Bowling down to Brighton in an E-type Jag is fun

In the light of recent royal revelations, I find myself wondering whether the growing antipathy of the British public towards Wallis Simpson might be less strident if, instead of cars, her secret lover Guy Trundle had sold ancient Egyptian art at Sotheby's. Or specimen roses or pedigree pigs or even life insurance, anything, in fact, but cars. What is it about car salesmen that arouses such suspicion, derision and amusement? Much has been made of the fact that Mr Trundle sold Ford cars, a brand associated more with reliability and family motoring than glamour. But even if he had dealt in Bugattis and Bentley Continentals, I doubt it would have done much to redeem his social standing.

It's that salesman tag that does it. We're such snobs about selling, which is daft because watching the technique of a good salesman can be as absorbing and impressive as watching a grizzled countryman build a dry-stone dyke or a prima ballerina execute those 32 fouette turns in the last act of Sleeping Beauty.

For a short period in his youth, while he was deciding what he wanted to do with his life, my husband worked as a salesman – cars, double-glazing, insurance, door-to-door art, you name it he sold it. In the same way that fishermen reminisce about landing a 35lb salmon in the Spey, he recalls the chatelaine of a bungalow on the Livingston Road to whom he sold a complete set of aluminium doors and windows, or the couple who ransacked their children's moneyboxes to buy an unusual rendition of Turner's Fighting Temeraire in acrylic on flock velvet. It all hinges, apparently, on two things. You feed the customer questions to which the only answer is yes, and when all the questions have been asked and answered and it comes to the moment of closure, you never break the golden silence. If you do, you've lost the sale.

I wonder if Guy Trundle hooked Mrs Simpson with his golden silence. I'm bound to say I rather like the sound of Mr Trundle. He was in the RAF, a wing commander, I understand, and wincos were a great deal more glamorous and much better dancers than their equivalent in the other services. I got all this from Frank, the Lancaster bomber pilot who, until he died, lived in the flat downstairs. And I'll tell you something else, if Guy Marcus Trundle was half as charming, raffish and attractive as Frank, even when I first met him in his seventies, I'm not surprised he charmed the pants, so to speak, off Mrs Simpson.

Flogging cars, particularly second-hand cars, requires a particular sort of talent, the equivalent of a bedside manner. Not long ago I went with a friend to buy an old banger. She didn't care what it looked like as long as it worked, and we ended up in this vast showroom somewhere off the A40 which had a flashing neon sign over the entrance saying "Enter A Whole New Used Car Experience''.

It was an incredibly fancy set-up, piped music, pretty girls in uniforms offering drinks, leather sofas and salesmen with clipboards who looked either like George Clooney or Brad Pitt. My friend said she was looking for something cheap. "How cheap?" asked George Clooney, and when she told him he rubbed the side of his chiselled nose thoughtfully and said: "Strictly speaking, we don't cater for the budget market, but as a matter of fact,'' and here George Clooney dropped his voice and drew us into an alcove behind a row of gleaming off-road jeeps with bull bars, "I have a friend with a two-year-old Golf, leather interiors, satellite navigation, Bose stereo system and only 6,000 on the clock which he wants to get rid of. If you're interested, I'll speak to him and give you a bell this evening...'' What a charmer, what a spiel.

I didn't end up as a duchess, but I did briefly go out with a car salesman. I'd just come to London, and all my friends were going out with lawyers and doctors and people who wrote television jingles for butter substitutes. "But what on earth do you talk about to someone who sells cars all day?'' they cried, their eyes wide. "I mean, does he like the theatre or go to art galleries?''

No he didn't, thank God, but every time he took me out he arrived in a different car, faster, sleeker and more expensive than the one before. There is much to be said for an evening listening to Mahler in the Festival Hall beside a serious young solicitor, but bowling down to Brighton in an E-type Jag with a Brad Pitt lookalike is more fun. Even more fun, probably, than marrying a chinless wonder and nearly becoming Queen.