For crying out loud!: the world according to Clarkson, volume three

by Jeremy Clarkson

  Anyway, out of the blue, I found a whole new seam to mine in my relentless quest for horror: Stow-on-the-Wold.

  Those of you who have read A. A. Gill’s book on the English will know that he described this Cotswold hill town as unquestionably the worst place in the world. And a lot of the locals have failed to understand why he feels like this.

  It’s simple. Adrian doesn’t know one end of the Cotswolds from a nasty dose of cot death. He was simply aiming his poisoned quill at the town where I live. And missed.

  The fact is that Stow is a wonderful place. For 364 days of the year. And then for 24 glorious hours in May it becomes the biggest campsite in the world for… er, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to call them now.

  Travellers seems wrong since they all live in houses in Dart-ford in Kent. I know pikey’s a no-no. Er, gypsies? Is that okay?

  It’s easy to remember when this is on because all of a sudden the shutters come down on the normal shops and everyone within 40 miles suddenly loses all their five-bar gates. And their lawn mowers.

  Oh, and every grass verge in the region is suddenly bedecked with a million chromed caravans. One of which, I couldn’t help noticing, had been fitted with a wheel clamp. Who did they think was going to nick it? The Duke of Marlborough?

  Anyway, the fair. Primarily, it’s a place where you can buy and sell horses, some of which go for £40,000. A bauble compared to some of the Range Rovers I saw. But as is the way with these things, there are a number of stalls where you can buy canaries for £3,000, 30-year-old Ford Transits for £1,800, and terriers. I don’t know how much they cost because while I was in the middle of finding out, one of them leapt six feet off the ground and tried to eat my head.

  You can also buy caravans, of course, and five-bar gates, and lawn mowers. But no heather, surprisingly, or pegs, or tarmac.

  As soon as I walked into the field I was assaulted by a 1 o-year-old kid. I reckoned that he would want to talk about Top Gear or some obscure Ferrari. But no. He had seen my Breitling from 700 yards away and liked it very much. Then he was joined by another kid who had noted I had the new B&O phone. Pretty soon, I figured, I’d have neither.

  The people here were simply incredible. All the women appeared to have stepped straight off the stage at Stringfellows. Except that they all had double-decker pushchairs full of half a million babies. And all the men had necks like birthday cakes and forearms thicker than my upper thigh.

  Aren’t they all just so lovely, said the girl I went with. Well, yes, here, when they’re prising a terrier offyour head, I agree, they are lovely in a salt-of-the-earth sort of way. But when it’s 3 a.m. and you come downstairs in a nightie to find one of them in your sitting room helping himself to your television set, then no: lovely isn’t a word that springs to mind.

  One thing. They were all spectacularly good-looking. I’m afraid I know very little about the origins of these people; I recall that they originated in India but they don’t look Indian to me. They look like gods. With beer bellies and pushchairs. If you can imagine such a thing.

  The trinkets they were selling, though, were not good-looking at all. They were absolutely hideous. Within minutes I had found at least 30 items that would fit nicely into my cupboard. But I have strict rules.

  I’m only allowed to buy one thing per venue or day.

  At first I was tempted by a rose bowl made from etched cut glass. And that was just the start. Some of the cut faces were brown, some were finished in ‘hand painted’ enamel and some in gold leaf.

  I can’t begin to describe the foulness of the thing. But it was £50 so I moved on.

  I finally settled on a £25 pot horse. Painted by… well, I have no idea. By a team of primary-school children, I think. It stands a foot tall and has golden ears and Romany scenes on its flanks. It is extraordinarily terrible and made me very happy.

  Sunday 14 May 2006

  Listen to me, I’m the drought buster

  After two unusually dry winters Britain is no longer classified by the world’s climatologists as ‘unbelievably wet and miserable’. We are now listed as ‘soggy and horrid’ and, as a result, I’ve had a letter from my local water company telling me not to clean my teeth or wipe my bottom.

