Clarkson--Look Who's Back

by Gwen Russell

  The two were once interviewed for the ‘Relative Values’ slot in The Sunday Times back in 2001 and their words showed how close they were. ‘I was always a bit of a mother’s boy,’ wrote Jeremy. ‘I can certainly see a lot of her in me – she’s one of those life-and-soul-of-the party, bang-the-furniture, make-a-joke-about-anything characters. Which is very much the image people have of Jeremy Clarkson. Even when I was an idiot teenager, I was in awe of her and how she could hold the entire room with one of her stories. Her friends used to call them Clarkson stories; they were, like, these elaborately exaggerated anecdotes. I’m sure they thought she made them up.’

  His mother, meanwhile, while clearly doting on her son, was already clearly concerned about becoming a burden to him. ‘We deal with emotions by having a laugh,’ she wrote. ‘It’s like when Jeremy comes to see me – the first thing he does is pat the cushions on my settee. “It’s okay, Mother,” he shouts, “you’ve not started wetting them yet!” We have this agreement: whenever I start dribbling my food or having accidents on the settee, he’ll drive up to Beachy Head and push me over the edge. And it’s mutual. I talk to a lot of Jeremy’s friends and they always tell me how their mothers drive them up the wall. I think: “What is it we mothers do that drives our kids up the wall? A lot of us have our faculties and can still get about – you should count yourself lucky your mother’s not in a home.” I dread the thought of that happening to me. And I’d never move in with the kids – I never want to be a burden. If that’s not possible, then, like I said, it’s off to Beachy Head.’

  In the event she died quietly at home, leaving full instructions as to the funeral she wanted and everything else as well. Her choice of music? ‘Thank You For The Music’ by Abba. If anyone wanted to look at where Jeremy’s high spirits came from, they really didn’t need to look much further than his very much-loved mum.

  * * *

  Jeremy was known for his high jinks and propensity to upset, but on one occasion he really did nearly go too far, possibly putting his own life in danger alongside those of his cohorts. And when the problems really began, he publicly complained that the BBC wasn’t being very supportive. In hindsight it’s possible to see that relations between Jeremy and Auntie really were beginning to strain.

  The incident began on 17 September 2014, when Jeremy and the team flew out to Argentina to film a Top Gear special, under strict instructions from the BBC not to start anything. Right from the start everyone involved knew there was the potential for this to blow up in their faces: not only was Jeremy known for insulting whole countries at random, but in this case tensions had been mounting because Argentina had been making aggressive-sounding rumbles about the Falklands, the islands the British retook after the Argentinian invasion in 1982, when Mrs Thatcher was running the show. To a pugnacious bruiser like Jeremy – and, in fairness, the other two as well – to send him to Argentina at such a sensitive time was akin to dousing the situation with oil and handing him a box of matches. And an explosion duly followed.

  It started quietly, though, or at least what passes for quietly in Jeremy’s world. The team arrived and Jeremy tweeted an innocuous shot of a messy hotel bar with the message, ‘I am going to fucking live here.’ But it didn’t take long for matters to kick off. Jeremy was driving a Porsche 1,350 miles down the Patagonian Highway, accompanied by James in a Lotus and Richard in a Mustang, but no one noticed Jeremy’s licence plate, at first, at least. Then someone did. It was H982 FKL, seemingly a deliberate reference to the Falklands War in 1982. Clarin, the national newspaper, said, ‘This is highly sensitive for Argentinians and Clarkson could have problems.’ It was right.

  The BBC insisted it was an ‘absolute coincidence’ and that the number had been on the car when it was bought in August. The car itself was hastily hidden near Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego and the southernmost city in the world. ‘To suggest that this car was either chosen for its number plate, or that an alternative number plate was substituted for the original, is completely untrue,’ said Top Gear’s producer Andy Wilman, but given Jeremy’s past history of insulting his host countries, the coincidence was an unfortunate one to say the least. The other number plates came in for scrutiny, too, and some locals believed that the 269 on Hammond’s car was close to the 255 Britons killed in the conflict and 646 on May’s was a reference to the 649 Argentinian dead.

  Matters quickly turned very ugly. War veterans staged an angry demonstration outside the Arakur hotel in Ushuaia where the team was staying – Jeremy later wrote the three of them hid under the bed in a researcher’s room – and matters got so out of hand it was deemed that lives were actually at risk. The trio decided to cut short their trip, abandon their cars and hotfoot it across the border to Chile, probably a sensible choice in the circumstances. The rest of the team followed shortly afterwards.

  Jeremy was clearly shaken. ‘I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been involved in,’ he told The Sun in an interview before all the crew had managed to get out. ‘There were hundreds of them. They were hurling rocks and bricks at our cars. They were trying to attack us with pickaxe handles. They were even driving lorries at our convoy to force us into the crowds. They wanted to drag us out. They were shouting, “Burn their cars, burn them, burn the pirates.” Make no mistake, they 100 per cent wanted to kill us. This is not some kind of jolly Top Gear jape – this was deadly serious.’

