Unpackaging Ronnie Pickering, Everyone’s Favourite Road Rage Dad

Everyone has met a Ronnie Pickering in their lives. They are uncles and friend's dads and plucky stepfathers. They are ASDA shift managers who are real pricks about you being one minute late back from your lunch. They are the one in a group of builders you get in to do your attic who doesn't seem to do anything – he's been working the same half bag of cement for a week, he keeps having to "nip off early" for "summat" and comes back the next day with his ear re-pierced – the one who is always the loudest and the latest.

There's a Ronnie Pickering in charge of the car park near you who somehow turned an argument about you only having a £5 note and him not having change for £3.50 into an eight-month psychological war that ended up with a scratch down the entire side of your Prius and a CCTV tape inexplicably lost. There are a lot of Ronnie Pickerings about.

But the main Ronnie Pickering is Ronnie Pickering, from the video "I'm Ronnie Pickering". Here's a direct quote from Ronnie Pickering:

"You got a problem? Do you know who I am you [the word "fucking", distorted by a man aggressively pulling on a handbrake]. You're a muppet! You, you fucking muppet. There's no need for that. What? You, you cunt! Fucking hanging about like that. Not in front of cars. You fucking idiot. Yeah? What's your problem. Do you want to go? Get your fucking helmet off, then."

And then, iconically: "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? Ronnie Pickering. Ronnie Pickering. RONNIE PICKERING." And then the biker goes: "Who the fuck's that?" And Ronnie Pickering pushes against his own seatbelt in a way that actually makes him go backwards in his seat, and jams one fat thumb at his own chest, and goes: "Yeah – me."

Ronnie Pickering, Ronnie Pickering, RONNIE PICKERING. Take your "Bond, James Bond" and tonk it in the Humber. That's how I introduce myself now, and it's how you should, too. Car window wound down just enough to scream through but not enough for a clear swing of a punch. Rain dappled just enough to distort how pink you're going in the face. Engine revving, Hollister zip-up. Ronnie Pickering. And your heart beats faster, and adrenaline floods your veins. Ronnie Pickering. And you rev your Picasso, and jolt your thumb backwards towards the ghost of some minor traffic altercation. RONNIE PICKERING. And you're screaming now, and puce, but they know who you are, at least. They know all about you.

I know we haven't got much of Sir David Attenborough left, and as such we should save him and his gentle tones for those sort of huge, awe-inspiring BBC documentaries about puffins and sundry other birds, but once – just once – I'd like him to commentate in his slow deliberate way on the fighting ritual of the past-his-prime northern adult male, the one that only happens through the window of a sensible family-sized Citroen. Because Ronnie Pickering just did an immaculate example of it, and we need to stand and applaud that; we need to just take stock.

Because the main thing you need to understand about Ronnie Pickering is he absolutely does not want to get out of his car. You can identify the exact moment Ronnie Pickering realises that his mouth has shouted him into a corner he has to ease himself out of his Picasso to truly burst through, and it's… hold on, I'll grab the screenshot:

It's here, when he says, "Come on, let's have a bare knuckle then," while a hard red woman watches grimly on. This isn't the first time she's seen Ronnie Pickering say a semi-niche boxing term to try to intimidate someone, is it? It's probably not the first time today.

And then Ronnie tries to drive away, and the biker says, "Well, what will that prove?" But you know that a simple reasonable explanation as to why he should take his helmet off and be bareknuckle-punched by a man who looks like what would happen if a sausage was capable of doing a shit is like a red rag to a raging bull.

Sure enough, Ronnie backs up, hits that handbrake again – big on the handbrake, Ronnie; safety first, especially in this wet weather – dips his head and half-forms his hand into a fist. This is the exact moment that he realises there's a slight chance that him repeatedly offering to deck someone might actually result in him having to get out of the car and deck them, which, as we've covered, is something Ronnie Pickering fundamentally Does Not Want to Do. This could have been filmed anywhere between eight and nine days ago, and he could still be sat firmly in that Picasso, just furiously staring at the wall of the garage, thinking about how he's always right.

But that's not the point. The point is that Ronnie Pickering is not hard.

The curious sincere anger of the middle-aged British male. What's Ronnie angry about, do you think? Because I can bet it's not the biker.

Is it because he saw Steve Bruce in a curry shop, but when he got closer it wasn't Steve Bruce, it was just some woman with a block of cement for a head, but he'd already said a cheery "Steve!" and got his Kodak out, so he had to take the photo?

Is it because he's blocked up the toilets at work and he's blocked up the one at home and he had fucking four goes on the carvery at lunch and he needs to drop this shit off somewhere or he will die?

Or is it the realisation that he's a broad man in a ten-year-old Picasso, driving around Hull pulling up bikers for non-existent motoring infractions, and that threatening to go bareknuckle is the nearest he can get to feeling like a man again, alive again; to proving that Ronnie Pickering had hopes once, and dreams, and now he's trawling through the rain hoping for it all to end?

No: sometimes a dickhead's just a dickhead. And what is that dickhead's name? Ronnie Pickering. Scream it through the car window, sing it from the rooftops: Ronnie Pickering. Shout it in the face of a quiet policeman explaining how disabled parking bay rules work; choke it through your blood at an ambulance driver while you sink into cardiac arrest: Ronnie Pickering. Carve it deep in your tombstone while a hard red woman weeps a single tear out of her stoic face: RONNIE PICKERING.

@joelgolby

More stuff from VICE, including that one about Peugeot Dad:

Dissecting That Road Rage Video Where the Driver Chases the Cyclist and Lands on His Face

I Tried to Say 'Yes' to Every Creepy Guy That Approached Me On the Street

Canada's Tinder Men Are Annoying Black Women with Their Racist and Sexist Bullshit