Clarkson--Look Who's Back by Gwen Russell

Author:Gwen Russell [Gwen Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786065445
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2017-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

BACK TO THE FUTURE

As Jeremy’s career became increasingly successful, his leisure pursuits were expanding. Clarkson had taken up shooting, explaining, ‘I have decided that the best thing to do with the view is to eat it.’ This, perhaps, explained his sympathy towards Prince Charles, whom he praised in typically flamboyant style: ‘Now Prince Charles has shown himself not only to be a decent cove, but also the kind of leader this country needs,’ he announced. ‘Unlike John Major, he obviously has rather more than two pubic hairs in his underpants.’

And on the work front, the Jeremy and Adrian show was flourishing. The two were now taking regular jaunts to various destinations together, all reported on with much jocularity in the pages of The Sunday Times Magazine. The expeditions made extremely entertaining reading, not least because the two sturdy travellers were prepared to poke a great deal of fun at themselves, coming across more like two excitable schoolboys than members of the great and good.

‘We’ve been to America, Iceland and Mykonos,’ crowed Clarkson. ‘We’ve also been up the M1, visiting everywhere with a brown sign to see if they really are of interest. Adrian got excited, but then all he knows is South Kensington and the Ivy, so to him a caravan site is strangely thrilling.’

He was still enjoying being a grumpy old man, though. Asked what he considered to be the worst thing about driving in Britain, he replied, ‘Speed cameras. I could sit here and come up with a million things, like old men with big ears in J-reg Rovers who drive too slowly, but the proliferation of cameras really annoys me. When they first came along, and were going to be put in blackspots outside schools and be visible so you’d be forced to slow down, they were a good idea. Now there are 6,000 of them, none of which appears to be in accident blackspots, just hidden behind bushes; [they made] £71 million quid last year, from 6 million people being caught. That’s 10 per cent of the population criminalised, more than a quarter of the motoring population. Most of them were little old ladies doing 32mph.’

But he had not lost his sense of humour. Clarkson was still eminently capable of laughing at himself: when asked, as a motoring enthusiast, whether he had leather driving gloves, aviator sunglasses or a Genesis album, he replied, ‘I have the gloves and, furthermore, the index finger and the middle finger on the right hand are red, so you can make highly visible V signs. Sadly, I don’t have aviators. I used to own a pair in 1978, but only Robert Redford can wear them. And no, I don’t own a Genesis album – I own all of them.’

And that self-same sense of humour continued to get him into trouble. The RSPCA felt moved to issue him with a warning after he announced one day that he had just been hunting rats using tennis rackets and croquet mallets, something for which he remained entirely unrepentant.

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