by Gwen Russell
And with that he was off to make his next television programme, this one called, quite simply, Speed. His TV career as a whole was going as strongly as ever and, as ever, the label of the new programme was true to what you got in the tin. Clarkson was pitched at colossal speed in any number of situations, from jet fighters to rollercoaster rides. For the latter, he enlisted an unusual companion: his mother.
‘We wanted to do a test on The Big One roller coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach,’ said Jeremy, ‘and I thought, “Who can I get to do this? I know, I’ll get my mum.” Of course, she hated the idea and she hated the whole experience, but I bunged her £100 and she was OK with that.’
Indeed, the trials Clarkson was about to put himself through were, if anything, even worse than those in Extreme Machines. Nor was Francie thrilled that her husband was risking his neck yet again. ‘I assured her that I’d never do anything like that again,’ he admitted. ‘Unfortunately, this producer friend of mine from school phoned me up with a wonderful idea to do a lot of things very fast and I couldn’t refuse him. I don’t suppose Francie was too happy about it, but she’s got used to me saying and doing my own thing over the years.’
Jeremy’s willingness to put himself through it was commendable. He was also exceedingly willing to talk about just how frightening it had been. ‘I know that half the people tuning into Speed will be doing so just to see me make a fool of myself and they won’t be disappointed,’ he said. ‘We had a series of disasters and I’ve never been as genuinely frightened as I was doing this. Up to now I thought nothing would faze me. How wrong I was. People have been killed going down bobsleigh runs and when I asked if I was insured, people just laughed at me. Then, about halfway down, doing 80mph, the serotonin in my brain kicked in and I froze with fear. It’s what causes rabbits to freeze in front of car headlights. I couldn’t move – all I could do was grunt. After the run they wanted me to comment on how I felt, but I couldn’t speak.’
Jeremy also very sportingly found himself being sick in a cockpit again, this time courtesy of the Empire Test School in Wiltshire. ‘It turns out that Top Gun is for pussies,’ he said. ‘If you’re a good Top Gun instructor, then you end up at this place in Wiltshire where they do this manoeuvre that no one else in the world teaches you.’ The manoeuvre in question was certainly not for the faint hearted. ‘I was taken up to 42,000ft and then they stall the engine, so you go into freefall,’ Clarkson explained. ‘You fall axis over axis and I was explosively sick everywhere. I felt dreadful and I was in a fair amount of pain. I didn’t feel much better when we landed either, or for about three days afterwards, and I really don’t want to repeat the experience.’
He did, however, enjoy it on the whole. ‘I also met some incredibly interesting people,’ he said. ‘I crashed Colin McRae’s rally car and I raced an extreme skier down a red ski run in Austria in a baby Jag, which was hair-raising. You had to stay above 80 miles an hour otherwise you get bogged down. The course was about five miles long, but it was almost vertical in places. It was fantastic. Hopefully, a lot of viewers will tune in because they are interested in how and why we go faster and how fast we’ll go in the future. But I also know there will be people watching who hate me and are only waiting to see me suffer. There are plenty of those, believe me.’
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. Indeed, he also raised eyebrows when he revealed how to smoke on airplanes: ‘I don’t smoke nearly as much now, but yes,’ he said. ‘You kneel on the pump thing to keep the vacuum going in the toilets, to get rid of the smoke. It’s very undignified, but I was never caught.’
And, as usual, the targets of his jokes never realised he was not always being serious. It is very unlikely that Jeremy would have employed a tennis racket to track down a rat and, as for smoking in the toilets of planes – well, even if he had done it, as he himself said, it was hardly the most distinguished image to create in the readers’ minds. Sometimes it almost seemed as if he couldn’t help himself – if it was going to upset people, he said it – and at others, it was almost as if he took a delight in jarring delicate sensibilities. But either way, as with the naughty child Clarkson so often resembled, the trick was not to rise to it, something that time and again people forgot.
Indeed, at times it seemed as though the disapprovers were out in force. Yet another was Transport 2000, which called for Top Gear to be replaced with a programme that was more safety and environmentally aware. Indeed, they were merely the latest in a string of organisations to do so. For years, environmental protestors had been having a go at Top Gear and in Jeremy, of course, they found the perfect target to complain about, for the simple reason he was so very politically incorrect. Another presenter might have tried to play down the environmental issues a motoring programme will inevitably come up against: for Clarkson, however, the confrontational approach seemed best.
