Truly, there is almost no end to the myriad pettifogging ways in which we’ve contrived to make the whole driving experience as miserable as possible: bus-lane cameras that don’t care if you were only straying across briefly to turn left – they’ll have your £60 just the same; swarms of overzealous traffic wardens paid not according to fairness but by results; ever-expanding congestion charging; a growing array of swingeing green taxes; on-board monitors in company cars (it’ll be all cars next) to check they never exceed the speed limit; motorist-harassing “Mad Mullah” of the North Wales police Richard Brunstrom; even spy satellites.

You’ll protest that most of these annoyances were dumped on us unbidden – invariably by EU diktat – but I still think we must all accept our share of blame. When, little by little, our motoring freedoms were being eroded, we did not protest nearly as much as we should have done. Instead, we allowed ourselves to be gulled by deeply misleading Government safety campaigns like “Speed Kills” (which it rarely does, actually: only 5 per cent of road accidents involve motorists breaking the speed limit). Worse, we bought far too heavily into the green propaganda line that private cars are a near-inexcusable luxury in times of global warming.

Is there anything we can do to turn back the clock to the era of that nice old lady? Probably not. Not with rising fuel prices and ever more overcrowded roads. But we can at least have a stab at it. The fightback must begin with an attitude of mind. It is time to reclaim our inner Mister Toad, and remember that cars still are, as they always have been, about fun, freedom and escape. Poop! Poop!