Back on the road again

Tired of being told by environmentalists that you should put all your savings into an "ethical bank", even if that means lower returns? Then join us here at Vic's Unethical Bank, where we specialise in exploiting the poorest and most disadvantaged people, on behalf of our wealthy customers.

Give us your money and we promise to invest it only in businesses that employ child labourers, flog arms to corrupt dictators, trade in narcotics, cut down the rainforest, pollute the environment or mastermind international prostitution rackets, all of which are considerably more lucrative and profitable than setting up wind farms or saving the whale.

Whenever you enter one of our branches, you'll see pictures of polluted arctic wildernesses, and of enchained eight-year-old children working in Third-World sweat shops for 8p a day, thereby helping to boost your savings; and when you withdraw your cash, our cashiers will symbolically smear the notes with blood, to remind you that your money has been hard-earned (though not by you). So remember our slogan here at the VUB: Vic's Unethical Bank can only pay so much interest to you because we pay so little interest to everyone else.

Those who like the sound of the VUB were probably also attracted to the gas-guzzling SUVs (sports utility vehicles), Bentleys, and Ferraris that featured on last night's 5th Gear (Channel 5). Less laddish than BBC2's Top Gear, the show at least makes some attempt to address the concerns of ordinary drivers, but like all motoring programmes, its main purpose is clearly to give male presenters of a certain age the chance to get behind the wheel of high-performance, environmentally unfriendly cars that they could never afford in real life.

Personally, I preferred such vehicles-back in the days when they all ran on leaded petrol, mainly because of my contempt for squeegee merchants, who make a pretence of washing your windscreen at traffic lights, before demanding money with menaces.

They're the bastard offspring of the twin dogmas of Thatcherism (care in the community, and total deregulation of private enterprise), and if only all Londoners in the early Nineties had driven gas-guzzlers and revved hard at major crossroads, our lead-enriched fumes could have finished the lot off within a month.

"SUVs are vulgar and selfish vehicles" declared an unmade bed called Adrian Simpson, who proceeded to review a new Volvo chiefly in terms of its stereo, excitedly emphasising its "140-watt sub-woofer, and 13 speakers" (though why we need 11 more speakers than we have ears was never explained).

Meanwhile, Tiff Needell (is that a name or a fault in the carburettor?) was at the Ferrari factory in Modena, driving a big red penis substitute on wheels around a race track, and talking to us in such an absurdly in-yer-face manner that I began to realise what Jack Ashley must have gone through for all those years.

But just as my brain was slipping into neutral, on bounced the delectable Vicki Butler-Henderson, who informed us of the scams used by traffic wardens to boost their output, and counselled us to challenge rogue tickets at every opportunity, because the cowardly authorities will often back down if you do. Her advice was an eye opener, although I'd rather have seen her present the earlier SUV item, because there's surely no more delightful sight than a beautiful woman offering an in-depth inspection of her Volvo.

If Vicki is pure televisual Viagra, then Quentin "2Ls" Willson is surely pure televisual bromide. He's the NCO of British television, beneath whose brilliantine-smooth exterior lies an unreconstructed Estuary man, and even though he smugly presented his report from within "my own personal Bentley", you could tell that there remains something of the Ford Cortina about the man.