The feud with Vauxhall was also still going strong. In an attempt to prove a Vauxhall could be driven from the back seat, Clarkson did exactly that and crashed. Asked where he was when he crashed, he replied, ‘In the back seat.’ On yet another occasion, during the Top Gear Car of the Year Awards, he dumped nearly half a ton of manure on a Vauxhall van. Sometimes, of course, these ploys seemed rather childish, but they still delighted vi
ewers.
However, that reference to not smoking so much, made on the subject of smoking in planes’ lavatories, was a sure sign that age was beginning to catch up with even the mighty Clarkson. Many people absolutely revel in smoking in their youth, but once on the wrong side of forty, it starts to seem like not such a good idea. And it wasn’t just his own health he had to worry about: he had his children to look after, too. Jeremy would have denied it, but these days he was taking slightly better care of himself. Not that he had the slightest intention of slowing down.
Nor was there any indication that anyone would want him to. Since 1996 he had released a motoring video annually, a profitable venture that was still going strong. He was also now writing a series of books, which went on to become bestsellers. Ever more interesting television programmes were coming his way – of which more in the next chapter – home life was happy and his life was an interesting one. These days he merely realised that to continue to get the maximum out of life, he would have to look after himself a bit better.
But there really were indications now that he was feeling his age. He once wrote that, in his youth, he and his friends left a restaurant either when they had run out of money or when it [the restaurant] had run out of wine. Now they went home because they were tired. On the whole, however, he was coping well with middle age. Life had, after all, turned out very differently from what he and his parents had feared when he was younger: he was, and still is, one of the best known faces in the country and all for doing a job that he loved. His current position in British society would have seemed inconceivable in the dark months after he had been ‘expelled’ from Repton, and, indeed, in the happy lad-about-town days of his youth. Clarkson had never, after all, gone out to make a career for himself in television: his really was a career that had started by pure chance.
Even better work was just around the corner. Clarkson had done plenty of non-car-related television already, but he was about to show a far more educated and cultured side to himself than many people could have believed existed. On top of that, he retained his fan base of lads, who loved everything he did and wanted to be like him. As his appeal broadened, so did the range and number of projects he came to be associated with. It turned into a virtuous circle: as Clarkson became more popular, more work came his way, which made him even more popular. And, by now, it was perfectly possible to have seen a huge amount of Jeremy Clarkson on the television without seeing him go anywhere near a car.
And now he was back, bigger, bolder and better than ever before in the show that had originally made his name. Not that he’d exactly been away from television altogether, of course: his presence on our television screens was almost as frequent as that of The News At Ten, but he was returning to the programme that had made him famous: in 2002, less than three years after leaving, he was back with Top Gear. And, to be honest, they’d missed each other. The programme hadn’t been the same without him, while Jeremy himself, although kept busy, had not found a permanent replacement for his first true amore. And so he was going back, in a move welcomed by his television bosses and fans alike.
But it was not just that Clarkson was returning to Top Gear: the programme itself was undergoing a complete transformation. Everything was to be new: some of the old presenters had gone off to Channel Five, while the show itself had been taken off air for a year while BBC executives pondered its fate. That they saw its best hope for the future in a presenter who had left three years previously says a great deal about Jeremy’s role in making the show the success it had been: if it was going to be must-see TV again, they wanted him back. And then some.
Their man was only too happy to oblige. Jeremy might not have been making the programme any more, but his love of cars was still as strong as ever, and he was only too happy to get back into the driving seat. He was also only too happy to offer his take on the challenge of reforming the show. ‘The old Top Gear was too formulaic,’ he said. ‘Every day I was filming miles away from home, getting back late and writing the next day’s script.
‘One night, I had a Renault Clio to review and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. All those little cars were fine; all economical, all could do 100mph, all had cup-holders. What I wanted to write was, “Want one? Then buy one. Don’t want one? Then don’t.” Instead, the cursor on the screen winked at me until 2am and I knew I’d reached the end of that particular road. But I still loved cars. I had an idea for a new show just when the other presenters buggered off to Channel Five, so here we are. But this time it’s studio-based and we have our own test track so we can drive fast and talk cars – I want to make talking enthusiastically about cars less embarrassing than it is at the moment.’
One inspiration for this, no one should be surprised to hear, was Clarkson’s old friend AA Gill. ‘You know, I knock around a fair bit with Adrian Gill and people come up to him all the time and coo, “Oh Adrian … restaurants … where do we go? How can we get a table? What’s the latest thing to drizzle over sundried tomatoes?”’ Jeremy said. ‘But if anyone wants to talk to me about cars, they do it in hushed tones in case anyone hears. I want to change that.’
