Chopper cut down to size

The Weekender

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and theatre ticket deals

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Inspired by those shining alumni of HMP Bellmarsh, ex-cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken and the great fiction writer Jeffrey Archer (well, his CV was

great

Our web site offers the discerning prisoner a full range of legal (and illegal) services, including acting classes in the Saunders Method, which teaches you how to acquire Temporary Irreversible Alzheimer's Disease, so the judge will declare you "too ill to see out your sentence" and allow you to return to the City, where you'll instantly become well enough to acquire a string of lucrative directorships.

We also have a team of stunt criminals on our books, available for hire by the police whenever the real criminal is too dangerous to be let out of his cell for court appearances.

So next time you see a defendant on the evening news with a blanket over his head, being led out of a police van past a jeering crowd who are throwing rocks at his skull, that will probably be me. And no, those stones aren't domigang my brian.

Of course I can tell you how many fingers you're holding up. The answer is Thursday.

Legal firms such as mine ensure the public's faith in lawyers stays low, but surveys show that the two least-trusted professions of all are journalist and car salesman.

So it somehow seemed appropriate that Friday night's Confessions Of A Car Salesman (Five) consisted of scheming hacks slyly trying to cast aspersions on the equally sly tactics of a bunch of scheming men from the motor trade.

We all know the little tricks that the latter get up to, such as telling us that a used car has had "one careful owner" (without mentioning the previous four, who were all maniacs), or advertising a VW Polo as being "in mint condition" because it has a hole right through it.

But the programme makers were equally duplicitous, especially in giving an utterly irrelevant and misleading title to their documentary, in the hope that a hint of salaciousness would boost the ratings.

By way of comparing sales techniques in America and Britain, the cameras focused on Chopper, the most successful and flamboyant car dealer in Las Vegas.

A sort of fat Tony Robbins (five more pounds and he could qualify for group insurance), his high-energy method centred on loud motivational speeches to his staff, in-your-face hassling of customers, and the banging of a gong whenever another sale was made in his Towbin Dodge used-car lot.

"The way he trains is really real, human-wise" declared a colleague in awestruck tones.

But would the dynamic credo of this secular Nevada priest work equally well in sleepy Staffordshire, where he'd been invited to retrain the staff at the Motorhouse used-car showroom?

Or would he be won over by their unassuming Black Country brand of secular Buddhism, which relied on passivity and silence to clinch the deal?

Far from bringing us any confessions, all the documentary did was record the predictable clash between American brashness and British reserve.

Chopper's attempts to whip up a party atmosphere in Cannock shopping centre failed embarrassingly, while the British salesmen turned out to be the sort of people who buy their sense of humour from a joke shop and regard wearing comedy spectacles fitted with windscreen wipers as an adequate substitute for wit.

A surly gentleman called Pete was especially resistant to displaying any enthusiasm for his job (indeed, his whole purpose in life may well be to act as a warning to others), but he nevertheless managed to sell dozens of cars, including one to a couple who said: "We came 12 months ago and we bought, and we've come back again, so that must say something, mustn't it?".

Indeed it must, although what it says to me is that the first used car they bought from Motorhouse could have completely broken down within a year.

Ultimately, Chopper wasn't very successful at selling cars to British punters, and he wasn't very successful at selling himself to viewers either.

But much of the blame for that must lie with the programme- makers, because simply taking a fish out of water and filming it as it thrashes around breathlessly on the riverbank could never form the basis for a serious documentary (although, to be fair, Five doesn't seem to have a serious documentary department at present, which may explain why they commissioned this).

As for the cars, they mostly seemed overpriced but reliable, and as my word processor crashed for the third time today, I wondered what would have happened if the motor industry had behaved like the computer industry over the past 40 years.

By now, I suppose, a Rolls Royce would cost £2, would do 600,000 miles to the gallon, and would blow up once a year, killing everyone inside.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in