turn, it’s got a good lock,” – that was a very motory expression that I knew so I thought I was very clever – and I put the full lock on, hit the wall and bashed in the side of the car.

I had the car for three years and went everywhere. My mother said, “We’ll go down to Lancashire and visit Auntie Maggie.” She was wanting to show off her daughter driving a car. How many girls of 21 had a car of their own paid outright in 1959? At the time I was running about with Jackie Stewart’s brother – they had a Jaguar garage in Dunbartonshire and had delivery of the first E-Type Jaguar in Scotland, and I got to drive it! Then when Jackie was starting to do circuits we all went to Oulton Park in Cheshire, and I drove it at 140mph round the track myself. That was something, wasn’t it? My second car was an Austin Healey Sprite. I must have caught the bug. «

Dorothy Paul’s show Retiring From Retirement is at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, tonight and 26 March as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival. It is also touring Scotland until 14 April, including dates at the Town House, Hamilton, on Tuesday and Queen’s Hall, Dunoon, on Saturday