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Going full circle: This is the UK's biggest fan of roundabouts
Kevin Beresford is the president of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (UKRAS) Most people barely even have an opinion about roundabouts – some just can’t get enough of them Surely, if anyone knows a dull car when he sees one, Kevin Beresford does. That’s why I’ve asked the creator of those tedious but inexplicably popular wall calendars ‘Car Parks of the UK’ and ‘Motability Scooter Riders of Benidorm’ to consider another: ‘Dull Cars of Redditch’, a potential companion calendar to his recently launched ‘Roadworks of Redditch’, the relevance of the place being only that he lives there. So it is that I find myself standing in a car park in the Worcestershire town with the Lord of the Rings – so called on account of his presidency of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (UKRAS) and his 12 calendars so far dedicated to the UK’s greatest gyratory traffic systems – as he considers its assortment of dull cars, earnestly deciding which is the dullest. “That one,” he says, pointing at a grey city car. It’s a Suzuki Wagon R+. You and I may know why this early-2000s box is not as dull as he imagines (indeed, Autocar described it as “the UK’s best-kept secret” at the time), but since he was once invited to be deputy assistant vice-president of no less an organisation than America’s Dull Men’s Club, I have little choice but to agree. “It’s the ‘R’ that makes it,” he explains. “If it stands for ‘racing’, it’s being ironic, which is the defining quality of the best dullest things. The Wagon is box-like and grey and it says ‘R’. Ergo it’s Redditch’s dullest car.” In fact, the ‘R’ stands for ‘revolution’ and ‘relaxation’, I inform him, but he isn’t to be discouraged: “It might do, but most people will think it stands for ‘racing’. I don’t imagine Suzuki would have been too eager to correct that impression. "What car maker doesn’t want to be associated with motorsport?” He has a point, so Redditch’s dullest car the Wagon R+ is. Beresford is fresh from advising on an episode of new Discovery+ show James May & The Dull Men’s Club. In it, the former Autocar staffer (and former Top Gear presenter) attempts to drive across Milton Keynes without stopping – a feat made easier by the town’s many roundabouts. Beresford’s association with roundabouts dates back to 2003, when, as the manager of a small printing firm in Redditch, he needed a theme for the following year’s calendar and, with help from staff, came up with ‘Roundabouts of Redditch’. TV’s Graham Norton got wind of the new calendar and featured it on his show. Within weeks, 100,000 copies had been sold around the world. It spawned other calendars, including ‘Best of British Roundabouts’ and ‘Roundabouts of the World’, plus books devoted to them – one of which Beresford now hands me, autographed by no less a figure than Sharon Osbourne. Nowadays, he and fellow members of UKRAS – usually six of them – meet twice a month to talk about roundabouts. Clocking my alarmed expression, he explains: “Artists have always been fascinated by the mundane. Think Andy Warhol and Campbell’s Soup Cans, Tracey Emin and My Bed… "There’s nothing more expressive than a roundabout: it’s English in its good manners, with people giving way to each other, whereas a set of traffic lights is fascist in its demands that you stop and go only when it allows you to. “Roundabouts also boost your spirits on a tedious journey. I’ve seen them with statues, trains, planes and even a cricket pitch [Basin Reserve in Wellington, New Zealand, if you’re interested] on them. London’s Marble Arch and Paris’s Arc de Triomphe are both in roundabouts.” At this rate, Beresford is at risk of a seventh member joining his bi-monthly UKRAS sessions – right up until he lapses into jargon: “We call a roundabout with a flower bed on it a Titchmarsh and one with a dwarf wall a brick ringer.” The roundabout we subsequently photograph him on has both, making it a Titchmarsh brick ringer – a condition no one would want. Away from roundabouts, Beresford’s calendar ‘Roadworks of Redditch’ is back for a second year. “I like to see the positive in something negative and roadworks are not only necessary but also put people to work, earning a wage,” he explains. Another popular calendar is ‘Car Parks of the UK’ – an idea inspired by a job that Beresford did for the AA in 2006, when the motoring organisation commissioned him to travel the length of the UK for a book celebrating them. In 2022, his Car Park Appreciation Society named Trinity Street Car Park in Digbeth its Car Park of the Year, describing it as “charismatic” and praising its entrance, which is constructed from bales of crushed car parts. However, it’s roundabouts that most attract Beresford, he reassures me: “In his book In the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson writes: ‘Few men who come to the islands leave them… "No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor.’ I like to think he was talking about roundabouts.”
