Traditionally, the car salesman cuts a comedic figure. Pimps for their own pride, entirely lacking in scruples, and drenched in cheap aftershave to match their cheap suit. But a used car salesman... the very term carries with it a certain low rent infamy, conjuring up shonky wheeler-dealer types who’ll do or say anything to make that sale.
The film Made In America cast Ted Danson as one such scally-wag. Not only did he spend his days flogging product already deemed unfit for purpose by at least one previous owner, he kept trying to revisit Whoopi Goldberg’s well-trodden ladies porch. Calm down Ted, you already knocked her up once you insatiable halfwit.
Lou Fromneighbours ran a used car lot. He laughed like a reptile – untrustworthy sort. Then he lost it all, donated a kidney to Harold Fromneighbours, and poked some Russian mail-order bride.
Then there’s Swiss Toni, a caricature of the car dealer archetype featured on The Fast Show. Likened everything to making love to a beautiful woman. My suspicions about the bequiffed smarmbag’s success rate with beautiful women and his sense of humour are much the same. He doesn’t have one.
Perhaps the greatest of them all was Frank Butcher. Everyone’s favourite diamond geezer, this rascal was sound as a pound, and could often be found pounding that mound (Pat) but disgraced himself by torching his lot for the insurance. Frank, I never had you down as such a double-yolker. Frank disappeared to that Eastenders hinterland of Manchester for some years before returning as he left - in a blaze of glory. Rival dealer Roy Evans fired straight into Pat, but took Viagra for his pathetic impotence and died quite dramatically of a heart attack, knocking loads of files and stuff over as he fell down. Roy, you dipstick!
Roy’s son Barry followed his father’s lead into the used car world, with mixed results. What am I saying? He was utter balls at it. Inept, ineffectual, and pretty much a full-on retard; a master of glass-cut banter and business nous this was not. Barry copped it at the hands of poor, damaged Janine, by “falling” off a cliff. As Frank would have it, “Barry went into the Cairngorms wearing a pair of city shoes, like the dozy big plum he always was!” I’ll leave the last word on Barry to his father Roy: “It’s not because your illegitimate, it’s because you’re a bastard.” Classic.
For used cars, from the kind of people that are probably disappointingly trustworthy, try fish4.co.uk. For personal loans, go to rbs.co.uk