The Blue Lumiere!

But hey, that's capitalism. The church was invented to make capitalism work better. It'd be ironic if it wasn't, you know, diseased and hideous.

Feeling you brother. Up in the Western Isles and highlands, the Free Presbytarian Kirk or WTF they call themselves. The "wee frees", as they're known have a slogan: 'Keep The Sabbath Special'. I made up my own slogan, as a witty retort: 'Fuck off back to the seventeenth century ya shower of fuckin' knob jockeys'. Bit wordy, maybe. Needs PR work.Their ministers get paid, I'm guessing, to work on Sundays. I'd love one of them to take a coronary and go: "Phone an ambulance!" and have his enraged flock kick him to death for being a heretic then the ambulance to come and the crew on time and 3/4 plus overtime mopping them up.And for lightning to knock the fuckin' steeple down, right into the minister's Audi.

Ah, well you see apparently if they didn't scribble 'serving suggestion' on the packet, you can legally expect the company to supply everything else in the photo other than the product you just bought. In your case you'd be able to write to the salad cream guys and DEMAND a bit of manky lettuce and a tomato. My favourite is the cornflakes packet - how else do you eat cornflakes t'other than with a bowl?Oh, and in case you were wondering, this message was composed in a protective environment."TIME TROUSER", Sept 08:".....as comedy, worldwide, was quite simply stood upon it's head when it was noticed that the serving suggestions on food packaging tended to illustrate the most obvious method of serving the food contained therein........if I could walk that way, would I be buying an athletic support, I countered..........the Englishman, Irishman and Welshman's replies notwithstanding, I said...."

I thought they'd already done that and it ends up in Kent.It'll just end up a total fiasco, like the whole 'Mini Cheddars' thing. Look: Those are NOT Cheddars, of any size. They are pub snacks, like Tescos Cheese Savouries or Victoria Wine's own brand 'Cheese Snips', and they have been fashioned to resemble a very small cheese flavoured snack cracker. It's grotesque.When Dr Alexander Fleming noticed the unsightly mould which had grown on the petrie dish he'd left unwashed overnight, he immediately thought: "This could quite easily be formed into small, bitesize morsels and sold in public houses as Cheese Moments and Scampi Fries". He did not think it could somehow be marketed as some kind of miniaturised version of an already popular savoury snack item. No, he immediately contacted the girl with the bakelite headset at the hospital reception and told her: "Munich, long distance. I must speak urgently with doktor Klaus KitKat Chunky!"

You sound uncannily like a bloke I know called Tom. He comes out with bizarre ideas like that GM stuff. I mean really - I think he did too much acid back in the 60's and left his mind in a Black Hole somewhwere - talking of which - is anyone concerned by this experiment in France to create mini Black Holes?Of course. That bloke you know called Tom had quite slipped my mind there!And fair play to you for working in the phrase "too much acid back in the 60s"! Fab gear. I bet his hair's so long you can't tell if he's a boy or a girl and he listens to that bleedin' jungle music where you can't hear the words and there's never a tune you can dance to......

1300 ohc? Do you mean Pinto engines? Can't be many of them, anywhere. They DO happen, though. When I was working as a mechanic, around 1990, we took in a Sierra to fit a timing belt to it. It was badged 'L'. We took it be a 1600. When the belt we ordered didn't fit, we wondered 'Could it be a 2.0? Surely not?' I drove the car in question up to the factors, to get another belt. While doing so I could feel that it was definitely not a 2 litre. We were amazed, after checking the engine number, to find it was a 1300cc Pinto. What in the name of god is the point of that? The 1600 wasn't even really up to the task of hauling a motor the size of a Sierra. I remember (though I never met one) that Capris could be had with 1300cc engines. Were they Pintos? Or were they Essex crossflows? Whatever they were it can't have been much of a 'pin you to the seat' experience

What does that mean?

I quite like that. That would look like a bit of a brute if it's wheels and it's tail pipe weren't so comically small.....

