Paul Daniels: My first car...

MY FIRST car was bought for £5 from Elsie Hind’s scrap yard. It was a 1938/1939 Standard Flying Nine. Thank goodness my father was a great craftsman and mechanic. Looking back I must have been more of a hindrance than a help when we were “doing it up”.

Readers of today will probably find it amazing that it had a wooden floor (which had rotted and was the first thing we replaced) and the rear suspension had come up through that.

Nine months and 15 hand-rubbed coats of cellulose later, I was driving around in a red and black car with cut-away doors and flip-out trafficators and obviously thought I was the bee’s knees. Talk about a poser. I didn’t have a radio so I attached a car aerial (much cheaper) and used to drive round clicking my fingers pretending that I was listening to music. The first trip I drove it from South Bank, near Middlesbrough, to Blackpool and it was so different that people walking by stopped to admire it. One man offered me £150 for it. I said no.

Years later my brother took it when he went to uni. I never saw it again. «

• Paul Daniels is touring his show Hair Today Gone Tomorrow (accompanied by his wife Debbie McGee and son Martin Daniels) in March, appearing at Palace Theatre, Kilmarnock, 28 March; Howden Park Centre, Livingston, 29 March; Rothes Hall, Glenrothes, 30 March; and Motherwell Concert Hall, 31 March