  There is a chilling warning too. If I persist with my personal hygiene, they will ban me from topping up the swimming pool.

  Of course, everyone is now running around saying that instead of sending out threatening letters, the water companies should spend some of their profits fixing the leaks.

  Why? The whole point of a company is to make money, not to spend every single penny it has digging up every single road in the country to repair a system that is 150 years old and completely knackered.

  Even more annoying are the swivel-eyed loonies who have blamed the water shortage on people who eat meat. They argue that thanks to climate change, south-east Britain has less rainfall per head than Sudan. So what? Monte Carlo probably has less rainfall per head than the moon. It just means that a lot of people live in Monaco, not that the Monegasques have to walk to a standpipe every morning with buckets on their heads and flies in their eyes.

  On top of all this you have those who say that the hosepipe ban is not the fault of climate change or the water companies but is all down to John Prescott and his insane plan to house everyone from eastern Europe, Africa and South America in a starter home on the outskirts of Canterbury. ‘That’s why there’s a water shortage,’ they say. ‘It’s all being stolen by Somalian rapists.’

  Of course, normally, I would leap at the chance to pour scorn all over Two Shags but I’m afraid I don’t subscribe to this ridiculous blame culture. And so, instead of sitting around with a dirty bottom and scuzzy teeth, pointing an accusing finger at anyone and everyone, I have been working out what might be done.

  The fact of the matter is that from 1760 Britain’s rainfall patterns have been up and down like a pair of whore’s drawers. We have a handful of very wet years and then a handful of dry ones. And we’ve always managed just fine.

  What has changed recently is that Mr Prescott has moved south. I’ve moved south.

  Everyone’s moved south. Ever wondered why you never hear about anything going on in Scunthorpe these days? It’s because the entire population now lives in Guildford. And what are all these emigres doing?

  Well, mostly they’re standing in dried-up lake beds wondering where all the water has gone.

  What’s urgently needed in the south-east are more reservoirs. And that’s a problem.

  In the north when you build a reservoir you lose, at worst, three small villages and a couple of bats. But wherever you build such a thing in the south-east would mean drowning something a bit more substantial. Like Marlow, for example. Or Windsor Castle.

  What’s to be done? Well, if we head back up north we find Kielder Water, one of the largest man-made lakes in Europe. It was first mooted in the 1960s, when everyone felt that heavy industry in the north-east would need more and more water to stay competitive. But it was opened in 1976, at pretty well the precise moment when the last of the region’s heavy industry closed down.

  I’m sure there are people there now, still working out who was to blame for this mistake. I’m not. I’m wondering how it might be possible to get some of those 44 billion gallons of water to my toothbrush.

  How hard can it be? An idea, first mooted in the Sunday Times seven years ago, suggested that the water could be scooped into massive plastic bags and then floated down the North Sea. This idea was tested in Greece and then forgotten. I’m guessing because plastic bags full of water when put in the sea will, er, sink.

  No, the only sensible way to move water from the north to the south is in pipes, and please don’t tell me this can’t be done. If we can get gas from Siberia to the back of my Aga, without a single leak at any point on the journey, then, I’m pretty certain, we can get water from Tyne and Wear to my lavatory bowl.

  Doubtless you are all thinking that the cost and disrupt
ion of such a pipeline would far outweigh the benefits. But who says it has to go by land? Why not run it offshore down the east coast?

  You wouldn’t even need any energy-sapping pumps because the base of the dam at Kielder Water is 460 feet higher than central London. It would be downhill all the way. Complicated? I don’t think so. Brunel could probably have designed and built such a thing in about a week.

  I have another idea. In places like Dubai, where the rainfall is even lower than ours, they build desalination plants and get their water from the sea. Why can we not do this? At the very least, drinking sea water will help to keep the sea levels down.

  Unfortunately, none of these ideas will ever come to fruition because everyone is far too busy blaming everyone else. You can take the consequences if you want to and end up in the Middle Ages.

