KilianEmissions/Kilian Doyle: I have to be very careful here. For several reasons, one of which is that the main protagonist of the target of the following tirade is about seven feet tall, and secondly because he has a bigger fan club than David Beckham.
It's BBC's Top Gear and its larger-than-life presenter, Jeremy Clarkson. (For the two readers out there into whose field of recognition he hasn't blundered like a bull with piles, he's BBC2's omnipresent curly-headed star who looks like a cross between David Hasselhoff and a roadie for Seventies rockers Status Quo.)
To be fair, it's not really Clarkson himself that grates. He's an extremely funny chap - one only has to watch his faux-belligerent reaction to the tormenting of the loathsome Trinny and Susannah he received on What Not to Wear for evidence of his self-deprecatory sense of humour. He's probably a great laugh over a few pints, if you don't mind not being able to get a word in edgeways. And anyone who gleefully destroys caravans for fun is fine by me.
But when he's off with the boys, it's another matter altogether. His two sycophantic, slavering, self-satisfied sidekicks, the cheeky chappie Richard Hammond and the pseudo-intellectual James May, are what an Irish mother would call a "bad crowd".
"Nice boy, that Jeremy," she'd tut-tut into her tea sadly. "It's just such a shame he's such a show-off when he's with his pals."
And therein lies the problem with Top Gear. The sheer laddishness, the "I've-got- more-torque-than-you-do" nonsense, the bravado and the smugness - it just makes me want to chuck my telly through the windscreen of the nearest BMW X3.
Hammond is so conceited, there's a photo of him in my encyclopedia beside the entry for smug. "Who doesn't want to own a Porsche?" he exclaimed in a recent episode. "Hell, I've even got one." Top of my wedgie list, that fella.
As for May, who seems to regard any car worth less than a hundred grand as utterly beneath him, the fallen aristocrat act is fooling nobody. He's just fallen.
On Top Gear, unless a machine has enough horsepower and acceleration to render Jeremy and his cronies incapacitated through priapism, it's idly dismissed as rubbish or, worse still, a "girl's car". Could someone please explain to them that not everyone gives a toss if their car can outrun a Cessna or jump over the Grand Canyon?
A prime example is Clarkson's review of the newest top-of-range Saab. It gets the traditional Top Gear treatment of being ripped around a deserted airbase, tail whipped around every corner, tyres reduced to dust and Clarkson nearly soiling himself in the process.
The verdict on the performance of this triumph of Scandinavian engineering and styling? "Crap." Being front-wheel drive, it's got poor handling at over 130 mph, you see. Like, who cares? Clarkson himself admitted it was faster than a Porsche from 40 to 70 - prime territory for overtaking - so who needs it to go any quicker? And what Saab owner is going to take their €35,000 pride and joy to a friggin' racetrack anyway? You want a racing car? Buy a racing car. It's like writing off a Boeing 737 because, while it may be ideal for getting you long distances in safety and comfort, it's not particularly good at bombing Taliban artillery positions.
As for Clarkson's attire whilst reviewing the Koenigsegg last year . . . this exorbitantly priced sports car, which would leave you little change if you sold your house to buy it, is the epitome of the unattainable. It may as well be made of diamonds as far as the vast majority of the populace are concerned. It's - surprisingly enough - Jeremy's favourite sports car. And his choice of clothing while driving it? A Che Guevara T-shirt. Now, that's either his finely tuned sense of irony kicking in, or he's giving us proles the fingers. Decide for yourselves. I'm off to suck a lemon.