I was six months pregnant when I was asked to be psychological commentator on Five’s Britain’s Worst Driver. I was happy to participate but I got a bit nervous when they asked me to get in the car with one of the bad drivers.
“She’ll only be going slow,” the producers said. “To teach her to calm down we’ve put a barrel full of water and eggs on top of the car and asked her to drive without spilling them.” They wanted me to comment on her state of mind as she did this.
This woman was a very bad driver (she went on to win the show) and she ignored the barrel, driving in her usual way by lurching from side to side so the eggs began smashing on the windscreen.
But — partly because I was pregnant — I began feeling anxious and I told her to stop the car immediately. There was no way I was going to be driven by her in my condition.
A few months later I had an experience with my husband Teddy that brought back the memory. He’s a much better driver than she was, but he has the unfortunate habit of taking his eyes off the road to look around him.
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We were on the Hammersmith flyover in west London on a freezing day in January and we had his parents in the back. As we came over the top something caught his eye and he turned to look at it.
I could see we were approaching a queue of slow-moving cars but he hadn’t noticed. I began to madly pump the floor, looking for non-existent brakes, and I called his name in a panic — “Teddy!” The weirdest thing was he swivelled his head 180 degrees, from looking out of his side window to looking at me, without stopping to check the road.
We ploughed into the car in front and there was a sickening crunch as our bumper crumpled the other car’s behind. We weren’t going fast and nobody was hurt, and I had to laugh at the way Teddy’s head had switched from one wrong focal point to another.
Linda Papadopoulos is best known for giving psychological profiles of contestants on Big Brother. Her book The Man Manual is out now