Get yourself over to www.ebay.de, dig out your piggy bank and be prepared to part with more money than Sandra Bullock (DVD) donated to the Tsunami fund.

After three hundred bids plus, a car once belonging to new Pope Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger has tipped the $1 million mark. And it doesn’t even have sat-nav.

Twenty-year-old sharper than a Wilkinson tack Benjamin Halbe bought the car for less than six grand from a local German dealer in January. Actually, saying he’s sharp would be implying Halbe knew that Pope John Paul II was going to die three months in advance, and that Ratzinger was going to fill his slip-on shoes just a week later. Unlikely, even for someone named Benjamin.

The car in question is a ‘two litre petrol-powered manual, with 75,000 km (47,000 miles) on the clock since it was first registered in March 1999’, roughly translated as a reasonably brisk Volkswagen Golf in metallic grey.

Not a motor likely to get you invited to a Nova-stuffed B&Q carpark anytime soon. But with a character like bad boy Ratzinger once having sat behind the wheel, who cares?

Sticking two twizzlers up at the suggestion Germans don’t have a sense of humour is young Habe’s Phytonesque (DVD) response to the following question:

‘Does black smoke or white smoke come out of the exhaust pipe?‘ as posted by one hilarious cheekie-chappie on the listing’s Q&A spot.

"Very funny" replied Habe. Is that a yes or no then?

This blatantly fraudulent ‘Popemobile’ is not going to be suitable for official religious business at all.  Stand up and wave out of a metallic silver Volkswagen and you’ll get nothing more than empty beer cans and abuse for your trouble. It hasn’t even got a sunroof.

If you still fancy wasting a truckload of cash on a ‘fake’ you’ve got until 5th May to do so. At least you’ll have guaranteed yourself a place next to tubby Titchmarsh on the 20th Century Roadshow in a few years time. Suppose it outdoes a collection of James Bond phonecards or Disney Pez dispensers anyway.

‘It drives like heaven.‘

Six years on the road and 47,000 miles on the clock with no service history? Pope or no Pope, for one million dollars he’d at least need to bless it first.