  The plates had come to light after a two-week drive, when a group of youngsters saw it and flashed it up on Twitter, so often the scene of mass hysteria and condemnation, which was certainly the case here. As soon as the connection had been made everyone got angrier and angrier. ‘When we saw people on Twitter getting upset we took the plate off,’ Jeremy continued. ‘But they still attacked us, so we made a break for it to our hotel in Ushuaia. We thought once we got there they’d ease off, but the mob just descended on the hotel and encircled us. State representatives came and ordered us out of the country. I am convinced the mob was state-organised. Elections are coming up and they want to look like they stood up to the English. James, Richard and I thought if we left, things might calm down for the rest of the crew. We got nine seats on a flight to Buenos Aires, took some of the female members of staff, and scuttled out of the back door.’

  Martin Marcilla, a receptionist at the hotel, confirmed what had happened. ‘They were very tense moments,’ he said. ‘The war veterans were furious and shouting insults. Police had to remove them. Luckily things didn’t get too out of hand. They left the hotel just before 7.30pm. It was all very sudden and unexpected. They left by a service door and in such a hurry that they even forgot a computer.’ The crew abandoned the cars shortly afterwards, telling the locals they could burn them if they liked.

  Although there was a great deal of local triumphalism at having forced the bad guys out of the country, not everyone felt it had been handled very well. While there were plenty of people saying that Clarkson had at last had a taste of his own medicine, the mob scenes had been very ugly and many felt they had backfired. ‘We have committed a great mistake with the violence,’ said the mayor of Ushuaia. ‘That never resolves anything and the impact it was going to have was not taken into account. Instead of talking today about a person who was trying to be clever, we’re talking about the victimisation of that same person. Obviously I don’t agree with violence, and smashing windows or a car wasn’t necessary. I believe the people responsible made a big mistake when they decided to act in that manner because now the news is that they decided to smash up the cars instead of talking about the real issue. The clever Dick ends up becoming the victim of this situation. It’s deplorable. I would have preferred it if nothing had been damaged. And if the TV programme had come here without creating distrust like this because they would have helped the city become better known in Europe.’

  Back in the UK, Our Boys were point blank insisting it had all been an unfortunate coincidence and that they had done noth
ing wrong, but another unfortunate discovery seemed to suggest otherwise. Investigating Clarkson’s abandoned Porsche, the locals found another licence plate, which bore the legend BEII END. This wasn’t looking good, but the BBC gamely rushed out another statement. ‘The number plate was not used at any point during filming. It was originally intended to be in the programme’s final scene, a game of car football, but that ending has changed.’

  The Argentinians, unsurprisingly, were having none of it. One local official said: ‘We know bellend… is often employed as an insult in England. We regard it as another insult to the people of Argentina.’ Some also saw references to the General Belgrano, the cruiser sunk by the British with the loss of 323 Argentine lives.

  The episode came very close to sparking an international incident, with the Argentinian ambassador to the UK giving a furious response and calling for an apology, and there were a lot of people of the opinion that this time Clarkson really had gone too far. There were calls for him to be booted out of the BBC and even Andy Wilman admitted it had been a challenging year. ‘We walk a tightrope, sometimes we’re going to fall off and if you do, I’m not a fan of their [the BBC’s] reaction,’ he said. ‘They’re like, “Can you be naughty between the hours of [8pm and 9pm], can you be naughty under these conditions?” Sometimes I feel they don’t trust us at heart, but – apart from the very odd occasion – we can be trusted. We’re knackered after last year because it was a horrible year. It was our – what did the Queen say? – our annus horribilis. Our appetite is still there. I hope and think we’ll continue.’

  Jeremy himself allowed it to be known that he didn’t think the Director General, Tony Hall, had stood up for the team. But for now, they were all still going ahead.

  CHAPTER 16

  BUST UP

  By the end of 2014, Jeremy had turned into an almost unique mixture of enfant terrible and national treasure. His bosses at the BBC patently didn’t understand his wider appeal and indeed, were going to go on to take a disastrous decision about the show he had made so famous, but for now he was doing better than ever. Now estimated to be worth in the region of at least £50 million, he was one of television’s great success stories.

  But Jeremy needed some of the money, at least, for legal fees. That row over the footpath across his land on the Isle of Man had dragged on for five years, between 2005 and 2010, until he was forced to open it to the public by the high court. And his marriage finally came to an end after twenty-one years when Frances filed for divorce in 2014. ‘She’s done her penance,’ his first wife Alex told the Daily Telegraph. ‘It is her hard work that has made him into the idol he is today. Jeremy is the frontman but behind the scenes she was the swan paddling frantically beneath the surface. So she deserves every penny she gets – she worked for it.’

  However, it was in March 2015 that the incident briefly mentioned in the last chapter occurred, one that led to Jeremy’s ultimate parting from the BBC. It was widely felt that he had been extremely provocative for some time and it was only his enormous popularity – and the fact that Top Gear was a huge money earner for the BBC, selling all over the world – that had saved him so far. But there was still muttering about the potentially racist ‘slope’ incident in the background and when the crunch came, the BBC was not prepared to put itself on the line for Jeremy – a decision it almost certainly came to regret.

