Confessions of a tyreophile

At Oxford I had a clerical friend, a mature postgraduate and student of 19th-century evangelism, who developed a temporary but consuming passion for car tyres. Unlike his more lasting passions for tobacco, alcohol and (I believe) cannabis, his enthusiasm for tyres was as great as his ignorance; he didn’t know a cross-ply from a radial. His fundamental ur-passion was really for easy ways of making money, and for two terms he thought tyres were the answer to life. He had been greatly taken by a probably apocryphal story about some Cambridge undergraduates who imported tyres from Holland and allegedly made £14,000 in one year (a great deal then) without having to see or touch a tyre themselves. That latter aspect appealed particularly to him.

It didn’t to me: I like tyres, their smell, their tactility, their obvious utility. A well-shod car is a pleasure to behold. Nor am I alone â” I know a respectable married lady who can barely keep herself from stroking every tractor tyre she sees.