  Me? I’m going to spend the summer washing my bottom with Evian and topping up my swimming pool with gin.

  Sunday 21 May 2006

  Trust me, work is more fun than fun

  Last week David Cameron suggested we should think less about money and more about the quality of life. And immediately every socialist in the land started running around shaking his fist, saying it’s all right for some with their big houses and their floppy hair. But that some people have to work to have money for pigeons and whippets.

  Of course, that’s true. But I don’t think Mr Cameron was addressing the nation’s factory workers, who already have a good life. They clock off at 5.30 on the dot and are in the Dog and Communist 10 seconds later.

  I think he was talking to the middle classes, who work and work and work and never have time to play Monopoly or Swingball with their children. And I bet his ideas had some appeal.

  Staying at home all day, tending the garden, never missing a school play and rearing geese all sounds lovely. Especially if you’re a provincial GP who’s just spent the morning lancing boils and playing with the varicose veins of the town’s pensioners.

  Certainly, there are days when I think of jacking it all in. Last night, for instance, I was driving round a sodden airfield in Surrey in a Vauxhall Vectra while my son was third soldier from the back in Beowolf. I should have been there.

  And what’s more, I could have been there. Thanks to the kindness of those who bought my book last year I probably do have enough now to stop working.

  Of course, there would have to be some sacrifices. I wouldn’t be able to afford a car, for instance, and we’d have to move to a much smaller house. And there’d be no more holidays, or birthday presents for the children. And we’d have to eat lawn clippings. But the biggest loss of all would be my job.

  This is the point I think Mr Cameron missed. Yes, for five minutes a day the idea of living the Railway Children dream with my kids in pinny dresses waving at trains all day long sounds great.

  But for the rest of the day I love what I do.

  Of course, there are times when I have to drive a Vauxhall and it’s raining. But there are times when I drive a Ferrari and it’s not. And best of all there are times like right now when the house is quiet and I’m tucked away in my little office writing. This is not a chore. It’s called work, but there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

  And come on, be honest, it’s the same for you. Yes, the provincial GP may not like having to examine an endless parade of sagging, ageing flesh, but who knows, the next person through the door may be Kate Moss.

  Furthermore, deep down, a doctor must feel pretty good when, after a seven-minute appointment, he makes someone better. He could not replace that contentment if he were at home arranging flowers.

  Take Saturdays as a prime example. This is the day when I hide away in the office, writing the following week’s Top Gear show. Sure, I could be playing Cluedo with the kids. But they like to watch MTVmore, and if I watch MTVwith them I become very agitated, which causes a row.

  For family harmony, then, the best place I can be when they’re watching MTVis in the office. They like this too, because when I’m in the office I’m earning money that they can spend on PlayStation games, and that improves their quality of life hugely.

  Also, if we have money, they can go to school in a car, which is more comfortable and much safer than going on an ox cart. And, I suppose, if I’m honest I didn’t really want to be at Beowolf last night. It is a very dull play when performed by professionals. Give it to a bunch of io-year-olds, and you know what? I’d rather drive a Vauxhall Vectra in the rain.

  Then there’s the question of marital happiness. At present, I come home late, fall asleep on the sofa and dribble slightly until bedtime. My wife is very happy with this arrangement. Whereas she’d be very mad if I were here all day trying to be helpful.

  It is a known fact that men, when bored, cannot last for more than 15 minutes without imagining that DIY is an instinctive ability like mating and eating: that being a male means we simply must be good with an electric sander. Men must never be bored while at home, then; otherwise the whole house will fall down.

  Furthermore, we need the buzz we get from working; the juice. When I read out the script I’ve written for Top Gear and the production team sit there yawning, I have 12 hours to write a new one.

  And that’s a roller-coaster thrill. I love it. I love the pressure. And I fear there wouldn’t be any if I spent my days waving at trains and growing cabbages.

