24th June and where is Darwin when you need him? I am a huge fan of the Darwin Awards. Some border on the extreme, and they certainly make me smile. However, this particular morning, I badly needed somebody—anybody—to take one jerk off the road.

We had had the weekend from hell, it was cold, rainy and the roads were very slippery. On the Pacific Highway, before North Sydney, I stopped for a red light, as you do. The lights turned green, and I watched with fascination as this idiot came out of the right-hand side street on to the highway. Given that his lights would not have been amber, but well and truly red, he decided that the red was not quiet red enough (perhaps he was hoping for a different shade) doing about 80. The combination of speed, the road conditions and his own bad driving resulted in the fool skidding from a lane to lane trying not to roll his 20- year-old 3-series BMW. Since this was very early morning, he was saved by the fact that it was only him, me and one car behind me. All three of us stopped at the next lights, and it made my day to look across and see a twenty-something male, as white as a sheet, with a deathly grip on the steering wheel, terrified to take one finger off. I was going to add to his woes by telling him that he was an idiot, but I thought he must have figured that out all by himself.