When I say ‘never meet your heroes’ I don’t mean in terms of people you admire – I never got a chance to meet racing driver Ayrton Senna, but I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Nigel Mansell several times in his capacity of IAM RoadSmart President, and talk at length with him about his career and viewpoints.

My car finally had enough. It had a successful three year stint until various problems started to arise, suggesting it may be time for me to start searching for something else. My little Night Fury (the name I gave my car due to the resemblance of the dragon’s eyes in the film ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and the headlights on my car) was ready to be passed on to someone who could put him on the operating table and fix him – something I couldn’t afford to do.

At the end of January I had the first taste of being in front of a camera in my role as IAM RoadSmart’s young driver ambassador. I was invited by Boston Advanced Motorists to join them at Listers Mini dealership in Boston. The group had organised an ‘assessed drive’ video to be created; the idea was to create a short video that demonstrates what an assessed drive involves, focussing on the stress-free element of these sessions.

There are several changes coming to the MOT test, starting on 20 May (apart from in Northern Ireland, where they have a separate MOT system). The most obvious will be a new, more elaborate way of classifying defects. Currently, each item is simply marked as Fail or Pass. In future, defects leading to the car failing the test will be categorised as Dangerous or Major.

I’m not superstitious but sometimes weird things happen that I can’t explain and I get a bit spooked. For example, one evening last week I was sitting in my favourite chair, thinking about plans for the weekend. Nothing unusual there. Suddenly I remembered that my girlfriend Kim (playing with her phone on the sofa opposite) had made some tentative plans to have lunch with a friend. “You still meeting Jen on Saturday?” I asked. At that precise moment, Kim’s phone went ‘ping’ announcing a text message from (you’ve guessed it) Jen, cancelling on lunch.