Feature: Bruce Robinson: the man who put the I in Withnail and I

'I must have been eight or 10,' he recalls. 'I can't remember if it was a DB4 or a DB2 but he used to drive in state of complete Messerschmitt pilot danger. Completely pissed. And I really fancied all of that when I was a kid. That turned me on to Astons. But they are very beautiful.

'My Aston actually stars in Withnail. When they're going off on their journey, when he flicks the shades down and turns into the street, on the right over there is the Aston. The set people were saying "We've got to move those fucking cars" but I said it's all right, it's a '61, it's in period. No problem. So it stayed there.

'But the weird thing about them is that they were massively underpowered. That straight six engine they used to sling in those was about 300 horsepower and it's just not enough,' he continues. 'Except my one is considerably sort of heated up. It's got a very low-ratio back end and it whacks through the gears much, much faster than the normal version would. The car will supposedly go at 150 miles an hour but who wants that? I'd rather have it go like a rocket up to a hundred. After that it's appearances in court anyway, isn't it?'

He's a little more circumspect these days but, like both Withnall and Withnail, Robinson's own interpretation of the Highway Code has always been, at best, loose.

'All the things I used to love about driving - ie drinking and driving - are all illegal nowadays. It's a complete nightmare really,' he complains. 'I used to go around in that Aston full right up to the shoulder level with empties, bottles. And cans because I used to figure out how long a journey would take by them. It would be an eight-can journey; four cans out, four cans back. And I would just throw them over my shoulder so it was like a sort of council recycling tip in the back of the car there. You can't do anything like that any more can you?'

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