by Gwen Russell
And the 1980s were fast approaching. Britain was changing: it was no longer the sleepy, strike-riddled country it had seemed to be for so long. There was an energy in the air that signalled new days were on the horizon, with new opportunities for a young man with everything to play for and nothing to lose. This was a time in which the world was there for the taking, if only you got out and went for it. It was inevitable that something had to give.
And it did. Matters finally came to a head when Jeremy was, of all things, covering a ‘ponies and produce’ show: ‘I had all the Pony Club mothers giving me earache about how, “Well, she shouldn’t have been in that class so she shouldn’t have won,”’ Clarkson recalled. ‘I’d been hearing how somebody cheated with his marrow and how someone else’s apples had come from Sainsbury’s and that they hadn’t grown them at all, and then the Pony Club mothers – that’s what made me do it. I picked up my typewriter in the press tent at the Wyckersley show and shouted, “Enough!” I thought there must be something better than this out in the big, wide world.’
There was, but he hadn’t found it yet. And it was a bold move to make, even if it was an utterly necessary one if he wanted to find any real success. However, there was still no obvious alternative game plan – Jeremy ended up working for the family business – and he was reaching the end of his tether. A big personality like his was never going to be content in a small world and clearly he felt the need for greater challenges, even if he wasn’t yet quite sure what those challenges would be. But he was still young enough – only twenty – to be reckless and get away with it. He had not yet reached an age when it was imperative that he settled into a career.
By now there was something else in his life. Ever since he had passed his driving test, Clarkson’s love affair with the motorcar had been growing and he had been indulging it ever since. One of his first cars was a VW Scirocco, a car that many might have thought too small for his 6ft 5in frame. Jeremy agreed that it might well have been, but he loved it nonetheless. ‘I was desperately uncomfortable in it and the clutch cable used to saw through the bulkhead and break – but it didn’t matter because it was such a lovely car. You’d walk up to it after you’d been shopping and look at it and go, “You’re magnificent.”’ The signs for the future were all there, had anyone just looked for them. Jeremy got a lot more pleasure from his car than from his career, so why not try to combine the two one day?
That Scirocco was going to inspire more outpourings than just praise for its wonderfulness; it was to be the very touchstone of his career. It was while he was searching through various guides to decide what car to buy that the idea first occurred to him that he might return to journalism after all: this time, though, because no one else was doing it well, he would write about cars.
The writing was, to be honest, a bit nerdy and far too technical. It’s a wonder no one else realised this at the time, but Clarkson’s maverick approach when he finally got going was one of the many reasons he came across as being such a breath of fresh air. It is not stretching it to say that he changed the face of motoring journalism, making it not only lively but also mainstream. He addressed the issues everyone wanted to know about – namely, what the car would do for their image and what was it like to drive – while at the same time making his reporting entertaining. Viewers of BBC’s Top Gear and the innumerable other programmes Clarkson has been involved with don’t just tune in because they want to learn about motoring – they watch because they want to be entertained.
And motor journalism at that time could certainly have done with a change. ‘They were all like a trade magazine, this incredibly tedious line-up of facts and details,’ Clarkson recalled. ‘I wasn’t interested in that. I want to know, as I cruised down Doncaster High Street, am I going to look good in this car or not? I didn’t give a shit about headroom and bootsills. And it made me start to think: “I wonder if you can write about cars in a different way?”’
You could, but he wasn’t going to just yet. Jeremy got his big break relatively young, but he had paid his dues in the run-up to it. His early foray into journalism hadn’t been a success and neither was his next scheme. Temporarily, he had returned to the family business to become a travelling salesman selling teddy bears and, although this didn’t last for very long, it did herald a major change in the young Clarkson’s life. Eager to get on, he decided it was time to swim in the biggest pond in the land and so he moved to London to try out his luck in the Big Smoke.
This was not entirely for career-related reasons – indeed, Clarkson would maintain that back then a career was the last thing on his mind. Other issues played a part, too, not least that he wanted a change. Life in Doncaster was no longer the same: his friends had moved away and the local scene was beginning to pall. He saw his peers starting to do exciting things: they were in jobs and establishing an independent life. Being stuck at home with his parents was not part of the game plan and Jeremy was beginning to realise that he would have to branch out if he was to achieve what he wanted in life.
And so he upped and left, which was one of the best moves he could have made. It was the beginning of a riotous existence, a period in his life that he would look back on very fondly. London in the 1980s was a place brimming with opportunity; there was liveliness in the air and a sense that great adventures lay ahead. An unreconstructed Thatcherite, although he probably would not have described himself as such at the time, this was precisely the kind of atmosphere in which Jeremy thrived. Barriers were breaking down, Britain was changing and the mood of the country was that there was everything to play for. Young, lively and energetic, Clarkson made full use of these early years in London before he settled down: career-wise, he might still have been getting nowhere, but otherwise, London was an awful lot of fun.
