Daddy Cool: ‘I learned to drive after being dumped’

A friend had sage advice: “Remember, chauffeur-driven cars only lead to one thing: liver damage.” But, at that moment, as I sipped my congratulatory glass of champagne, I really didn’t care.

The occasion? Both daughters had passed their driving tests after only – one of them will hate me for saying this – seven collective attempts, and both in the same week. All the hours of hitting kerbs while backing around corners, doing 19-point turns and parallel parking while trying to avoid collisions with expensive BMWs are over. It was a journey as much for me as for them. I’ll never forget parking halfway up the pavement outside Harvey Nichols in front of astonished shoppers or nearly crashing in the grounds of a hospice. I suppose if it had been a bad prang, it would have been classified as a mercy killing.

It was Daughter No 2 who passed first, then threw a hissy fit because she couldn’t drive off into the sunset in our “top-of-the-range”, decade-old Suzuki Swift without making sure she was properly insured. Suddenly the car she had spurned as an obstacle to her successful completion of the test – it drives like an old First World War tank – was an irresistible luxury limo. But her triumph only put more pressure on her older sister, who took to the mean streets just five days later.

During her test I was supposed to be having a relaxing massage though it’s difficult to relax when every bone in your body is crossed. But the prayers worked and soon she completed her first solo run to meet up – in a pub – for lunch. Newly sensible, she ordered a Diet Coke. The only interruption to her happiness came when she contemplated the price of a tank of petrol. We’ll leave forking out for insurance, tax and servicing for later.

It’s easy to forget the momentousness of earning your motoring stripes. I learned to drive because I was dumped by a girlfriend who preferred my mate with the flash Ford Escort. The next one dumped me after being forced to push-start my new car – a ridiculously-vintage Fiat – in her heels, in a downpour. Like most Italians, it was fantastic when the sun shone but petered out in the rain. Then when I got a flash Ford Escort, my mate Jeremy, with whom I shared a name, got an even flasher one. It is now a matter of recorded fact that my wife, when we first dated, thought I was Jeremy with the new, souped-up, go-faster version rather than the one with the heavily scuffed model bought third-hand from his cousin. You should have seen her face when she learned of her life-changing error. n