James May column - James talks dirty - 2010

I spent some time with an artist the other day. He drives a diesel Audi so, inevitably, the conversation soon moved on to the subject of sympathetically restoring paintings from the Italian renaissance and the Dutch masters.

What many people perhaps don't realise is that it wasn't until 30 or so years ago that we started to see these things as they looked in their own time. That's because they hung for centuries in rooms lit by smoky candles and warmed by coal fires, and admired by people puffing on clay pipes, and who emitted malodorous clouds of BO and germs. Pretty soon they were plastered with soot.

Interestingly, I'm having my own house repainted as I write. It was last done about five years ago, and already, if I remove a picture from the wall, I can see where it was by the outline of grime that frames its former position. Presumably the same grime is on the picture.

And that's after just a few years in the modern world, where only the cack from the odd diesel Audi floats through the window. Now imagine what has stuck to Botticelli's Birth of Venus over the last 500 years.

If you look at it in the colour plates of old art books, it looks pretty flat and dull. Look at the cleaned-up version in Florence's Uffizi gallery today, and it's almost 1960s-a-delic in its vibrant brightness. That's because, once the technique had been worked out, somebody finally cleaned it and revealed its beauty.

I assume there's no one out there who thinks it shouldn't have been cleaned. Thought not. So - what about the car?

"Why would you drive around in a dirty Ferrari? The whole point of beautiful cars is that other people can enjoy them as well, surely?"

Despite what my colleagues might like to tell you, I actually hate cleaning cars. The only things I hate more are cleaning motorcycles and trying on a new pair of trousers. Cleaning cars is very boring. Richard Hammond really does enjoy it, but that's because he turns it into a family entertainment, and out in the countryside it's that or make yet more chutney.

Trouble is, I hate dirty cars even more than I hate cleaning them. Somehow, driving a clagged-up car is an insult to the people who designed and made it, especially if it's something made with love like a Fezza or a Fiat Panda.

Why would you drive around in a dirty Ferrari? The whole point of beautiful cars is that other people can enjoy them as well, surely? Driving a Ferrari or an Aston DB4 GT or a Parker Knoll-bodied Bentley is an act of generosity and philanthropy, like buying up Picassos and hanging them outside of your house.

But not if it's dirty. It just doesn't look as good. It was designed as a clean and shiny thing and should be presented as one, like the painting. You owe it to society.

It's not as if cleaning the car is in any way difficult. You drive it down the road and find an Albanian living in a railway arch, give him £5 and then stand back. Then you wrest the jet hose thing from him and do it yourself because he keeps missing bits and bashing the door mirrors.

The inside should be kept clean as well. You sit in it, and so do your friends. You don't want to wallow in filth. You don't do that at home. Get it hoovered out, you slovenly bugger. And while you're at it, yes, you should remove all that dust from the air vents. It's full of fart particles and is horrible.

It's not as if it's difficult to clean the inside of your car. You just drive down the road, find a Latvian living in a converted container, give him £10 and threaten him with an untimely and unlamented death if he goes anywhere near it with that disgusting silicon spray that makes the dashboard look like a nylon suit and the pedals all slippery.

There you have it - just 45 minutes of your time, and most of it gainfully occupied by other people, and you have a car that you, the public and the motoring community can look at and be proud of, rather than some scrofulous box of bilharzia and TB that looks as though it's been driven out of the 19th century. Job done.

Curiously, Clarkson and I - can you imagine - disagree on this one. Everything that has ever entered or adhered to his car is still there, and will be until he sells it. Some of his children may be in there. Everything you might want to know about Jeremy Clarkson, and probably quite a bit you didn't want to know, can be found by rummaging through his car. But at least he's safe from the gutter press going through his bins.

I assume they're empty.