Kevin Beresford is the president of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (UKRAS)Most people barely even have an opinion about roundabouts – some just can’t get enough of them
Surely, if anyone knows a dull car when he sees one, Kevin Beresford does.
That’s why I’ve asked the creator of those tedious but inexplicably popular wall calendars ‘Car Parks of the UK’ and ‘Motability Scooter Riders of Benidorm’ to consider another: ‘Dull Cars of Redditch’, a potential companion calendar to his recently launched ‘Roadworks of Redditch’, the relevance of the place being only that he lives there.
So it is that I find myself standing in a car park in the Worcestershire town with the Lord of the Rings – so called on account of his presidency of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (UKRAS) and his 12 calendars so far dedicated to the UK’s greatest gyratory traffic systems – as he considers its assortment of dull cars, earnestly deciding which is the dullest.
“That one,” he says, pointing at a grey city car. It’s a Suzuki Wagon R+. You and I may know why this early-2000s box is not as dull as he imagines (indeed, Autocar described it as “the UK’s best-kept secret” at the time), but since he was once invited to be deputy assistant vice-president of no less an organisation than America’s Dull Men’s Club, I have little choice but to agree.
“It’s the ‘R’ that makes it,” he explains. “If it stands for ‘racing’, it’s being ironic, which is the defining quality of the best dullest things. The Wagon is box-like and grey and it says ‘R’. Ergo it’s Redditch’s dullest car.”
In fact, the ‘R’ stands for ‘revolution’ and ‘relaxation’, I inform him, but he isn’t to be discouraged: “It might do, but most people will think it stands for ‘racing’. I don’t imagine Suzuki would have been too eager to correct that impression.
"What car maker doesn’t want to be associated with motorsport?” He has a point, so Redditch’s dullest car the Wagon R+ is.
Beresford is fresh from advising on an episode of new Discovery+ show James May & The Dull Men’s Club. In it, the former Autocar staffer (and former Top Gear presenter) attempts to drive across Milton Keynes without stopping – a feat made easier by the town’s many roundabouts.
Beresford’s association with roundabouts dates back to 2003, when, as the manager of a small printing firm in Redditch, he needed a theme for the following year’s calendar and, with help from staff, came up with ‘Roundabouts of Redditch’.
TV’s Graham Norton got wind of the new calendar and featured it on his show. Within weeks, 100,000 copies had been sold around the world. It spawned other calendars, including ‘Best of British Roundabouts’ and ‘Roundabouts of the World’, plus books devoted to them – one of which Beresford now hands me, autographed by no less a figure than Sharon Osbourne.
Nowadays, he and fellow members of UKRAS – usually six of them – meet twice a month to talk about roundabouts.
Clocking my alarmed expression, he explains: “Artists have always been fascinated by the mundane. Think Andy Warhol and Campbell’s Soup Cans, Tracey Emin and My Bed…
"There’s nothing more expressive than a roundabout: it’s English in its good manners, with people giving way to each other, whereas a set of traffic lights is fascist in its demands that you stop and go only when it allows you to.
“Roundabouts also boost your spirits on a tedious journey. I’ve seen them with statues, trains, planes and even a cricket pitch [Basin Reserve in Wellington, New Zealand, if you’re interested] on them. London’s Marble Arch and Paris’s Arc de Triomphe are both in roundabouts.”
At this rate, Beresford is at risk of a seventh member joining his bi-monthly UKRAS sessions – right up until he lapses into jargon: “We call a roundabout with a flower bed on it a Titchmarsh and one with a dwarf wall a brick ringer.”
The roundabout we subsequently photograph him on has both, making it a Titchmarsh brick ringer – a condition no one would want.
Away from roundabouts, Beresford’s calendar ‘Roadworks of Redditch’ is back for a second year.
“I like to see the positive in something negative and roadworks are not only necessary but also put people to work, earning a wage,” he explains.
Another popular calendar is ‘Car Parks of the UK’ – an idea inspired by a job that Beresford did for the AA in 2006, when the motoring organisation commissioned him to travel the length of the UK for a book celebrating them.
In 2022, his Car Park Appreciation Society named Trinity Street Car Park in Digbeth its Car Park of the Year, describing it as “charismatic” and praising its entrance, which is constructed from bales of crushed car parts.
However, it’s roundabouts that most attract Beresford, he reassures me: “In his book In the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson writes: ‘Few men who come to the islands leave them…
"No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor.’ I like to think he was talking about roundabouts.”
