Except obviously he didn’t.

OK, there’s a very slim chance he did but he probably didn’t.

Anyway, what he definitely did do was to write a review of the Tesla Roadster in the Mail on Sunday’s LIVE magazine which included a lefty baiting rant about hating herbal tea drinking cyclists and an anecdote about parping his horn at a group of cyclists as he silently sped past in the electric sports car. The sheer shock of him tooting his tooter, according to his story at least, forced the unsuspecting riders off the road into the hedge.

James Martin successfully catches the first of 1000 bikes to be thrown at him.

Sadly his version of events have been deleted from the Mail’s Website so I stole them from elsewhere:

Twenty minutes into my test drive I pulled round a leafy bend, enjoying the birdsong – and spotted those Spider-Man cyclists. Knowing they wouldn’t hear me coming, I stepped on the gas, waited until the split second before I overtook them, then gave them an almighty blast on the horn at the exact same time I passed them at speed.

The look of sheer terror as they tottered into the hedge was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my rear-view mirror. I think this could be the car for me.

Brilliant, James. Just brilliant.

And his article has caused an ugly storm on the internet. Thanks to the wonder of Twitter and seemingly all the internet’s cycling Web sites every British cyclist has now read the article and become outraged by his now deleted words. In fact the shock of reading the article was so great I sprayed my Clippers Green Tea with Echinacea all over my keyboard!

Did it Really Happen? Did it?

Now, I realise this fact will amaze and shock you in equal measures: I’ve never met James Martin – but its hard to find anyone who’s not on HRT with anything nice to say about him.

Take the British Courts, for example. They ruled he was a liar. Back in 2008 his former stepmother sued him and won damages after extracts of his autobiography were published in a paper in which he labelled her the “ugliest women he had ever met” – oh, and he wrote some nastier stuff about her being a terrible witch of a stepmother that wasn’t as school boyishly funny so we’re under playing that.

However, what with this being the Daily Hate Mail I suspect that, as inappropriate as his comments were, James’ article was somewhat playing to the crowd. Was his encounter with the cyclists simply an exaggeration to add a touch of spice to his review? From my experience of Daily Mail readers, the tale of James’ Mr Toad antics could only have raised more self satisfied guffaws from the breakfast tables across the Home Counties if it had turned out the cyclists were, in fact, disabled, illegal immigrants.

Of course that doesn’t excuse him. His words were at best ill-judged and at worst an irresponsible admission of law breaking. Nor does his subsequent “sincere” apology – although apologies phrased as “Do you lot not have a sense of humour or what?” never seem particularly sincere to me – provide him with a get out of jail card.

But his claim that it was just a joke only leads me to believe that James either has a very strange sense of humour or he made the whole story up.

54,00 Complaints

Ross and Brand: A right pair of fuckers.

What’s interesting about this affair is how similar it seems to – the lazily named – Sachs-gate scandal that quite literally rocked the Daily Mail’s readership to its very stone-hearted core last year and yet how different the response of the Mail is.

On that ocassion the Mail embarked on a moral crusade to defend public decency – sadly it was too late to defend the chastity of Manuel’s Satanic Slut granddaughter, Georgina – which resulted in 54,000 complaints – 53,999 of which came from readers who hadn’t even heard of Russell Brand let alone the broadcast itself before the crusade began. But it also resulted in Brand and the controller of Radio 2 resigning and meant that 100’s, if not 1000’s, of Bridge Clubs had to cancel matches as their memebers stayed at home to write “Outraged of Eastbourne” letters to the Beeb.

Fast forward 12 months and when the Daily Mail publish an article – written by a BBC employee – containing a remorseless admission of “driving like a nutsack” that could, without exaggeration, caused someone’s death, they’re keeping tight lipped.

Harassment of the not so vulnerable elderly – oh no, no, no. Harassment of vulnerable cyclists- oh yes, yes, yes.

Has the Mail started a crusade to sack James Martin from its paper? Has the Editor resigned? Have they even mustered an apology? Has a monkey flown out of my butt?

This hippocracy is undoubtedly down to the Mail not really giving a flying fuck about cyclists – although if the truth be told, they didn’t give a flying fuck about Andrew Sachs or his granddaughter either they simply had an axe to grind with the BBC and a paper to sell. And they seem not to give one about honesty, transparency nor the decency that they previous did so much to defend. By demonstrating a level of journalistic integrity that you’d wouldn’t expect from a shoddy blogger they surreptitiously removed the offending words from the online version without so much of a by your leave, and closed the comments section’s flood gates to stop the deluge of complaints.

So James Martin might not have fucked your granddaughter but he surely deserves the sack from the Mail just as much as Britain’s cyclists deserve an apology from the paper.