Motorworld

I was able to land a job in journalism on the Rotherham Advertiser because grandfather, a doctor, had delivered the editor’s baby during an air raid in the war.

And I found myself on Top Gear after sitting next to the producer at a party.

And my luck didn’t run out on Motorworld. It only rained when we specifically wanted it to. People turned up at the appointed hour and said exactly what we had hoped. Machinery never broke down. The camera never jammed.

This, for two years and eleven countries, was the law.

But then we arrived in Dubai and absolutely everything that could go pear-shaped ended up looking like an artichoke.

The customs confiscated bits of vital equipment. Our Range Rover caught fire. And on the last night, the very last night of our two-year world tour, we found ourselves in the middle of a religious festival and that all the bars were forbidden from selling alcohol.

Let’s take it step by step. In order to demonstrate how Arabs are now more interested in power than purple-velour headrests, we borrowed an Escort Cosworth which had been tuned to develop 420 horsepower.

You may recall that our interview with the driver was conducted at the roadside. This was because it broke down.

Then the falconers didn’t turn up, and when they did, three days late, the hunting vehicles had disappeared. Then the heavens opened and in the next ten days Dubai received more than two years’ worth of rain.

There were floods so deep, smaller people needed an aqualung just to go shopping.

We were having to rejig our already vague schedule on an hour-by-hour basis, which would have been hard enough in a media-aware country like America. But in the United Arab Emirates to change a long-standing arrangement is to ensure it won’t happen. We know this because even if you don’t change anything, it won’t happen either.

Take the fun run for an example. This was an event where 750 cars and upwards of 2,000 ex-pats head into the desert in their off-road cars for two days of getting stuck and lost, and then stuck again.

The only way it was possible to demonstrate the enormity of such an event was from the air, which is why we’d hired a helicopter.

This had been organised for weeks. It had the backing of their government. The pilot had been briefed. But air traffic control decided fifteen minutes into the flight that it was a military area and that the chopper should return to base.

That meant we had to spend all day playing catch-up with the rest of the competitors — a problem that was made even harder because we had to lug half a ton of film equipment around.

Just 50 yards into the soft sand and a call for help came over the radio from Keith, the cameraman. His Discovery was stuck up to its axles in powder.

Happily, the producer, Andy, was in a 4.5-litre 24-valve, 6-cylinder Toyota Land Cruiser pickup which looked like shit but which, off-road, was unstoppable. It became known as the Millennium Falcon.

And it pulled the Discovery out. And 20 yards later, it did it again. And then, 250 yards on, it repeated the process once more.

Tactfully, we took Keith on one side and explained that, in order to keep going, he must stick the gearbox in first, in high range and never, ever, ever lift his right foot from the carpet.

Keith, we said, it doesn’t matter if the valves begin to bounce through the bonnet, or if you’re about to crest a brow which may be the precursor of a sheer drop. No matter what, Keith baby, you must drive everywhere absolutely flat out.

Now this was all right in my Jeep, and the director’s Range Rover and the Millennium Falcon because they were empty. But on the first bump taken at speed in the Discovery, ?150,000-worth of camera equipment leapt out of the boot, ricocheted off the roof and ended up in the passenger footwell.

In the end, we were actually saved by the rain, which gave the sand a more gluey texture allowing poor old Keith to drive a little more slowly. The downside was simple. All hopes of catching the other cars up were dashed.

But I didn’t care because I have decided that driving in the desert is better than sex.

Certainly, it’s a damn sight rougher, as you are hurled sometimes three feet out of your seat. This means your right foot leaves the throttle and that, of course, is catastrophic, because the revs die, the wheels bog down and you are then faced with an hour’s digging.

But on the flatter, harder-packed plains, you can get up to 100 mph or more, safe in the knowledge that there is nothing to hit, that you aren’t breaking the law and that your exhaust fumes can’t even find a flower to throttle.

The desert is a big deal in the UAE.

The fun run happens annually, and is organised by the Gulf News newspaper for ex-pats who, very sensibly, would never dream of heading out there alone.

Over the last ten years I’ve been fortunate to see some truly epic scenery. There are the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, the Yorkshire Dales just near Keld and the wall reefs that surround the Maldives.

But for me, the best views are to be found in a desert, and the best desert of all has its eastern fringes 30 miles from Dubai. They call it the Empty Quarter.

There is no life out there, just millions of tons of sand which have been shaped and crafted by the wind. It’s a constantly changing landscape but it is never anything other than extraordinarily beautiful.

Fun too, because most nights teenagers take their tuned four-wheel-drive cars to the wastelands for a bit of dune-bashing.

Every night, hundreds of guys choose a particularly arduous slope and see who can get up it… and before the tree-huggers start to whinge, I should explain that after everyone goes home, one breath of wind is all it takes to erase their tracks.

Now I had a 4.6-litre Range Rover which had air suspension and the pressure in its tyres lowered to 10 psi. Here, then, was the world’s best off-roader which had been modified to do the job. And it failed.

The reason is simple — 4.6 litres is not enough. You need a lot more than that, and special sand tyres which are nearly slick. Some skill is useful too.

One guy had an ordinary-looking Nissan Patrol and he could dawdle up the slope, changing gear halfway up if he felt like it. He could stop at 45 degrees, and then get going again.

On the rear window there was a large question mark, which provided the perfect answer for anyone wanting to know what sort of engine it had. A big one. With some turbos, at a guess.

We were deeply impressed but there was more to come because these guys like to drive home on two wheels. One veered on to the wrong side of the dual carriageway and then swerved back so that his Nissan hoiked itself over… and stayed like that for fifteen miles!

Each to his own. In England, young chaps show off by seeing who can drink the most pints, and who will order the hottest curry. Out there, where they don’t drink, the challenge is to see who can drive the furthest at 45 degrees.

Others do doughnuts while some indulge in full-bore, smoking-tyred, wailing-banshee quarter-mile tests.

The police don’t really care, and nor do passing motorists, most of whom simply pull on to the hard shoulder for a gawp.

Let’s be honest. The average Arab isn’t really in a hurry to get anywhere. I mean, it’s not like the next meeting will be make or break. And they don’t need to get the cheque into the bank on time.

These guys are so rich, it makes your teeth itch. If Elton John lived out there, they’d put him on income support. We worry about winning the lottery when most of the Arabs are getting that sort of cash every day. Some, I suspect, make millions every hour.

It made the news in Britain when a Dubai sheikh wandered into a London furniture store and bought every single item in the showroom. The bill was ?325,000 which is nothing. They lose ?325,000 down the back of the sofa most nights.

I know of one woman who made a set of curtains for someone’s house. He paid the ?340 bill… and gave her a Jaguar XJS convertible as a present.

When Mohammed Bin Sulayem said on the programme, ‘I am not a rich man,’ viewers all over Britain gasped because I’d already explained that he had a Ferrari F50, a tuned F40, a Jaguar XJ220 and a Porsche 959. In