Ever since I was just starting out as an errant lad I've loved nothing more than Ferraris and explosions.

These two sit at the apex of things that fascinated me in my formative years. Growing up in the 1980s nothing could be cooler: they embodied everything about the decade; its decadence, its destruction, its decadent destruction.

For Ferraris, just think Tom Selleck in Magnum PI, Ferris Bueller in the eponymously titled film, Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice or Sammy Davis Jnr and Dean Martin in the revisionistly risible Cannon Ball Run.

For explosions it is hard to do better than Bruce Willis jumping from a cataclysmically exploding skyscraper with the mere aid of a swinging fire hose – way to go Bruce. Running a close second is Return of the Jedi and the apocalyptic furnace of the flame-gorged Death Star.

It is when my two loves are twinned that the problems begin. Fire-wracked Ferraris have a singular ability to excite and disturb me into a kind of trance of agitated ambivalence.

Thankfully, no-one has been injured, but news images of faulty, car insurance hazardous, Ferrari 458s - a number of the models have spectacularly self-immolated into little more than misshapen hulks of melted metal – have recently stirred my inner-child. Even now he's within me, with wild and frozen eyes, spellbound, perhaps even a little traumatised, unsure what to make of events.