Dirty Van Messages

Winter is the season of the dirty van, accompanied by inscribed witty messages. After a non-exhaustive study, I have decided that these messages can be sorted into 4 main categories:

1. Cheeky
   
2. Dirty
   
3. Abusey
4. Exceptions

The wit category is dominated by variations of a few well tried and tested forms, for example, "Also avaliable in white", "Do not clean - test dirt" and the cheeky "How's my speeding?". Mention must also be made here of the 'pathetic fallacy' wit of vans which say "Clean me", or the more progressive "Plough me", as though the vans themselves were alive. They are not of course.

The second classifcation of dirty, is dominated by a single message - "I wish my wife was as dirty as this van" or somesuch similar. I heard that once someone had added "then I could write things on her back" to the original message, thus forming a 'category bridge' between cheeky and dirtyclasses. Impressive.

There must have been a time, when these were funny, but with time and desensitisation we have grown to almost completely ignore them. I like to think that each message arose in a single instance, and that all related messages form an evolutionary tree; an ancestry. Each new case carries forth the inheritance of the founding message. In each case, one person was responsible and they are the godfathers of all subsequent messages. Although tracing such people would be nigh on impossible, it would make a good programme for BBC4.

The third category is that of abusive messages and, let's be honest, they have not lost the potential to be funny - there is something constant and immutable about the comedy of writing "Hugh is gay" on, presumably, Hugh's van. I can also tell you that Los (whoever he is) Has A Hare Lip, and importantly that "John is a fat $£*%".

And so we reach the miscellaneous collection of exceptions, in which I shall include the art of Ben Long, who drew pictures by selective cleaning of dirt. I shall also include, as it is the inspiration for this whole post, what I saw the other day... On the side door of a BT vehicle, a roughly scrawn face comprising large circle for head, a sweeping smile and blobs for eyes. Beside this, written in a non-adept hand was "DAD IS COOL". And I thought that was really lovely and it cheered my day.

So, we can see that dirty van are not just a comedy institution, but also potentially a canvas for self expression.

I should also briefly mention that obviously winter is also the month of frost, and as such there is a whole transient message dimension... the best 3 are:

• "I like your car"
• "What would Freud say?" (must be written on a sports car)
• "I know where you live"