And Another Thing by Clarkson Jeremy

Author:Clarkson, Jeremy [Jeremy, Clarkson,]
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MICHAEL JOSEPH
Published: 2010-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

And Another Thing

Sunday 2 January 2005

Bowling for the beautiful people

Bowling for the beautiful people

You’d imagine that the world ladies’ bowls championship would be a genteel affair, brought to you by Werther’s Originals, Rover, Saga Holidays and Thora Hird’s stairlift.

But no. Seven of the eight quarter-finalists chosen to represent Britain are aged between 21 and 37. One, an extremely comely young lady, was pictured in the newspapers last week wearing an unzipped leather biker’s jacket and very little else.

This has prompted commentators to come out from behind their tea urns and remark that the team has perhaps been chosen for its televisual appeal rather than its ability. I’m sure they have a point.

You see, in the olden days, when most bowls players were born, there were no photographs in the newspapers, so people were allowed to be fat and ugly. Joseph Whit-worth, the great gunsmith, was a national hero because no one knew he had the face of a baboon. Isambard Kingdom Brunel achieved success because the great British public had no clue he was a midget.

Back then, skill and intelligence were what you needed to get on. But now, with the zoom lens and the tabloid newspaper, neither thing matters a jot.

We’re entering a whole new world where, to get on, it’s not what you know or who you know, or even what you know about who you know. All that matters is what you look like.

David Beckham, I’m told, is far from Britain’s best footballer. But he has become a global success because he’s a handsome chap. Then you have Tony Blair. He became leader of the Labour Party simply because he is better looking than Robin Cook and John Prescott. What’s more, he will win a third term because he has more sex appeal than Michael Howard. And Gordon Brown will never be prime minister because the hinge on his lower jaw appears to be loose.

Then there’s Sienna Miller. Who, I hear you ask. Well, she’s the bit-part star of two films you haven’t seen, but because she’s so unbelievably pretty her engagement to another woman called Judy managed last week to knock the Asia catastrophe off the front pages.

I understand all of this. You wouldn’t deliberately buy an ugly sofa or an ugly car, so why would you invite an ugly person to peer at you from the other side of the electric fish tank?

By the same token, I’d rather watch my new crush, Fiona Bruce, reading out the Cumbrian lambing reports for 2004 than Reginald Bosanquet, with his florid nose, telling me about the tsunami. I have a friend whose car dealership was staffed entirely by astonishingly good-looking girls. When asked why, he said with a grin that pretty ones cost the same as ugly ones. I understand that, too.

There is, however, an enormous drawback to all of this. You see, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Denzel Washington may look good in leather miniskirts and Roman armour, but where would we have been 30

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