You are walking home from work because there are no buses. Your Nikes are beginning to bite. You are sweating. You see an Alfa Romeo break the red lights, the Dublin traffic parts, police sirens wail and whoosh.

You catch a glimpse of a youngish man sitting in the back seat. You think you recognise him. It's then you begin to think. In this world there are the haves and have nots.

Michael Schumacher is one of the haves. His time is precious. The Prince of Arrogance steps out of his car at the RDS oblivious to any industrial action and is ushered into the hall for an exhibition of antique sports cars, elegantly titled "Cuore Sportivo, The Essence of Beauty".

Schumacher fans would approve of the parallel. In a Ferrari the German driver is as close to the essence of beauty as any other before him. Already his name has joined the list with Senna, Fangio and Enzo Ferrari.

A picture of serenity, he treads after the red jacket in front in the middle of a fussy, buzzing swarm of minders, car executives, promoters and . . . well, girls in short skirts. This is F1, not the Spring Show.

Oooh Michael, how do you hit the bends so fast? Aaah Michael, are you better than Senna? Oooh Michael, what do you eat?

"Ham and eggs . . . hamburgers," he mutters. The bubble bursts. No one calls him a spoofer, but people are thinking. That sallow complexion? Those taut cheeks? Sure, and we all drive a Ferrari to work. Elegantly dressed, Schumacher's arrogance is pocketed. Today is a charm offensive. Unless you're Eddie Jordan. Through Schumacher's prism, issues are multicoloured, not monochrome. So is Jordan really the best, back-slapping, deal-making, fun-loving, dodgey-sideburned Irishman in the world?

"No, I never advised Ralph (Schumacher) to move from Jordan to Williams. He wouldn't have taken my advice anyway. Unfortunately Eddie wasn't very nice in this situation. In the year Ralph drove for him they had quite a lot of technical problems and failures and Ralph was young and made some mistakes.

"Eddie forced him . . . at a certain stage of the season if Jordan didn't have points then he said he would take him (Ralph) out of the team. It's not a very nice approach to take to a young driver, to make him more confident.

"He was under much pressure. I didn't like this approach and because of this both of them had fallen out and Ralph didn't want to stay there any longer.

"Eddie has two sides," the elder brother continues. "Quite rightly he has to look for his team and not care so much for other people. At some moments he made my life difficult as well. We had a contract. I knew he was going to go with the Yamaha engine the following year and I didn't want to go because I knew the engine, so I went to Benetton. "But time has gone by and I still have a good relationship with Eddie. Even my brother, I think he gets on much better with Eddie now than he did at the actual time.

"Long-term, Eddie is going to have to have a works engine. If you want to survive in F1 you have to have a works engine, otherwise you will be in trouble in one or two years' time."

And what about the other Eddie, the one who's even more fun-lovin' than Jordan?

"There have been moments where you'd say he could have behaved a little bit better, but . . . When he came to Ferrari things were disorganised. For Rubens (Barrichello, who took over from Irvine) things are easier and he can be more relaxed. Rubens is more what I am, a very quiet, family orientated person, who leads a private life. He is not comparable really to Eddie."

A few sound bites and he's gone. The traffic parts. That's how it is on about £2 million a month.