Pimp My Pride

Is it really possible to rescue a car from impending doom by giving it a stereotypical lick of paint and a DVD player? Not a chance, but MTV will always give it a try...

When you switch on your television, which channel do you aim for first? The 'cultured' members of an audience may flick through the grown up bits of UKTV Documentary and Drama. The unemployable, all-day viewers might pick a re-run of Supermarket Sweep or Street Crime UK ("You can see me in that shot!"). If youre as stunningly intellectual as myself you may choose to watch 3 repeats of old Top Gear episodes per day on UKTV People, occasionally recording them to make sure I have something to watch between showings of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

However, modern pop culture was presented with MTV more than 20 years ago, and slowly but surely more and more rubbish has arrived on the network. I'm not saying that its an entirely bad thing - if young people are at home watching Jackass then theyre not outside firing BB Guns at kittens (not a proven fact). But in the last couple of years, MTV has presented us with the Bling Encrusted Extravagance known as Pimp My Ride, a show dedicated to taking crap cars and filling them with flatscreen TVs and subwoofers which will obviously shake the 25 year old chassis apart.

If you've never seen the show, here's a brief explanation: a thick-built rapper pays a visit to a deserving individual with a rusty old American Corner-Shy car in need of sprucing up (or scrapping). The car is taken off to a workshop, where some barely-evolved men attach ten grand's worth of body kits and neon lights, before presenting the glammed-up death trap back to it's owner.

The car has usually been given a theme, meticulously based on one impromptu item they find in the car which is assumed to be the key to the owners personality and lifestyle; a classic example of this could be seen in an episode where the designers found a bowling ball on the back seat and took it upon themselves to install a ball polisher in the boot.

This got me thinking what would they do if they got their hairy hands on my car? I doubt they could even fit their Neanderthal biceps in through the doors of my Fiat Cinquecento, let alone find space to glam it up with a chandelier or a karma fountain. If I even put too much shopping in the boot, the car tilts backwards dangerously, so imagine what would happen if they put 16 inch stealth speakers in there; the window would probably shake itself out.

Theme-wise, there are things currently in my car that would be dangerous in the hands of a creative mind; there are little bits of Lego caught under the carpets, fluffy Las Vegas dice covering up scuffed sections on the plastic by the back seats, a pink diamante tax disc holder and - the piece de resistance - a nodding Yoda on the dashboard. The customising guys would go crazy! I'd be presented with an X-Wing Fighter paint job, diamond encrusted 18 inch alloy wheels, a Lego dashboard and shag carpeting. It would be like sitting in a tiny flat in Brixton, shared by a middle-aged loner and his grandmother.

So look where this has left me - sitting in a barrel of stereotypes which are likely to result in a thorough beating from those who are usually on the receiving end of my moans (primarily The French, but on this occasion its rappers and dimwitted television producers). And that's my presiding muse on this whole subject; is Pimp My Ride just a carriage for stereotypes? As Pimp My Ride UK takes hold of this proud nation, will the cars instantly take on tweed seating and somewhere to put our cup-and-saucers? Will the American producers throw away their expletive bleeps because they expect us to just say, "Crikey!" when we see the car?