  The simple fact of the matter is that, for the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of the people like and enjoy their jobs.

  So stick at it. Unless you’re Tony Blair, that is. You are allowed to go home and spend more time with your family, because that way we’ll get David Cameron, who promises he’ll do the same.

  And that, a country with no leader, would improve the quality of all our lives immeasurably.

  Sunday 28 May 2006

  Pot-Porritt wants me eliminated

  For many years I’ve poked fun at environmentalists, fondly imagining that my opposition to their nonsense was about as ineffectual as Denmark’s opposition to American policy in the Middle East.

  Oh sure, the eco-people sprang out of the bushes from time to time to plant a custard pie in my face, in the same way that a 16-stone man might leap out of bed at night and swat a particularly annoying bluebottle.

  And yes, when I make jokes about gassing badgers, funny little men with curious downloading habits go onto the internet and put my name and address in their To Be Killed folders. But despite this, I’ve always felt like a bit of beef dripping in a big vat of tofu.

  No, really. The eco-ists have the ear of the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, the whole of the BBC, most of the country’s newspapers, every single university campus and nearly every government in the world. Whereas I have the ear of the Ford Capri Owners Club. Which is comprised of half a dozen men in Dennis Waterman-style leather bomber jackets.

  Last week, however, it transpired that I may be more of a nuisance than I imagined. Jonathon Pot-Porritt, the former director of Friends of the Earth, who now heads the government’s UK Sustainable Development Commission, says he can’t get his message across because everyone’s too busy watching me driving round corners too quickly on Top Gear.

  He called me a bigoted petrolhead and said that anyone who shuts me up should be given a knighthood.

  Now I’ve seen Goodfellas, and as a result I know that ‘shutting someone up’ is Martin Scorsese-speak for having someone killed. Crikey. A man in the government wants me dead. And it’s not like they haven’t done this kind of thing before…

  So I’d just like to say, if my body is found in a wood at some point in the not too distant future, it wasn’t suicide. Tell Lord Hutton that Swampy Porritt did it.

  I should be worried, I suppose, but mostly I’m rather flattered. For years I’ve felt like King Canute sitting on the beach, watching helplessly as the tide of eco-offal rolls inexorably towards the shore. But now Mr Pot-Porritt has come out of nowhere to say that I really do have the power to hold back his plans to make t
rains out of cardboard and create electricity by composting Tories.

  I should explain at this point that Pot-Porritt and I have history. I once interviewed him on a television show, and out of common courtesy the producer edited the slot to ensure we both scored an equal number of points. In fact, Porritt made a tit of himself, trying to argue that cars were responsible for the then floods in Uckfield, East Sussex.

  Unfortunately, my mother-in-law lived in Uckfield and I knew full well that the waterlogged high street had nothing whatsoever to do with global warming, and everything to do with the way the local flood plain had been buried under a million tons of Prescott-approved housing.

  Porritt stammered a lot and was forced to agree. But he said the heavy rain was all our fault. In much the same way that he now says the drought is all our fault.

  And what’s more, he even has Sir David Attenborough on side these days.

  Now my respect for The Attenborough as a broadcaster is boundless. He could tell me that I was a giant panda and I’d believe him. He could come on the television and say koala bears can fill in tax forms and I’d stroke my chin appreciatively.

  But when he comes on the television to say Sienna Miller’s Range Rover has broken the Gulf Stream and overheated a guillemot, well, I’m sorry, but I just nod off.

  Because finger-wagging environmentalism, even from the God of the electric fish tank, is catastrophically boring.

  No, honestly. Being told to give up polythene to prevent something that might not happen is like being told to give up drink because it might damage your liver.

  Yeah, but, when you’re at a party having a nice time, really who gives a damn?

  I can prove this. Because last weekend the BBC ran a save-the-planet quiz show on BBCi against Top Gear on BBC2. And guess what? More people watched the planet being savaged than watched a load of weird beards trying to save it.