And it was certainly a raucous life. Later, when asked what his favourite decade was, he replied, ‘The eighties, when Thatcherism was at its best. I was living in Fulham with three other guys. Whenever we ran out of money, there would be another share issue.’ This was typically Clarksonian, although it did not tell the full story: Jeremy spent those years both living it up and being broke. An indication of the way in which he and his friends lived was their nickname of the flat, the ‘Vomitarium’: it was a time of total freedom and for Clarkson, it was the first taste of life on his own … he was enjoying himself to the full.
Evenings were spent at the local pub, the White Horse in Fulham, a lively establishment peopled with those strange creatures who were so prevalent in the 1980s: Sloane Rangers. Jeremy was not exactly a Sloane, but he did have some of the right credentials: a public school education and a bit of family money behind him, even if it wasn’t a great deal. There were also indications that he didn’t slum it quite as much as the flat’s nickname indicated.
Asked once what his biggest regret was, Clarkson replied, ‘Having lived in the same block of flats as Lady Diana Spencer and never meeting her. I didn’t realise who she was until a media circus arrived one day.’ This shines a slightly different light on the bachelor flat: Lady Diana lived in Coleherne Court, which is not by a long shot the home of rundown studenty bedsits. It is a very smart apartment block indeed and rather suggests that Jeremy was living in slightly more style than he would care to admit.
Life, however, was very much a studenty affair. Jeremy’s fellow flatmates were friends from his school days and he recalled their existence with a certain amount of glee. ‘It was all vomit-stained walls and curry packets – the house from hell,’ he said. ‘What little money we had went on booze and fags. Women didn’t like coming around but, once they did, that was it, because they stuck to the carpet and couldn’t get out.’ Jeremy had his fair share of girlfriends around this time. He was, in fact, shortly to meet the woman he would marry, but they did not get together as a couple until nearly 1990, which was probably for the best. It meant that Clarkson could play the field and get it all out of his system before he was ready to wed.
And he had lots of fun – and
otherwise – here, too. He moved in a circle in which everyone was young and willing to play as hard as they worked (actually, in Clarkson’s case, he frequently claimed he did hardly any work at all) and so there were plenty of young women happy to go out on dates. Jeremy had a healthy interest in women and enjoyed this period of his life enormously, although not everything always went according to plan. In later years, he would talk about his dating experiences: it certainly wasn’t all wine and roses.
There was a blind date when, he said, rather ungallantly, ‘She turned out to be a walrus – I talked to the carpet all night.’ And there was one girl – ‘I can’t tell you about her here, but I’d never go out with anyone from Hampshire again.’ The only person he ever chucked was, ‘A drug addict. When I found out I went into hiding. Otherwise I’ve always been the one who was dumped.’
And one of those occasions was rather painful, as could be gained from another remark he once made. Asked what the worst way he’d been dumped had been, Jeremy replied, ‘The worst way anyone can dump you is by going off with your best friend. I won’t comment further.’ But he was young, resilient and bounced back almost immediately. Clarkson has actually been very fortunate in his private life: apart from these early experiences, he married at what is these days a young age – thirty-five – and was lucky enough to have a relationship that was very content.
And, meanwhile, there was work. It is hard to imagine Clarkson as a teddy bear salesman, but he made an attempt at it for a while. His parents, after all, had done an enormous amount for him: as well as putting him through Repton, they were now actually employing him and that, in turn, gave him the chance to explore life in the capital while he worked out what he wanted to do next. It was a job, it funded his social life, it was actually helping the family and at least it gave him a short-term aim in life. And, again, there didn’t seem to be a great many other options. Clarkson was disinclined to look for a job on another paper but, being entirely without qualifications, he was hard-pressed to know what else to do.
But if truth be told, his heart didn’t really seem to be in his new job. At that time life was about socialising, not careers, and his job was, in many ways, an adjunct to what he really wanted to do, which was to party. ‘I was supposed to tour the country selling them [the bears], but they sold themselves, so I fooled around, living in the London Vomitarium,’ Jeremy said. ‘Very laddish – well, who isn’t in their early twenties? It was get home, be sick, eat Disprin and nurse a hangover until it was time for the pub again.’ The message was clear: he wasn’t taking anything seriously, least of all what he would do in the longer term.
On another occasion, however, he was less frivolous about what life was like back then and, despite the fact that he was relishing his new world, it clearly wasn’t all plain sailing. It was hard work and sometimes seemed as if there was little reward. ‘I’d drive all the way to Cwmbran or Pontefract, where the usually horrid proprietor of a gift shop would listen to my spiel and then say, “no thanks” and I’d drive back to London,’ he recalled recently. It was not his finest hour. Being a salesman also means having to please the customer, rather than the other way around: a man like Jeremy would not always have relished having to stay on the right side of the person with whom he was dealing. It didn’t suit his personality at all.
But what should he do? He didn’t want to continue working for his parents’ business, he knew that, but neither did he want to return to local newspapers. And so he pondered on what was the best course to take, what he would be happy doing, how he wanted to live – until an idea that had been brewing for some time began to take hold. He might not have enjoyed his stint on the paper, but it had proved one thing to him: he could definitely write. And then there was his great interest: cars.
The more Jeremy knew about them, the more he liked them, and he began to wonder if he could do something with that liking in the professional sphere. He had already noted how bad a great deal of motoring journalism was, and he felt it seemed to be written for the motor trade itself, rather than for the consumer. He thought that there was a gap in the market, a gap that, just possibly, he might be able to fill.
