Why British Leyland is my home team

I BEGIN this week with a confession. I know nothing about football.

Despite the best efforts of my (Liverpool-supporting) mates I still can't feign any interest whatsoever in the beautiful game, so much so that I'll actually keep an eye out for pubs which aren't showing Rooney's/Gerrard's/Lampard's (delete as appropriate) on a big screen at volumes even Spinal Tap considered a bit loud. But I do reckon - and feel free to give me a yellow card on this one - I understand the psychology of sticking behind your team through thick and thin.

In much the same way a kid brought up in The Kop is going to grow up a Liverpool supporter, so I reckon impressionable young petrolheads raised in the vicinity of a particular kind of car are going to develop a loyalty to it in later life. In some cases it's so acute they'll even develop allegiances to just one model.

It's a pity then that when I grew up in the late Eighties and early Nineties that the garage was always filled with motors made millions of years ago by a long-gone firm called British Leyland, which in a distant past peppered the papers with stories of strikes, Austins and Morrises which wouldn't start and never-ending quests to make Britain's biggest car maker turn a profit. But right up until Rover, its eventual successor, finally went under five years ago, I “supported” them.

Sure, Team BL scored a string of fairly cataclysmic own goals - the Morris Ital, for instance - but after a childhood spent in the company of the better cars it was almost inevitable I'd make two of my first three motors British Leyland ones.

Lots of you, for instance, took an interest in the MGB GT I bought earlier this year, which after a while of seeing it stuck silently in the garage I was begining to lose interest in it.

Or rather I was until I started it up and got an earful of evocative memories.

I love it because it's a cad's car, which you somehow suspect is up to no good even when it's sat still in a garage, like an escapee from the set of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You need to be a real car nut - guilty as charged - to understand why Rostyle wheels and chrome bumpers are cool, but they just are.

In much the same way as a Liverpool supporter is going to grudgingly acknowledge David Beckham's talent I'll happily praise all manner of motors - but obviously BL, my “home team” is indefinably better.

P.S: Racing driver Ben Collins (aka The Stig) makes his debut on Top Gear-rivalling Fifth Gear tonight at 7.30pm on Channel Five. Miss it and miss out...