Fast Cars, Naked Women, and Golf

(More pics of Fast Cars at Silverstone)

I think I've been suffering from an overdose of testosterone.

Whatever the excuse, I have been a very bad boy lately. It all started with that most he-manly of sports - Golf. The vice involved here was that of freebie-gluttony. Or, possibly, skiving-off-workity.

A few weeks ago I was invited to an awayday organised by one of our sometime suppliers to discuss the Mobile Phone industry with like-minded types such as myself from organisations like Reuters and Channel 4. Which is fine. It's my job to keep my ear to the ground and engage with the industry and yada yada yada. So far, so good. Nothing morally suspect here.

But then the agenda came:

• Item 1: Eat breakfast
• Item 2: Play 18 holes of golf at a posh country club near Surrey
• Item 3: Eat Lunch (drink wine)
• Item 4: Put the world to rights
• Item 5: Drink booze

Now, a right-thinking man with a proper puritan work ethic would have said, "No! Get thee behind me, Satan of little white balls and green fields!"

But instead, I thought, "Oooh, I've never played golf in this country! And really it would do me good to make connections with Whatshisbutt from Reuters and ThatDude from Channel 4."

I fooled no one. Certainly not myself. And so I ate breakfast and played golf and ate lunch and put the world to rights.

In my defence I will say that I drank very little booze, but that was because I had to rush back in order to hang out with Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman.

A wonderfully strange and bureaucratic miracle happened at work. The local council suddenly decided that Television Centre needed a license in order to perform live music in front of any members of the public (as they had been doing for the past forty years). This meant no members of the public at the tapings of any TV shows that had such performances. Which meant that we, the corporation's loyal workers, had to fill in. Which meant that I got to go to a taping of the Jonathan Ross show and sit scant metres from Halle Berry's very lovely cleavage and Hugh Jackman's relentless manliness.

I suspect this event, preceded as it was by the golf, increased testosterone production in my system to the extent that when faced with yet another despicable temptation, I caved in almost immediately.

This one was completely non-work-related. An earlier brush with supermodel glamour many moons ago had the side-effect of getting my name on the mailing list of a guy who organises Z-list celebrity party events in London. Most of these invitations I ignore but the day that my crazy landlord left the country I got an email inviting to me to the grand opening of Stringfellows Soho with free champagne and canapés and nekkid ladies. He would have wanted me to go.

I had never been to such a place before, but the original Stringfellows is an institution amongst lap-dancing clubs world-wide, and, really, one should try everything at least once. And so, after a brief struggle with my conscience and after getting approval from the long-suffering spouse who was up in Walsall that day, I called my friend James.

We attended the event. It was a fascinating experience. There were, indeed nekkid ladies. And many eastend gangster types with shaved heads and bulging suits and fat cigars. And, somewhat surprisingly, many women as invited guests as well. Oh, and one truly magnificent, rather corpulent, drag queen in a diagonally zebra striped mu-mu and turban.

Afterwards I felt dirty and guilty. At the time though, I felt... (Well I didn't feel quite what I wanted to. It wasn't allowed.) But I did feel happy. Lustful wouldn't be quite the right term, but after a bit of free champagne and one expensive beer, I have to admit I had a stupid grin on my face. I'm not sure why, but a naked woman gyrating in my face produces an emotion in my brain a little bit like glee.

That said, it's a bad thing to objectify woman and I shouldn't have gone and I am a bad bad man!

Whoops.

And then today I did something even worse. But this time it was Vicki's fault. Rather than glorifying the objectification of women, we glorified the automobile. I would argue the effect on global warming of nekkid ladies is not severe. If you think about it, less energy is needed to produce clothes for nekkid ladies than for clothed ladies.

Race Cars, though, are definitely bad for the environment. Racing glorifies the automobile and encourages boys to think they need a really expensive and powerful car in order to be a man. This leads them to roaring about polluting the planet and driving so fast they don't see the blind arthritic nun crossing the road and "SPLAT!" - Rosary beads everywhere.

That said, race cars are pretty cool and they kind of hit the same glee button that nekkid ladies do.

My friend James has a sister (and so should be terribly ashamed about accompanying me to Stringfellows). This sister works for a hospitality company and had some half price VIP passes to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. My charming spouse is a huge fan of formula one and we had many times talked about going. And so this was too good an offer to pass up.

We went today for qualifying and it was fantastic. It was like someone had put a brick down on my glee button. The best part was the race involving the historic sports cars. These were fantastic. The VIP passes meant we were allowed to wander past the garages for these cars and they were very very cool. They were all from the 1960s and early '70s. And now I desperately need one if I am to think of myself as a proper man.

Ah, you see! Some good did come from all this evil! My eyes have been opened to the benefits of recycling! It's not really wasteful if I buy a hideously overpowered and expensive sports car from the '60s. By doing so enormous amounts of energy will be saved that would have otherwise gone into the creation of the new fuel efficient car I would have otherwise bought.

I am a good person. Really, I am.