Is it cool to have sex before races? There’s only one rule: when doing it, etiquette requires drivers to leave the paddock, please.

Lord Uxbridge led several cavalry charges at the Battle of Waterloo and had eight or nine horses shot from under him through the course of the day. In the evening, he turned calmly to his commander-in-chief, the Duke of Wellington, and remarked: ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg.’ The Duke replied: ‘By God, sir, so you have.’

For close on two centuries, this famous if matter-of-fact conversation between two Englishmen has been seen as the ultimate in cool by those who have suffered the misfortune not to have been born English. Luckily, I was born English myself, as my passport reveals: my place of birth is forever shown as Surbiton which, for the benefit of any foreign friends reading this, is about as cool as it gets.

But enough of this fun. Space is precious, so here – in the style of the surrender monkeys of tabloid lowlife – are Ten Cool Thoughts:

1. Was Gerry Marshall cool? It did seem that way when he left scores of fellow BRDC members wondering how to top such a startling ultimate career move. Testing an IROC Camaro at Silverstone on April 21, 2005, Marshall slowed safely to a halt in the sandtrap right in front of the BRDC Clubhouse, finding time, in a moment of supreme professional self-discipline, to switch off the engine before he died of a heart attack. Better suited to the Merry Olde England of the Wars of the Roses than the 20th century, the mighty beast known as Gerald Dallas Royston Marshall, champion of St Albans, would have shown no mercy to anyone suggesting he was cool. Cunning and strong in battle, off the field he was a robust, jolly, ale-swilling hard man. With his loss, the wimps run free – but how did he get through the stress-related ECG in the MSA Medical in the first place?

2. Octane writers are so cool that they are invariably polite to fraudulent journalists who’d have trouble driving a nail into a piece of wood, yet pretend to have a personal history of race wins. Seeing such a person at the wheel of some priceless machine, trailing along at 20mph behind a photographer’s car, we say nothing. We know that Photoshop will erase that tow-rope, permitting an account of driving ‘on the limit’ to follow. Our silence is maintained when he borrows a race winner’s garland and is photographed with it round his neck; likewise when he lends his helmet to a real race driver and then pretends he drove that car too. Respectable magazines like Octane would never, ever be so uncool. Let’s move on.

3. We feel it is always cool to know where you are and how to pronounce it. We never smirk when we hear Monaco pronounced with a long ‘a’ but we were more severely tested by the man who arrived at Nuremberg and discovered that a taxi ride to the Nordschleife took longer and was more expensive than he expected.

4. Have you noticed how historians today avoid the past tense? Wanting to sound young on radio and TV, they descend into baby talk. (‘Henry VIII is executing his latest wife.’ Not cool.) Fortunately motoring historians stay cool, seeing this aberration as the academic equivalent of wearing a ludicrous toupé.

5. Being quick in the wet is cool. Bragging about it is not.

6. Winter tyres are cool. Not realising that low-profile summer tyres are useless on snow, even with 4wd, is not; nor is stopping to struggle with prehistoric chains. Crashing on snow-covered roads when using the wrong tyres is a crime against style committed by too many British holidaymakers. Winter historic rally drivers, however, are all cool.

7. Driving for Ralph Broad in the 1970s was cool but we swore at each other so much that I can’t reveal a word of it here.

8. Waiting for the race, really fast men put their feet on the table, pull down their hats and keep one eye imperceptibly open. They are not trying to be cool. They’re winners, that’s all.

9. Is it cool to have sex before races? There’s only one rule: when doing it, etiquette requires drivers to leave the paddock, please.

10. Buying a clapped-out old race car for peanuts and keeping it for 30 years until it’s worth ten million quid – well, that’s more than cool but, of course, I never thought of it.