24 Jan 08
We're temporarily holed up in Barnes, south-west London, while we wait to move back into our regular digs. It's a bit of a luvvie hangout, as I discovered when I caught Jennifer Saunders eagerly eyeing up the parking spot I was about to abandon near our flat. She was aggressively chewing gum as she eyed up the spot, all the while beaming that visual barbed wire that celebrities use to keep the likes of us at bay.
At this stage I must report that JS - she who is in second place on Top Gear's celebrities-in-a-car shtick - was driving a Porsche Carrera 2 S and it didn't have a Tiptronic gearbox. Hurrah! She's one of us (ish).
But I did catch a flicker as she took in the Roomster's profile, a sort of '...and what the hell is that he's driving?'
Because even after all this time, the most controversial thing about our Roomster is the way it looks. From the B-pillar forward, it's very sexy. From the B-pillar back, not so much. In fact, Clara (the better half by far of this duo) thinks it looks like a hearse. I think that's unfair, but I'm now struggling to remove that image from my memory banks. Like an annoying tune (on that score, I think I've probably heard Amy W's Rehab one or two times too many).
The looks of the thing are, indeed, polarising. When she first laid eyes on it, my niece thought it amazingly cool and demanded of her dad why they couldn't have something so neat. Which must have been galling, as he drives an Audi S4 convertible.
I still like it - the back end does veer worryingly close to a sort of wheels-on-meals stodge, but the whole is saved by the pure eccentricity of the front doors, with those custom-looking scallops. The only downside here is that in tight parking spots, the top of the door frame, which sweeps back more than is usual, can take some manoeuvring to get around as you enter and exit the car.