  Strangely, for an incident that was to have such massive repercussions, no one has disputed the main gist of what happened, although some of the details vary in the telling. In March 2015, the team had been filming in Hawes, North Yorkshire, and after a long day filming, returned to the hotel. Jeremy wanted a steak for supper but the hotel chef had already gone home and he was offered soup and a plate of cold cuts instead. Clarkson flew into a rage; matters got completely out of hand and he ended up punching Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon in the face. According to the latter, Clarkson also called him a ‘lazy Irish c***.’ Tymon ended up in hospital.

  Jeremy was to end up apologising to Tymon repeatedly and there was also ultimately a behind-the-scenes cash settlement involving both Jeremy and the BBC, which was estimated to be well over £100,000. In the immediate aftermath, however, there was uproar. Jeremy is a big man physically and Oisin isn’t, but while there was widespread sympathy for the producer, there was also serious concern over Jeremy’s future. He was immediately suspended from the BBC and even the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, got dragged into the row, saying, ‘I don’t know exactly what happened. He is a constituent of mine, he is a friend of mine, he is a huge talent. I see that he said he regrets some of what happened. All I would say – because he is a talent and he does amuse and entertain so many people, including my children who’ll be heartbroken if Top Gear is taken off air – I hope this can be sorted out because it is a great programme and he is a great talent.’

  The BBC, however, had had enough. Jeremy was suspended. The upcoming episode of Top Gear was not broadcast. There is a common belief that Jeremy was fired, but this is not true: rather, his contract was up at the end of that month. Originally, everyone had been in talks to renew it; this was not now going to happen.

  But the public was up in arms. The North Yorkshire police made inquiries into what happened, but Oisin declined to press charges. Jeremy was forced to ask the show’s fans to stop trolling Oisin as the incident was not his fault. A petition was launched to get the BBC to change its mind; it swiftly gained one million signatures and was taken to the door of Number 10 by a man dressed as The Stig. BBC Director-General Tony Hall received death threats and in yet another bizarre twist, within 24 hours of his suspension, the Russian state broadcaster Zvezda approached Jeremy to ask him to front a motoring programme.

  Jeremy, always so much closer to the actual viewers than the management top brass, realised faster than his erstwhile employer what a terrible mistake they had made. ‘There was an eighteen-year waiting list to be in the audience of Top Gear, but the BBC has fucked themselves. It was a great show and they’ve fucked it up,’ he said at a charity event in London’s Roundhouse, although he later claimed he was joking.

  Tony Hall released a statement about what had happened, which really just served to reveal that the BBC did not understand what it was about to do. It read:

  It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. It is not a decision I have taken lightly. I have done so only after a very careful consideration of the facts and after personally meeting both Jeremy and Oisin Tymon.

  I am grateful to Ken MacQuarrie [Director of BBC Scotland] for the thorough way he has conducted an investigation of the incident on 4th March. Given the obvious and very genuine public interest in this I am publishing the findings of his report. I take no pleasure in doing so. I am only making them public so people can better understand the background. I know how popular the programme is and I also know that this decision will divide opinion. The main facts are not disputed by those involved. I want to make three points.

  First – The BBC is a broad church. Our strength in many ways lies in that diversity. We need distinctive and different voices but they cannot come at any price. Common to all at the BBC have to be standards of decency and respect. I cannot condone what has happened on this occasion. A member of staff – who is a completely innocent party – took himself to Accident and Emergency after a physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature. For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.

  Second – This has obviously been difficult for everyone involved but in particular for Oisin. I want to make clear that no blame attaches to him for this incident. He has behaved with huge integrity throughout. As a senior producer at the BBC he will continue to have an important role within the organisation in the future.

  Third – Obviously none of us wanted to find ourselves i
n this position. This decision should in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC. I have always personally been a great fan of his work and Top Gear. Jeremy is a huge talent. He may be leaving the BBC but I am sure he will continue to entertain, challenge and amuse audiences for many years to come.

  The BBC must now look to renew Top Gear for 2016. This will be a big challenge and there is no point in pretending otherwise. I have asked Kim Shillinglaw to look at how best we might take this forward over the coming months. I have also asked her to look at how we put out the last programmes in the current series.

  Anyone familiar with what was really going on, however, would have had no trouble in reading between the lines. The then Director of BBC Television was Danny Cohen and it was widely known that he and Jeremy were the polar opposites of one another, Cohen being the very epitome of the metropolitan elite and not a man who liked Jeremy’s sense of humour and constant inability to toe the line. He was thought to have wanted Jeremy to go for years and now he had his way.

  Jeremy was well aware of this. ‘Danny and I were, and I suspect will remain forever, very far apart on every single thing,’ he told The Times a year later. ‘Normally, you could find some common ground with somebody, but I think Danny and I could probably only get on perfectly well so long as we absolutely never had to think about each other for the rest of the time. Because I don’t mind anyone having an opinion that’s different to mine, just so long as they don’t mind my opinion, either. So long as it doesn’t impinge on what I want to do.’