you really CAN'T get better than a Kwik-Fit fitter

I went to Kwik-Fit the other day. Nothing so very out of the ordinary in that, you might say, and of course you would be right. It was just a fairly bog-standard trip to get the front two tyres on my car replaced, expedited by the provision of the facility to pre-order your chosen tyres via the Kwik-Fit website.

It's all done while-u-wait stylee, so my only complaint would be regarding my own failure to take a book with me, so I was left reading an out-of-date Sunday newspaper colour supplement for the 45 minutes or so I was sitting around waiting for the horny-handed oily proletarian type they'd assigned to my car to finish the job.

No, the only reason I mention any of this is that on examination of the invoice they presented me once they'd done the job I discovered something rather interesting. Take a look:


No? Look a little closer; here, I'll do it for you:


I swear to you there's no fakery involved here; my car was genuinely manhandled by that bloke off Civilisation (here's episode 1 in full; check out the sidebar for the others) in the early 1970s (and Conservative MP and serial sex pest Alan Clark's dad), with subsequent quality control procedures being carried out by Frank Sinatra's mate and Jerry Lewis' comedy sidekick. You can just imagine what would have happened if something had proved to be seriously wrong with the car:

When some swarf hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie
That's your head gasket gone, guv, that'll cost you

- not to be confused, of course, with the marine biologist eel-spotting song That's A Moray; one of a whole sub-genre of songs including Come On And Do The Conger and Are Eels Electric? And of course this one.