Going full circle: This is the UK's biggest fan of roundabouts

Surely, if anyone knows a dull car when he sees one, Kevin Beresford does.

That’s why I’ve asked the creator of those tedious but inexplicably popular wall calendars ‘Car Parks of the UK’ and ‘Motability Scooter Riders of Benidorm’ to consider another: ‘Dull Cars of Redditch’, a potential companion calendar to his recently launched ‘Roadworks of Redditch’, the relevance of the place being only that he lives there.

So it is that I find myself standing in a car park in the Worcestershire town with the Lord of the Rings – so called on account of his presidency of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (UKRAS) and his 12 calendars so far dedicated to the UK’s greatest gyratory traffic systems – as he considers its assortment of dull cars, earnestly deciding which is the dullest.

“That one,” he says, pointing at a grey city car. It’s a Suzuki Wagon R+. You and I may know why this early-2000s box is not as dull as he imagines (indeed, Autocar described it as “the UK’s best-kept secret” at the time), but since he was once invited to be deputy assistant vice-president of no less an organisation than America’s Dull Men’s Club, I have little choice but to agree.

“It’s the ‘R’ that makes it,” he explains. “If it stands for ‘racing’, it’s being ironic, which is the defining quality of the best dullest things. The Wagon is box-like and grey and it says ‘R’. Ergo it’s Redditch’s dullest car.”

In fact, the ‘R’ stands for ‘revolution’ and ‘relaxation’, I inform him, but he isn’t to be discouraged: “It might do, but most people will think it stands for ‘racing’. I don’t imagine Suzuki would have been too eager to correct that impression.

"What car maker doesn’t want to be associated with motorsport?” He has a point, so Redditch’s dullest car the Wagon R+ is.

Beresford is fresh from advising on an episode of new Discovery+ show James May & The Dull Men’s Club. In it, the former Autocar staffer (and former Top Gear presenter) attempts to drive across Milton Keynes without stopping – a feat made easier by the town’s many roundabouts.

Beresford’s association with roundabouts dates back to 2003, when, as the manager of a small printing firm in Redditch, he needed a theme for the following year’s calendar and, with help from staff, came up with ‘Roundabouts of Redditch’.