Alan Horridge of Footie Chick has his head turned by a sexy Italian model with curves in all the right places as he puts Alfa Romeo's Brera through its paces.

It's always good to hear the echo of laughter in the office. Its not so good when the laughter is aimed at you, as it was when I revealed that Fleet Times had asked me to test drive and review a high performance car. ' Like putting King Herod in charge of a nursery," was a colleague's verdict.

I guess I could understand their disbelief, as I have this love- hate relationship with cars. Iv driven a million miles in my life, but im a stickler for buying cars that are comfortable and safe. So the thought of me piloting a 3.2- litre Alfa Romeo Brera was seen as something of a culture clash.

Once the paperwork had been sorted out, including taking my 23- year old driving license out of its less-than - protective plastic cover and faxing the four crumbling parts over to Alfa Romeo, the car arrived at the appointed time, accompanied by an enthusiastic delivery driver.  " Would you like me to show you the car?" he asked. "Yes please!" I replied. As we walked over to it, he asked me what I knew about this fine piece of machinery.

Said: " Nothing," I confessed.
He shook his head, looked at me and said, "It's sex on wheels."

With that he was off, leaving me with to navigate around the electronic seat controls. I climbed into the drivers seat, noticing that there was just two doors. The dash was, as you would expect from its Italian heritage, very well designed. However, despite me being not the tallest person on the planet, the roof was ominously close to my head.

The rear view mirrors are generous, possibly to compensate for the rear view through a widescreen slit. The boot was a generous size, too, but the high back 'lip' meant you had to lift bags up and over- making it inconvenient for those wishing to fill the boot with furniture or weekend booze supplies.

My first real drive was during the "rush hour". The car was very smooth and easy to drive, but I cam nowhere near to getting the MPH needle up to the maximum 160 on the dial. Close to the end of my drive home, though, I picked up the M58. The first mile or two is an uphill stretch that is deceptively steep and generally has vehicles struggling to get up to any decent speed. At last, I thought, my chance to see if this 3.2 litre had the necessary oomph. The lights at the end of the sliproad changed, I put my foot down, and it was away like excrement off a polished digging implement.  Naturally, I never went over the speed limit (honest!) but I was impressed by the rate of acceleration and the power still left untapped.

Later, during a night out, my daughter and I offered a lift to my brother and my niece. This short journey did show up a limitation of the car. Like many sports models, the legroom given to rear passengers ranges from minimal to non-existent, depending on how long the front passengers' legs are. So a word of warning - if this is to be your "pulling wagon", and you go out with a mate, make sure your pickups are literally (as well as probably figuratively} legless.

So there it is. The car looks distinctive (you always know an Alfa by the offset front number plate!), has a fair amount of power under the bonnet (most of which, unfortunately, you wont be able to legally use in the UK) and has all of the refinements you would expect.

Driver and front passenger have a reasonably comfortable ride (unless you happen to be on the tall side- in which case it might be a bit snug), but rear passengers need to be supple yoga experts to be really comfortable. The list price of the basic 3.2 is around £29,000- putting it in the same price bracket as an Audi TT. But sex on wheels? I'm not so sure. With so little space you'd struggle getting your leg over.