Skip Channel4 main Navigation
Explore Channel4
Food
Homes
Film
4Car
News
See All
100 Greatest Cars
Celebrities & Cars
Jay Kay
"The first thing I bought with my first royalty cheque, which was for £5000, was a car. It was a BMW 1602. It cost me a grand 11 years ago, which was quite a lot," he says. "In fact I loved it so much that I just bought it back from my band's didgeridoo player (Wallace Buchanan)."

Jay's life can never be called dull. About the same time as he regained his BMW, he was reunited with his estranged Portuguese father, spilt from Denise Van Outen after a very public relationship, crashed his Lamborghini and sank one of his Mercedes 4x4s in the lake at his Buckinghamshire estate - a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

"Soooo rock and roll, don't you think?" laughs Jay, who would be horrified to be thought of as a dim rocker with no more a grip on performance driving than a knowledge of Prokofiev. "You can't drive cars like this for 10 years and be a crap driver. The Enzo is not for idiots. It is a very wide car and on country lanes at night it is heart-in-the-mouth stuff."

Jay's genuine knowledge of cars has earned him some respect from motoring cognoscenti. "I have a book at home with all the chassis numbers of cars in. It's a cross between a train spotters' notebook and The Times Atlas. I read it in bed at night," he says.

Jay's cars all have a theme: classic design. The art of a car is as much a lure as its performance. In his mind they should look as good hanging on a wall as sitting in the garage. "I have bought a lot of my cars because of the designers. You know, Ferrari, Pininfarina, Ghia, Bertone," he says "There's the old adage that if it looks right it will go right."

Previous: True consistencies

Next: No Yank tanks