My friend once came to see me in a flat I’d just moved into. This was Lee Dixon, the former footballer and a television colleague at the time. He looked around approvingly but said: “You’ve got to be a bit careful here. Your carpets, your sofa and your walls are all grey. You’ve got these big windows and outside the clouds are grey. Your hair is grey and so are your clothes. Your disposition’s a bit grey sometimes, too. You’re blending in. I can barely see you. You might have to put on some hi-vis.”
Footballers can be terribly savage like this. But I saw Lee had a point, and I’ve been trying to de-grey myself ever since. This is hard in the world we live in. Having chosen a new lease car, I had to select a colour. I was spoilt for choice: there were only shades of grey available, so I plumped for grey. Looking around, it then struck me that most cars are now grey. Apart from the sheer dreariness, this is surely suboptimal in terms of safety; like me in my front room that day, they’re all camouflaged against the roads and, often, the sky.
Why is this? “It’s beyond me,” shrugs Steve Fowler, the editor of Auto Express. “No idea why there are so many dull car colours, and many cars come in different shades of grey. The Range Rover I have is available in four greys and four silvers. How many do you need?” He directed me to an article in which I learned that last year more than a quarter of new cars registered were grey. A quarter! Even worse, “Second and third places on the podium went to grey’s partners in monotone crime, black and white.” If you also lump in silver, surely guilty of a monotone crime, more than two-thirds of all new cars belong in black and white films.
Olivier François, the CEO of Fiat, has seen a window of opportunity. My man at Auto Express flags up a video that is nothing less than life-affirming. “Ah, grey!” François despairs, walking between grey cars, with gesticulations and coiffure appropriate for a Frenchman in charge of an Italian car firm. “The carmakers’ favourite colour! German grey, Japanese grey, French grey. An easy sell. Always sells!”
He says grey isn’t Italian. François has had enough. “The world doesn’t need another grey car!” Ain’t that the truth. “So let’s change the rules!” he suggests. Oui/Si, Olivier! “From today, at Fiat, no more grey!” And with that he is dunked, car and all, in a vat of orange paint. This week Fiat has committed to cease production of vehicles painted grey because, as the boss points out, grey is nothing to do with joy, optimism, passion or life. I salute you, sir. Molto bene!
Grey, grey, grey. Even the bestselling work of erotic fiction ever (probably) has 50 shades of it. How have we come to this? How should I know? I’m just a grey man driving along in a grey car on a grey road in search of answers. The reliably brilliant @culturaltutor points out on Twitter that it is not just cars being drained of colour. Clothes, kitchens, living rooms, carpets, buildings – you name it. McDonald’s is far less red than it used to be. Superman’s outfit has been toned down. All our garb has been decolourised. Anyone colourfully dressed is thought to be eccentric. “You won’t get run over in that outfit!” they may even be told.
As even @culturaltutor doesn’t seem sure why this has happened, I hesitate to speculate. But I surmise that it is because everywhere else, not least in the superficial richness of our virtual lives, we are overstimulated. We can’t take much more. Perhaps embracing greyness is our way of taking a break from it all. But it’s not working for me. This grey man demands some colour back.
Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
