DIARY: Day out racing with The Sci-Fi Channel - Someone lets Jeremy Lee near fast cars. Frightening

7am Clutching a pair of string-backed driving gloves, I arrive

bleary-eyed at Sci-Fi HQ. It's 7am but I'm already late. The coach,

driven by a man not dissimilar to Pops from The League of Gentleman,

sets off on the two-and-a-half hour journey to Norfolk. Hopes of seeing

burning pyres are high, but within 15 minutes, everyone's asleep. Apart

from the constantly cheerful Tony Chatfield, who talks all the way

there.

9.30am Arrive at Snetterton and are split into groups of orange, white

and a hitherto unheard-of colour called teal, which most people would

call green. Clearly the trainer has been shopping at Habitat recently

or, like the Inuit, Norfolk folk have more than one word to describe

their immediate environment. We sign our lives away while the geniuses

who thought they wouldn't need driving licences on a driving day - Simon

Willis - have their credentials checked.

9.45am We're let out to examine the cars and the pit-lane looks like the

drive at Colin Gottlieb's house, but without the gravel. Everyone

excitedly clambers over an assortment of Porsche 911s, Ferrari

Berlinettas, Lotus Esprits and Dodge Vipers. F1 loon Steve Jenkins turns

up in his mum's Ford Escort - his own Metro blew up recently, he

explains, to the visible consternation of the staff.

10.30am Races start. The rules say two spins and you're out. Drivers

start in Audi S3s before working their way up the supercars. BLM's

Caroline Bamford begins impressively, undertaking her first lap in the

sporty Audi at a rip-roaring 23mph. One agency chap is concerned with

left-hand drive as his 'right hand is stronger than his left'. Hmm.

1.30pm Just as Sci-Fi's Patrick Crowe, Chris Rea tape in hand, is

preparing to hang his jacket in the back-seat window, it starts to rain.

Chatfield and Tamara Choy receive stern words for spinning Porsches.

Then it starts to piss down. Once it stops, we're off again and Jenkins,

in a scene Maureen from Driving School would be proud of, completely

misses a turn in the Viper, brakes heavily in a cloud of smoke and

speeds through some cones at 140mph.

4.30pm Congratulations to the winners, who receive a bottle of bubbly to

enjoy at their leisure and a plastic trophy to leave on the bus home.

There are two main prizes - one for best driver and one for best female

driver, which must mean they are mutually exclusive. The competitive

Paul Benson from Universal McCann wins best driver, Choy best female and

Bamford most improved driver, although the consensus is that it was from

a very low base.