On having a You've Been Framed moment

On having a You've Been Framed moment

Now, there's something you don't see every day: a little old man crashing his shopmobility scooter into a tree.

Granted, if you're the bloke at ITV who puts You've Been Framed together, you probably see little old men crashing their shopmobility scooters into all kinds of stuff before exploding in a ball of flame, leaving just one wheel and a shoe with a whisp of smoke coming out of it.

Day in, day out, nothing but hideous electric wheelchair accidents until you wish you were dead and/or were working for the other side watching Graham Norton telling people "You could be a Nancy" without the slightest trace of irony in his voice.

Aaaaand... Back to the chase. So, I was crawling to work the other morning along Reading's Bath Road, when I noticed – with some disgust, as I unpacked the contents of my left nostril – that a smug-looking senior citizen on a mobility scooter was overtaking me on the inside through judicious use of the cycle lane.

Building up a sizable lead over your humble narrator in The Silver Hornet, he went past car after car, probably chuckling to himself how he was going to cruise round town, picking up women and having his wicked way with them over the shopping basket.

Then, with no warning whatsoever – and clearly the work of some strange gravitational field – the pavement-hogging hooligan's machine lurched violently to the left and careered straight into a large tree, foolishly left at the side of the road by Reading Borough Council.

SPANG! He went like an elderly Marc Bolan, before driving off seemingly none the worse for wear.

Naturally, I was concerned for the old codger's wellbeing, and showed the sensitive side of my nature by laughing like a stupid.

I LOLed, in fact. I LOLed out loud, before driving off to work, pausing only, now that the red mist had descended, to mow down the queue outside Caversham Post Office for further LULz.

"Was it a plane tree?" a colleague subsequently asked.

"Yeah. It didn't have any leaves on it."

Strangely, this little episode occurred on the same bit of road I saw a cement lorry overturn last year, as if DRAGGED DOWN by some sort of localised Bermuda Triangle.

It is cursed.

Worse than that.

It is curs-ed.