I NOW have a clean driving licence.

This may not seem like the proudest boast in the world, but for someone whose endorsement section looks like the rental history of a local library's copy of The Kama Sutra, it is a moment to savour.

Many of those penalties over the years have come from speeding and I would calculate that the income derived from those fines have paid for at least three speed cameras.

What has developed over the years, however, is a realisation that getting somewhere two minutes earlier by driving like a nutter is far less attractive than taking it easy, sitting back, listening to my favourite music and getting to my destination safely.

But I have one wonderful memory of an incident which occurred when I was editing a newspaper in Greater Manchester many years ago.

I had been travelling at 58mph in a 30mph zone. I knew this, because the man in the peaked cap and incredibly smug grin sitting in my passenger seat was telling me.

He was loving every minute of it and even threw in the inevitable Stirling Moss gag for good measure to show me that I really WAS making his day.

"By law Sir, I have to show you the speed you were travelling on the readout in my car."

Off he went, a small dance in his step, with me following like a recently neutered tomcat.

He sat in the driver's seat and I sat down next to him.

"Oh bloody hell," he said and his face went a rather pasty colour.

In his haste to enjoy the moment with me, he had accidentally caught a plug on his radar machine and pulled it out of its socket. The digital readout was as blank as the look on his face.

He looked across at me. "You're the fastest I've had all week," he moaned. I honestly thought he was going to cry.

I drove off with a smile, a caution and a vision of a policeman taking 10 minutes to edge out of his car every subsequent time he nabbed someone for speeding.

CONGRATULATIONS to Swanage Pier and its dedicated team of around 60 volunteers for its third place in the National Piers Society's annual poll of favourite piers.

Granted, it's not got a theatre, shops or even a railway like winner Blackpool North. But what it does have is a feel that you are strolling on something very special.

And that's worth far more than cheap laughs or rock.