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us out.
    Now this puzzled me. I was still standing there, wondering if he had a hotline to John Birt, when a girl emerged from the shadows. She last knew what she was doing in 1976. Here was a person whose hair was green, whose nose sported sixteen silver rings and whose eyes had as much life to them as cardboard.
    Her first words were odd. ‘You’re that guy off
Top Gear
, yeah?’ ‘Um yes,’ I replied, wondering where my royalty cheque was if they were showing it in America. Actually, that’s a lie. I was really wondering where the lavatory was because I was about four seconds away from shitting myself.
    But then her face broke into a broad grin as she explained she’d once worked as a researcher on
Newsnight
and she ‘just luurrrved’ the BBC.
    Within seconds, we were joined by an army of gangland down-and-outs, all clamouring for an interview. Christian, the least stoned and most eloquent, explained that things are pretty bad in downtown Detroit these days.
    Had he been shot at? ‘What today? Yeah sure. I was down the gas station this morning and these guys came in. It was pretty ugly.’
    So we are in danger then? ‘You sure are. If they want your trucks, they’re going to take ’em. If they want your camera, they’re gonna take it. If they want your shoes, you’d better hand ’em over, because if you don’t the results could be disappointing. No… the results could be catastrophic.’
    We had a long chat, turned down several invitations to various parties and left. The police, waiting for us at theend of the drive, were impressed. ‘When you went in there we expected you to come out through an eleventh-floor window. How in the hell did you get talking to those guys? You ain’t even black,’ said one.
    Observant bunch, the Detroit cops.
    No, they really are. Two days later, we were being driven round an area of the city called Brush which had obviously just been on the receiving end of a B-52 strike. Not a single house was in one piece. Every car in every street was a wreck.
    There’d been a drive-by shooting, two people were dead and our chauffeurs were out looking for suspects. It’s OK, that’s what they were paid to do. They were policemenists.
    We were chatting about this and that, about how no one has a job because there are no jobs to be had, when one of them, Hal, suddenly asked if we’d like to see an arrest.
    In the blink of an eye, the car had stopped, and two fifteen-year-olds were spread-eagled on the bonnet.
    This would have made good footage but sadly, the Chevvy had child locks and we couldn’t get out without scrabbling over the front seats and tumbling into the street with my legs tangled up in the umbilical cord that links the camera to the sound equipment.
    By the time we were ready to roll, Hal had pulled a small gun and some drugs from the suspects and radioed for back-up… which arrived just as the crowd started throwing stones at us.
    Another guy was arrested and as he lay on the ground,his head pinned to the road by Hal’s shoe, his friend told cameraman Keith Schofield, ‘Get that on your camcorder, Johnnie Fucking Video.’
    This was getting ugly and we already knew that everyone was packing heat. You can buy a gun in Detroit for less than half a dozen tomatoes and the statistics show that a gun is a lot more useful.
    I must confess that I kept staring at the tiny pistol that had been confiscated earlier and was now lying on the passenger seat of the police car. Was it loaded? Where was the safety catch? Had anyone in the crowd started firing, you should be in no doubt that I’d have fired back.
    And I’m the guy who had to lie in a cold room for three days after I once shot a sparrow with an air rifle.
    Happily, we emerged from the confrontation in one piece, even though our Chrysler Town and Country people carrier had taken a direct hit.
    Compared to Detroit, the rest of America is Trumpton. You ask an American if he’s ever been there and he’ll be too