ONE TOY CARS It always begins with a toy car. Or at least it always began with a toy car - nowadays it''s probably a tweet or a TikTok or something virtual. But if you''re someone of an age who can even vaguely relate to what this 48-year-old man is typing, then I reckon it started with a toy car. There is something binary about the way young people respond to the form of a motor car, whether it''s on televi- sion, in the raw or a scale model. Children point and whoop at exciting-looking machinery because they are uninhibited by the societal baggage that the motor car carries for many adults in 2023. Nothing makes me smile inside more than seeing a kid want to stop and ogle at a low-slung slice of Ital- ian machinery, as their appalled parent tries to drag them away while delivering a sermon on the evils of the motor car. What a sad, joyless life they must lead. I bet they didn''t love toy cars when they were young.

I still have the box of toy cars that was the centre of my universe at around the time my first memories began to form. They are quite unremarkable and show no signs of having been curated to satisfy an enthusiasm for any particular type or shape. They are also in terrible condition, which must confirm that behavioural traits manifest themselves early in life because I still don''t look after my things - especially motor cars. In fact, I take impish satisfaction in knowing that those around me are appalled by how dirty and unloved my motor cars look. Mechanically, they are fit as a whippet, but the aesthetic has never interested me in the least. There are events for people who polish cars - actual celebrations of people who have specific methods of washing and polishing cars, and they award each other medals and money for the static preparation of an object designed to move. How perverse is that? The only beautiful static car is one that has just been driven hard and is caked in the dirt and insects that describe the journey it just completed. Better still, a racing car that has just won, not been washed and parked in a museum.

That I can understand. But not polishing for the sake of polishing. But those early toy cars were so precious. If you''re a car person - and I have to assume that if you''re reading this, you are - you might have reflected on your formative years and drawn the same conclusion. And that is this: the level of protection and obsession you felt towards those little Major- ette and Corgi toys was a brief prologue to your later life. It certainly was for me. I don''t have a very good memory (which isn''t ideal for the purposes of writing a book) but I do remember things that involved cars, so my fi rst memory does just that. It involves my late mother and a beach, and a bucket of toy cars.

She told me many years ago that she left me play- ing with them and when the time came to pack up and head back, there was a problem. I''d buried the cars but couldn''t quite remember where. This bit I don''t remember at all, nor the next scene which involved my poor mother digging up a large section of beach looking - and failing - to find four tiny, dented lumps of metal that could easily be replaced. Parents really are wonderful, patient things. The part I do remember is the aftermath, the feeling of utter desolation in the hotel room because my precious friends (because that''s what they were, they weren''t just inanimate objects - we had adventures together) had gone. They were the pals from the fantasy life so many kids hide in because they have no siblings, or maybe just retreat to because it''s safe and fun. Now that I make television I have a therapist, because it''s part of the uniform. When we discussed bereave- ment, I told him my fi rst experience of emotional loss was my grandmother on my mother''s side.

But it wasn''t at all - it was those toy cars. I was desperately sad to lose them because they mattered to me on so many levels. I must have tried not to cry but probably did weep buckets. I was a terrible crier as a child and have become a terrible non-crier as an adult. The irony is that I wasn''t remotely upset when that grandmother passed away. She was a hideous old boot and not a patch on a Majorette Renault 14.