Stephen Bayley

Why driving needs to become as fashionable as smoking

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Burgo Partridge was the son of a junior member of The Bloomsbury Group. I have been reading his classic 1958 A History of Orgies. Here he describes the 18th Century 'posture girls' whose vocation was to stand naked and simply be admired by salacious men. I am told something similar exists in Japan today: women strippers do not jiggle about, but present themselves stationary for examination by men using magnifying glasses. And that's the totality of the transaction.

By the time you read this, I will have been to the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court and the Concorso d’Eleganza at Varignana, outside Bologna. Here, the cars are separated from the act of driving and presented rather as Mr Partridge’s posture girls. Of course, I'll fly to Bologna. And, ironically, I will go to Hampton Court on the train because driving across London is all but impossible.

Driving has become a horrible chore of threading an expensive wasting asset through legal, moral and practical obstacles. Between me and my regular tennis game five miles away are 37 traffic lights. I recently accelerated to 26mph to avoid a wobbling Lime Bike and was sentenced to the cruel and unusual punishment of a Speed Awareness Course.