Spare a thought for us poor old journos churning out long-term test reports!

We have a van for six months and after eulogising about its finer points ad nauseam, there isn’t a lot else to say unless it goes wrong or starts playing up.

In the case of the Citroën Relay, it has been reliable to the point of tedium so far.

I was pondering what I was going to write about in my next report while waiting at a roundabout the other day ready to pull out into the stream of traffic when – almost like manna from heaven – a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter loaded up with pre-packed sandwiches slammed straight into the back of my van.

Now most people would look upon an incident like this in a negative light but, after ascertaining that the Mem Sahib (who was sitting in the passenger seat) was uninjured I smiled brightly and said: “Well, that’s solved one problem anyway – I’ll now be able to report on how the Relay handles itself in a crash situation.”

I alighted and scuttled round to the back of the van, where a rueful driver immediately admitted his guilt. I felt quite sorry for him actually – he was obviously in a tearing hurry to get his sandwiches delivered before lunchtime (our accident having occurred at 12.30pm) and just hadn’t seen that I’d pulled up.

And I’ll tell you what – his Sprinter was in a much worse state than my Relay.

It had piled right into the rear step on the Citroën and a fair number of bits of plastic were hanging off, whereas my van only suffered a small dent to one of the rear doors.

Rather curiously, he told me: “Sorry mate but the brakes are sh*t on this van!”