These strips were originally developed by General Motors in the early '60s. They were intended not for discharging static and reducing motion sickness, but to enable motorists to manipulate the very fabric of the universe; to bend time and space and allow cars to travel into other, previously undreamt of dimensions.When a Chevrolet Ordinaire, equipped with the first prototype of the strip was hurled into a hole in the space-time continuum which GM had built outside Dire City, Michigan, engineers were dismayed when it was hurled back 20 minutes later. The test driver was alive, but hopelessly addicted to heroin, mobile phones and criminal compensation claims. He had, however, suffered no noticeable signs of motion sickness and the car was bafflingly free of static electricity.The test driver's name? Patrick Halford Hopkirk......

Touche.

I'm sure I used to work with that fella. We used to let him have first shout on the overtime when he was saving up for his operation....

It's got me stumped, too. It was published in The Swinging Pocketwatch: Official Trade Journal Of The Guild Of British Stage Hypnotists. I turned up for my anger management class and I was told it was cancelled. I went mental and wrecked the joint.

Ooooh, Taunus. In brown. Classy.Does anyone else think the Taunus looks like the mkIII Cortina AND the mkIV, at the same time?Just me, then..

I dunno, for a 'non news' story, it's generated a healthy two pages full of debate.When I wrote my article "Why Cancer, Fascism, Cruelty To Animals And Slum Landlords Are All Absolutely Brilliant", no one even read it!

"It's paint."

So.......why can't they be discussed in a lightweight and flippant manner?

"Wheeler Dealers" is not staged! Mike Brewer is almost completely unknown to the car buying public, and when people arrive to inspect one of his cars and the vendor approaches them followed by a film crew who tell them where to stand while they film 15 takes of them shaking hands with Mike after agreeing to buy, they just presume that this is the accepted way of buying used cars.'Staged'! You know 'The Office' isn't a real documentary, right?(I think it's one of those practical 'how-to' shows, designed to help people buy, sell and repair used motors. They just put in those 'prospective buyer' scenes to make it easier to understand, like.)I was in total floods when Tim & Dawn finally got together at that Xmas party....

Hmmmm. I'd really rather not own one in that case thanks! Homos! After a bottle of wine and a few beers i'd be on it. Agreed. If you don't fancy Claire Sweeney, I think you've failed to pick up on what it is about women that you're supposed to fancy. What an absolute honey. Did someone list 'Liverpudlian' as a reason for her being unattractive? That is definitely starting to sound a bit 'closet'. Or that she seems 'a bit thick'?! "Have you seen that bird on that '60 Minute Makeover' show? You want to see the size of the intellect she's got on her..." Nope. **Wee bit unfair. I'm actually related to Claire. (Distantly, though, by marriage and that. I mean, I'm still OK to want to shag her...) ***Just had another look. The lad who reckoned she was too Liverpudlian was the one whose 'mate's dad' had a Rolls Royce! I'm picturing his ideal woman now, and I'm hearing the word "bitty".....

Another gripe:When you're at a T junction, indicating right, you're primarily looking right, right? Because traffic from there must be clear before you really need to check left, right? How often does some kind soul approaching from your left, indicating right to turn into the road you're coming out from stop not immediately in front of you, where he should, but off to the left of you and give you a flash, to graciously let you pull out before he turns in? You invariably don't see this flash. You're still looking right. They flash again. You don't see that one either. The road clears and you wonder why this complete spoon is stationery in the middle of the road. It dawns on you that he's a kind soul letting you out first, so you pull out, at exactly the same time as his patience has run out and he lurches forward. Both of you stop and he's still flashing and waving for you to draw in front of him. By this time more traffic has arrived from both directions and is waiting in queues each side.Why not just follow the Highway Code? Knobs.

This is not true at all! The KV6 is a 2.5 V6 and is 100% rovers own work, it is a quad cam effort and has nothing in common with the early 2.5 and later 2.7 honda engines which are single ohc. The KV6 fitted to rover 800's is woefully unreliable, but the later KV6 as fitted to 75's etc is much better. The two are not interchangeable either as the block castings are substantially different. Also the sohc honda V6 and the KV6 are not interchangeable.I'm sure you're totally spot on there, Mr B. I was winging it a bit, as I've never had much to do with the V6 800's & I was just recounting what I kind of half remembered reading sometime, without being 100% sure of what I was talking about. That's the first time I've ever done that in my entire life.So, a bit of a first there.

