Here are a few names...

Here are a few names that have come up in the press over the last week or two: Tony Blair, Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt, Neil Kinnock and John Prescott. I"ve met them all on a personal, one-to-one level.

Talking cars with Tony Blair was a surreal experience not helped by the fact that his eyes looked mad, his mood was unnervingly edgy and his words were nonsensical. He doesn"t seem to know one end of a vehicle - or a manufacturer - from another.

I only met Clarke briefly when we shared a TV studio for a few minutes. He is possibly the most unfriendly man I"ve ever had the misfortune to sit alongside. Conversely, Hewitt is warm but unconvincing. You may remember her making a fuss about an allegedly sexist British Motor Show poster at a time when UK car makers were on their knees. And her recent years as Trade and Industry minister were so ineffective that she must take some of the blame for the death of MG Rover"s Longbridge plant, the imminent closure of Peugeot"s facility in Coventry and the implosion of Blackpool"s TVR factory.

Kinnock cynically made a professional friend of me and the newspaper for which I was working (the biggest seller in Britain) about a decade ago. He persuaded us to publish his "expert" views on road safety, but how hollow they now look. This is a man with a background in transport-related politics, yet the courts have decided his recent actions at the wheel are so bad, he"s been fined heavily and banned from driving. This is no way for a senior politician fast-approaching pensionable age to behave, is it?

Talking of OAPs, it"s none of our business if John Prescott, 67, uses his spare time to cheat on his wife of 45 years with Tracey Temple, who"s young enough to be his daughter. Neither should we be surprised that he allegedly "leapt" on Tricia McDaid. Or that he acted "disgustingly" in the company of Helga Forde. These are, on the face of it, private matters between him and the women who found themselves in the same places as him.

But the fact is those were work or work-related places. Sexual activity reportedly took place between him and Temple during working hours in at least one Government office and in Prescott"s plush living quarters, funded by the taxpayer. Official cars were used to ship the mistress around. They also enjoyed saucy phone conversations, hotel quickies and boozy parties. Were these indulgences also paid for by us, the public?

Prescott was guilty of gross misbehaviour in the office when, as Transport Secretary, he screwed up the roads and shafted Britain"s 50 million car users. And evidently he"s still misbehaving now when he"s paid handsomely by us to do his job - whatever that is.