What does Max Key know about real men?

Never mind the overt sexism. Or the homophobia. Never mind the blatant disregard for the law forbidding using your phone while driving.

The First Son’s cat call about what a ‘‘real man’’ rides reveals something else entirely.

You might well wonder how a guy who has not yet cut the apron or (let’s be honest) purse strings is an authority on anything, let alone what constitutes a real bloke.

But Max Key has actually highlighted our national guilty pleasure: bagging cyclists.

We love discussing the fury induced by being stuck behind wellpadded, bouncing lycra-clad buttocks riding two or three abreast.

We’re apoplectic with rage watching a cyclist switch seamlessly from a being a road user to a pedestrian the second the lights go red. We hate them so much the backs of buses must be emblazoned with images reminding us that cyclists are, in fact, human.

I think it’s high time we got over our collective loathing of cyclists – and not solely because I’ve reached max Max Key.

I know they can be arrogant. But perhaps they wear their arrogance like armour because they aren’t afforded the arrogance implied by a tonne or two of Beemer surrounding them.

But to bastardise and misappropriate JFK’s famous quote: ask not what cyclists are doing TO you, but what cyclists are doing FOR you.

Given our penchant for commuting alone, every cyclist on the road is a car off the road. That alone should make any congestionweary driver want to kiss the next poor cyclist they see battling through a blizzard in their wet weather gear.

That’s one less car to drag race at the motorway on-ramp lights, and one fewer jerk to take the last