And why not? This was a time of opportunity and, given that he was still so young, Clarkson had relatively little to lose. It would be a way forward, a way of carving out a name for himself while doing something he actually enjoyed. The trick of a good career is to make your hobby your job, which means that you will always be passionately interested in what you’re doing, and Clarkson was about to do just that.
But he was insistent that this was not the culmination of a long-held dream. Quite the opposite, in fact: it was only as an adult that he really began to develop a passion for cars. ‘As a child I wasn’t remotely interested in them, in fact I didn’t take much notice until I wanted to buy one and found that all the magazines were rubbish,’ he said. ‘They didn’t tell you what to buy and what to avoid. I have been very passionate about them ever since, which is why I get frustrated by rubbish, designed by people who don’t care.’
In retrospect, it was the obvious course to take, but it was a bold move at the time, for it entailed leaving the safety of the family firm and launching out into a new business by himself. But in the 1980s the entrepreneurial spirit was going strong, and Jeremy was only twenty-four. There was one risk: if the venture didn’t succeed, it would be yet another career path that hadn’t quite worked out for him. However, he was determined and willing to take a risk and so, in 1984, the Motoring Press Agency was born.
To say that it took off immediately would be to overstate the case. To begin with, it was a long, hard grind. Clarkson had practically no experience of motoring journalism and virtually no contacts anywhere, so he had to get going from scratch. But he worked hard and began syndicating a motoring column, which again gave him the chance to learn his trade before his career really took off.
The man himself was typically self-deprecating about it: ‘Only two papers took it, which required twenty minutes of writing on a Thursday and gave me the rest of the week to sit in the pub, go to the bookies and watch Danger Mouse on television,’ he said. ‘I ran the business with a friend and, after three years, we’d earned only £4,000 between us and had massive overdrafts, but we were invited to loads of fantastic car launches.’ Back then, that in itself was a reason for joy. It was different from anything Clarkson had experienced before: for a start, he was actually enjoying what he was doing. That, if nothing else, made a break with the past.
And anyway, who cared whether the work was steady and the income less than lavish? This was the 1980s, when life was one big party. ‘It was a question of fumbling around in the morning, pretending to work, then meeting the rest of Thatcher’s children in the pub,’ said Clarkson. ‘They were all self-employed, too. I have no regrets about the eighties – they were brilliant.’ They were certainly made for people like him.
But his style back then was very different from what it is now. The Clarkson persona took years to develop and even after he started presenting Top Gear, he was much, much softer than he is now. His position as a freelance hack on the very fringes of the motor trade was a very precarious one and, at that stage, he didn’t want to upset anyone. Looking back, Clarkson himself mocked his early style: ‘The camshaft does this and it does this many miles to the gallon, and the coat hook’s in the wrong place. It’s all lovely and can I come to your next press launch, please? – never criticising in case I got put on their blacklist,’ he said.
And, for some time at least, it would appear that his new writing career was going nowhere fast. On another occasion, Clarkson related how he would spend an hour writing his column on Tuesday mornings, throw away his bank statement telling him he’d got an overdraft (‘Well, if you’ve got an overdraft, you’ve got an overdraft’) and spend much of the rest of the day having a flutter on the horses, playing Scrabble and watching Danger Mouse every afternoon. Danger Mouse was clearly a big element in his life back then.
B
ut, in 1989, all that was to change. Jeremy was invited to yet another car launch and, on this occasion, it was the seating arrangements at the launch that worked in his favour. He fell into conversation with the person he was sitting next to and, in no time at all, found he was making him laugh – irreverence was a part of his personality from the start. This individual was rather taken with the brash, opinionated young northerner with a good sense of humour, to such an extent that he began to wonder if the two of them could do business together. As it turned out, they could. For the person sitting next to Jeremy was not just any old motoring journalist: he was the producer of Top Gear.
CHAPTER 3
MARRIAGE & MOTORS
At first Clarkson could not quite believe what was happening. There he was, bumming around London, making just enough money to get by on writing about cars and having a fantastic time in the process, and now someone, out of the blue, was offering him the opportunity of a lifetime. The producer from the car launch thought he had spotted some real potential and, shortly afterwards, Clarkson was invited to do a screen test. ‘I thought it was a complete joke,’ said Jeremy. ‘I didn’t even prepare for it.’
At the time, Top Gear was a little-watched, if well-respected, magazine programme, not the entertainment show we know today. Until that day the thought of a career in television had never even occurred to Clarkson. Writing about cars was all very well, but appearing on television and talking about them? No one was more astonished by the turn of events than Clarkson himself, and he was even more flabbergasted when he got the result of the test. He had come across well on the screen and the producers invited him to start work on the show.
With hindsight, of course, it’s clear that Jeremy is a natural on television. For a start, he has a very striking appearance: tall, with that startling mass of curly hair, which may be a little more under control these days but remains as striking as ever. His face came across well, too. Clarkson has a long face, which gives him the vague look of an Eeyore, but it is one that is very well suited to the camera. In short, there would be no problems with the way he looked.