Quite a few changes were being made to the format of the show. It had been extended to an hour and considerably sharpened up. ‘The programme will be topical because it’s made just a few days before it’s screened,’ Clarkson explained. ‘I’ll also be very picky about which cars get on the show; if a car isn’t special and different, it won’t get seen.’
It also gave him a chance to go back to doing what he liked best: racing very fast cars around without worrying about besmirching his licence. Jeremy’s proud boast remained that, while he didn’t have so much as a point to his name for any driving offences, he was able to behave recklessly in the course of doing his job. ‘I went to Japan to try the Daihatsu Charade and, after only half a lap, I had a huge crash and stuffed it into a ditch,’ he said.
‘Luckily I was wearing a helmet that punched a hole in the windscreen and I was fine. I was going too fast. I’ve also crashed a Jaguar XJR 15, worth £750,000, and I recently drove a Ford RS200 into a ploughed field. It’s the fastest accelerating car in the world – it does 0–100mph in six seconds, too fast for me, but I’ll have a go at anything. I particularly like driving fast when I’m taking a corner, it’s quite a sexy feeling.’ Off duty, though, it was a different matter. ‘I’m very wary,’ said Clarkson. ‘I’ve never been flashed by a speed camera.’
He also couldn’t resist the odd dig at the old crowd he had previously worked with on Top Gear. Asked if motoring ever got tedious, he replied, ‘Not for me. It’s great fun. Since we changed Top Gear, I don’t have to drive the boring cars. People say, “I’m thinking of buying a Renault Clio, what’s it like?” I haven’t got a clue; I’ve no idea. Watch Channel Five, I’m sure they’ll tell you.’
But it wasn’t just the programme that had changed; Clarkson had, too. He had mellowed somewhat, something he was keen to put across to the public, and even claimed that he was no longer out to cause upset just for the sake of it. ‘I’m forty-two, and when I did Meet the Neighbours [a programme in which he travelled around Europe comparing the stereotypes to the reality], I was much more gentle,’ he said. ‘Now, with Top Gear, I’m being billed as, “bigger, bolder and ruder than ever before”, but to be honest, I’ll only court controversy when I think it’s worth it, not for the sake of it.’
A Jeremy Clarkson not deliberately stirring it up is much like fish and chips without the chips – one vital ingredient is missing – but that wasn’t all. He was showing a softer, more vulnerable side, even admitting that his feelings could be bruised. Asked if it hurt when people slagged him off, he replied, ‘Yes, it does. But I dole it out so I have to take it. Now, if I was David Attenborough and someone was rude about me when all I’d said was, “Look at these lovely meerkats”, then that would be unfair. Or if I was Alan Titchmarsh talking about a nice cotoneaster and someone called me a tosser, then I’d have every right to moan. But I
take a car that someone’s worked on for five years and call it rubbish. That’s hurtful, so I can’t complain.’ In that he was right, but he was certainly proving he knew the score.
He was still merrily dishing it out left, right and centre. The Germans remained a favourite target, even as far as their attitude to the English is concerned. ‘They still think that everyone in Britain is either a squadron leader or a Brontë sister,’ Clarkson announced. ‘We go to work with tightly rolled umbrellas and bowler hats. We only eat food when it’s charcoal and we only ever watch films about the war.’
Or take this one about another old favourite, Norfolk. ‘The government should stop promoting the Broads as a tourist attraction and should advise visitors that, “Here be witches,”’ he announced. ‘They spend millions telling us that it’s foolish to smoke, but not a penny telling us not to go to Norfolk – unless you like orgies and the ritual slaying of farmyard animals.’
Or this, on a new target: footballers. ‘I found myself sharing a hotel with a team that, thanks to the libel laws, shall be nameless,’ he said. ‘But honestly, the lobby was like Darwin’s waiting room.’ With that kind of savage wit it is hardly surprising that he had to take a dose of his own medicine from time to time.
As part of the new, gentler Clarkson (which, it must be said, never entirely materialised), the Ferrari was gone, to be replaced by a Mercedes SL 55, although, as usual, he tempered praise with a good deal of criticism. Asked what was the best car he’d ever owned, he replied, ‘The one I’ve got now. It’s a Merc SL, but it does break down often. Mercedes have completely lost the plot. They announced a few years ago they thought they were over-engineering their cars and were going to back off a bit in terms of quality, and it’s showing. The dealers are rubbish, too. I know they’re having a major overhaul, but they need to get it done in the next six or seven minutes.’