Have spent the week trying to pluck up the courage to phone Nick Cave's record label with my sometimes freelance for Driving section of Sunday paper hat on.

I have to ask if he drives a Fiat Multipla or not.

The argument: "I was trying to show her it was Nick Cave in the Fiat Multipla," didn't cut any ice with the traffic policeman, who'd pulled Thomas up for driving too fast and cutting him up on the seafront.

"I don't care if it was Nick bloody Berry in a blue BMW," said the copper (using lovely alliteration, as I later pointed out to a not very impressed by this Thomas. "You were driving at 17 miles over the speed limit in a built up area."

This is the point at which Thomas should have assumed his apologetic face and said something like: "I'm terribly sorry officer. I didn't realise I was going as fast as that. It's most unlike me and I realise it was a dangerous and selfish thing to do ..." in order to avoid being booked.

Instead he tried to explain why he'd been driving at 47 miles per hour in a 30 mph limit.

"We were just trying to keep up with the Fiat Multipla so I could prove to my wife that it was being driven by Nick Cave. She doesn't believe me you see," he concluded, gesturing at self in passenger seat, trying to calm three fretful Rugrats, who thought their father was about to be taken to prison.

"It wasn't Nick Cave," I glared at Thomas and smiled at the policeman, who proceeded to take down Thomas's details, so he could send them on to the magistrates, who could summon, fine and give him points.

A few moments prior to being stopped by a Panda car, we'd been driving along the seafront when Thomas had spotted a silver Fiat Multipla and pointed it out to me with a triumphant. "Look, that's Nick Cave driving that Fiat Multipla."

The reason for the triumphalism was he has, for some unknown reason, been itching to buy a Fiat Multipla. This, he believes, is the car of the moment and will safely transport us into the future.

I, on the other hand, think it is a tin model of a big fat dolphin which will not be able to negotiate the narrow car crammed street in which we live and can't afford.

Thomas has been doing his utmost to change my mind on this subject and, knowing I have a soft spot for the Australian but now Brighton-based singer, thought he could change my mind by telling me that he drives one.

So, we found ourselves racing along the seafront in pursuit of the silver Multipla, which Thomas alleged was driven by Cave, in an effort to catch up so I could get a proper look at the driver.

Having been stopped by traffic police, his plan was thwarted, which gave him points on his licence but also, in his eyes, the upper hand, as, having failed to draw up alongside silver dolphin, Thomas could still argue: "It was him, I know it was..." with about as much weight as I could argue: "It wasn't. I know it wasn't."

We continued arguing intermittently in this vein for next few days until eldest Rugrat told us we were boring. Thomas still continued walking round the house, with an air of being right which infuriated me and made me determined to prove him wrong and phone record label.

I would have carried out this threat, except for the fact that a friend of Thomas's told us he'd seen Nick Cave in a car pulling up at a fish and chip shop in Rottingdean and getting out to buy chips.

"He might have been," was his reply to the burning question, which left open the possibility that I could have been wrong. Still, at least I have a clean driving licence ...