"What do you think of Droids?" While I know 6.30am is an appropriate time for persons who work on the tools to be making phone calls, those of us in the more genteel classes, such as the car writing caper, are waking from a sound sleep at that time.

Now, these days this is compounded by the fact that even if the old geezer on the end of the line is a friend, globally known artiste, technician, rally driver and all-round renaissance person, you can't immediately blurt out a profanity-ridden tirade against Droids (whoever they are) lest you get a camera shoved in your face as you walk out the front door.

"You remember Mark Southcott, the Casanova of the south coast, the woke Moke-driver, sub-editor to the stars on the world's greatest newspaper and participant in many of our adventures?"

The Sultan grunted. "Well, after 40 years and 380,000km, the Markster decided to shout his British death trap new front seats. He tells me he bought the new seats from Minisport in South Australia where he says 'they have everything you need for Sir Alec Issigonis's various toys, including every body panel for a Moke. You can build your own car with their panels and a welder. You just need a donor body number and compliance plate.' Well there's an early thought for a gift for that special someone."

Anyway, COSC (Casanova of the South Coast) gets stuck in. "Two hours later, having not let the rusted bolts beat me, I got the first old seat out, but was now out of time to do the other one. I then realised I really also needed to replace the bolts (8 half inch or 1.27cm jobs). To get those I needed to drive to the Unanderra specialist bolts shop 45km away. You would have thought, having been as deeply involved in the wonders what the British passed off as a car for 45 years, I would have done the passenger seat first. It was a long walk."

Over in Spain, Hamo didn't just win, he was 24 seconds ahead of Mad Max Verstappen and was so in the groove he actually didn't realise he was on the last lap. While things are bright for Hamo, not so good for the F1 company run by our old rugby-playing US mate Chase Carey. Chase had to tell analysts that revenue had sunk to $32m this quarter from $840m last year. Not surprisingly profit was down 569 per cent.