Tuesday 6 September 2011

You're never too old to do a 'Brian Harvey'

From The Daily Mail:

It was almost a tragic case of life imitating art for radio show Archers' actress Angela Piper... the 71-year-old listeners' favourite came within inches of being run over by her runaway car in a field in France after forgetting to put on the handbrake.

Ms Piper, who plays Jennifer Aldridge, was returning to the airport from the holiday farmhouse near Bordeaux she shares with former BBC announcer Peter Bolgar when she decided to picnic at a pretty lake en route.

Unfortunately the BBC Radio 4 star was not used to the car's manual transmission and instead of applying the handbrake, she left the car in neutral on a slope as she sauntered down to the lake, she told the East Anglian Daily Times.

She said she strolled towards a footbridge when she sensed something behind and, quickly stepping to one side, was startled to see her car sail past her.


But a pale shadow of the original.

4 comments:

View from the Solent said...

Is she sure it was her car?

"Abracadabra: New stealth cloak makes tanks look like cows"
"... produces an infrared image that blends in with its surroundings and confuses enemy detection devices. The system could also mimic the appearance of objects such as a car or a cow"

Such a device can work in the reverse direction.
From Sunday Times(£)

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, no it was her car, as they retrieved it from the ditch later on. But we can't rule out that a cow released the hand brake and gave it a shove.

dearieme said...

There was a story in the morning paper of someone complaining that the council wasn't gritting his street in the winter and a councillor replying that he should get a better car than a BMW. Fair enough, I thought: he's a councillor and he gave advice: wot it says on the tin.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Talking of handbrakes, one of our employees rang in today to report a defect in their van. "The dashboard light won't go off until the handbrake is down on the floor", they said.

Good grief. ;)