Have to disagree.I'm as big a RR lover as the next person, but the Camargue is ugly. There's too many straight lines. It's dangerously close to looking like a Bristol.A Rolls-Royce should look like a Rolls-Royce. The Camargue doesn't.Similarly, Bentleys should look like Bentleys. This current shower of shite, the Continental GT &cetera: They're not what you want a Bentley to look like. Bentley have started turning out the 'Azure'. Rolls-Royce will have to take a similar long hard look at their current offering and do something similar, soon. The Current Rolls is ugly.

It's not advisable to put Radweld in most Rover engines, Mike! (I'd actually not recommend putting it in ANY engine, but needs must sometimes, spoze)The reason it was advised against using it on Rover V6's was that the waterways were all so slim (everything in the cyl. heads was scaled down to keep it light) that Radweld would just close them up completely.All academic, though, of course. If a little stone or whatever pierced a rad fin on a 2.7 800, the loss of coolant would have totally roasted the engine within about 100 yards!I put Radweld in my previous 820 Vitesse and drove the 15 miles home. Although the head gasket survived, the increase in pressure split the expansion tank like a bleedin watermelon....

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere recently that some speedbump happy council was persuaded to remove some of them by their local ambulance service, who told them that they were having difficulty transporting people with severe spinal injuries over them, whatever speed they drove at.

I had an L reg 827 SLi. Awful, just awful.I can imagine. World beaters they weren't. The 2.7V6 was known as the 'KV6', and was Rover's own version of the previous 2.5 Honda unit. Both engines were very similar. Rover obviously reckoned on saving a lot of R&D time by just copying the Honda blueprint. The Honda one was never renowned for it's durability. Rover's KV6 subsequently came to be nicknamed 'the kettle', on account of it's willingness to pop it's head gaskets and merrily boil it's coolant without too much prompting.The V6 engine which powers the 2.5 Rover 75's is still, essentially the same unit, but with an improved cooling system and sturdier CHG's.

The handling on all post 96 Vitesses was a huge improvement on previous models. They got stiffer springs, thicker ARB's etc. All post 96's are called 'Vitesse Sport', whereas pre 96 the 'Sport' spec was an extra cost option. It entails a power increase from 180 to 200hp (by upping the boost limit, IIRC) and the suspension tweaking already mentioned. The late cars handle brilliantly. By the time Cowley stopped turning them out in 1999, they were really very good performance saloon cars. They got so good because Rover (being Rover) had expected it's successor, the 75, to be in production by 1992! (only 7 years out! So close...) When it wasn't, they had no choice but to keep tweaking and refining the 800, even though it was hopelessly outclassed in it's market by Audi, BMW and even Ford and Vauxhall by this time, despite not being behind these rivals by much, if at all, in terms of quality and durability. The Vitesse & the Sterling in particular (and especially the absolutely fantastic Coupes) ended up every bit as good a prospect as the common as dog muck BMW 520. And of course, in the case of the Vitesse Sport, every bit as fast as (or usually faster than) the 525 or even the Sierra Sapphire Cosworth and the original Subaru Impreza.The Vitesse was touted by Rover as 'the fastest car we've ever built', and this is undoubtedly true; it's passing left a hole in their line up they never filled, even with the MG 'Z' range, none of which were anything like as quick as the Vitesse. By then though, of course, Rover was being left in the dust by every car company in Europe in terms of 'bread and butter' (ie family hatchbacks and small saloons) motors, so they couldn't even consider a big, 140mph+, 20 odd mpg sporting tourer.....No one would touch their tarted-up-a-bit (again) Honda Civic-a-like, the 'Streetwise'. Which was probably 'Verywise'.In 2005 the rest became history.Ps: Mr B: Mine had a tiny bit of 'dash lift', but I fixed it.