It happened on Corfu, over twenty years ago, and if I wasn't such placid and level headed chap I'd still have nightmares about it - waking up hot and breathless in the night, fighting off the tangled, sweat-soaked covers. As it is, I don't, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a deeply unpleasant experience. In a lesser man the mere smell of sweat, beer, farts, suncream or burning engine oil might set off a panic attack. Fortunately, as I said, I've never actually let it bother me all that much. But it's still not something I'd want to do again.

We'd been on an excursion to a beach barbecue, I think it was, and somehow, I don't remember how exactly, we missed the boat back up the coast - there were six of us lads and two Geordie blokes we'd just met. We emerged blinking from the beach's only bar to find the boat gone and the beach almost deserted. We were stranded. The beach was miles from the popular tourist areas and the only other signs of civilisation were a couple of overflowing waste bins and an abandoned flip-flop.

After a bit of indignant but completely pointless protest we set off walking along a dusty farm track, roughly in the direction we thought was home, quickly sobering up but not yet seeing the funny side. After a couple of miles we reached a village and stumbled across a car hire place, run by an embittered little moustachioed bloke reeking of Ouzo. How he made a living I don't know, there couldn't have been much money in the stranded drunk market. We asked if he could ring for a taxi but he shook his head sternly and said 'No taxis!' with a firm and unmistakable no taxi-type gesture. He wasn't falling for that. Fortunately one of the Geordies was a sober-ish responsible type who had his wallet with him so he agreed to do the necessary and hire a car if we'd all cough up the dosh to cover it.

Whilst he completed the transaction the rest of us sauntered nonchalantly round the corner to wait. Old Ouzo-breath had lots of photos of shiny modern vehicles in his shop but what appeared ten minutes later was not one of those, it was a ....... well, I have no idea what it was, and that's not due to the ravages of time and alcohol. It was like nothing any of us had ever seen before. It looked like the runt of a car manufacturers litter or the result of some bizarre car making experiment that had gone tragically wrong and it had obviously been hidden away in this isolated corner of the world for the same reasons that the Victorian gentry consigned mad or embarrassing relatives to the attic. And its paintwork, for some reason, was matt maroon.

The poor car looked decrepit and feeble to start with, with the same resigned, downtrodden air as the knackered old donkeys that the locals still rode about on. It was certainly in no condition to undertake such a demanding journey. In fact, if it had been a donkey it would certainly have already been consigned to the dog meat factory. Riding home on a donkey might even have been preferable, although it goes without saying that eight blokes sitting on it would surely have finished it off anyway. As it happened, it might as well have been a donkey because fate decreed that this journey was to be its last.

After much drunken deliberation eight heavy, sweaty, swearing blokes were packed, squeezed, prodded and shoved into the tiny vehicle. The other Geordie, a long lanky bloke, had to be slotted in sideways, his feet poking out of the window. A donkey ride would have been more comfortable. Even carrying the donkey would have been more comfortable.

Inside the car it was the stuff of nightmares - cramped, claustrophobic, hot and stifling, prompting primitive fears of being buried alive or roasted alive or spending all eternity with your face pressed into another man's armpit. You could have cooked a turkey in there except there was no more room for one. Then, after a couple of false starts, we set off. The walnut-faced old Greek peasants who waved cheerfully from the side of the road had never seen so many hands waved in reply as the sagging maroon curiosity chugged slowly past. Something somewhere began to scrape noisily but we bravely ignored it and carried on.

After about an hour of this torture, the protesting, over-strained vehicle decided it could take no more and began to go into its death throes. A consensus, perspiring anxiously in the cramped interior, judged it to be on the point of imminent combustion and the decision was taken to bail out. But perhaps just over this next hill we agreed, for we were nearly home. Our combined motoring expertise proved to be correct - using every innate sense of sound, smell and engine tolerance at our disposal, we rode it to the very limit and tumbled out just as the acrid stench of burning oil and scorched metal reached our nostrils and smoke began to pour from under the bonnet.

We had literally just scraped home and at the same time narrowly avoided a gruesome death by conflagration. The pitiful little Matt Maroon thing, possibly the only existing example of its type, was abandoned on wasteland on the outskirts of our resort, a sorry, smouldering, wreck. Shamelessly washing our hands of the whole business it was then a case of one eye over the shoulder until we got airborne on the last day.

That was a long time ago and the lads have all gone their separate ways since then. Now they're dispersed around the north of England, anchored down with marriages and mortgages and responsibility. But I often wonder if the Corfu Constabulary ever solved the mysterious case of the abandoned maroon hire car whose passengers apparently vanished into thin air. That file must be pretty bulging and dog-eared by now and no doubt some hard-boiled Greek detective will have been working doggedly on the case since 1984 - puzzling over it of an evening whilst settling down with a glass of Cognac and some Mozart. What about all those conflicting witness statements: Exactly how many arms did they say were waving out of that car: 9? 13? 20? What about that unearthly screeching noise that so terrified Mrs Popodopodopolous? Was this the first evidence of multi-limbed alien car-jackers?.

I often wonder if they'll one day catch up with us. Or maybe that Geordie fella has already spent the last 20 years festering in a Greek dungeon, who knows?