And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson

by Jeremy Clarkson

  I may be on to something here. They want you at the airport two hours early because in Brainless Britain everyone else is too thick to get to the plane any faster.

  Perhaps a national IQ standard might be the answer. People from Mensa should be allowed to check in two minutes before the flight goes. Those with worryingly long arms must be there somewhat earlier.

  Sunday 22 August 2004

  Proper writing is like so overr8ed, innit kids

  When asked how he felt about the chaos at Heathrow last week, an American student who had been delayed for 12 hours said: ‘I am so exhausted now, it’s like, “whatever”.’

  This is interesting because I went on holiday this year with two 13-year-old girls. Actually no. Let’s be specific about this. I went on a holiday where two 13-year-old girls were present. And one, who had been bombarded with text messages from a would-be suitor, said to the other: ‘It’s like, “whatever”.’

  In my daughter’s world almost everything is ‘like, whatever’.

  The poor weather is like, whatever. The onset of a new school term is like, whatever. Paula Radcliffe’s 23-mile marathon is like, whatever. Mysteriously, though, Led Zeppelin are so like, cool.

  I’m sure your children speak the same way; I’m equally sure they deliver longer sentences in a flat monotone with a scorpion tail of rising inflection at the end.

  This unbelievably irritating syntax, I suspect, has been picked up from too many Australian television programmes.

  Couple these speech patterns with the ‘like, whatever’ that has come from some exclusively blonde and pink valley in Los Angeles, and we’re left with an odd conclusion. A girl born in London and raised in Oxfordshire has developed an accent from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. Yup, thanks to satellite television, my daughter now speaks Polynesian.

  This is not the end of the world because eventually she will grow out of it in much the same way that you and I at some point stopped describing Emerson, Lake and Palmer as ‘far out’ and Goa as ‘groovy’.

  What she may not grow out of, however, is her insistence that ‘today’ is spelt with a 2 and that ‘great’ somehow has an 8 in it. This new language has now spilt from the mobile phone into her thank-you letters and homework.

  Those of a Daily Telegraph disposition believe that txt spk spells the end for proper English and are furious, but really it’s hard to see why.

  Think. When pictograms and hieroglyphics were replaced with letters and numbers, did people paint angry drawings in green ink in the caves of Tunbridge Wells, declaring that this new ‘writing’ was the work of the devil? Imagine having to “write” to a newspaper wn you’ve hrd a swllw. How much easier it is to simply draw one.

  Throughout history, great men have laboured over the written word, endlessly modifying the letters so they could be transcribed more quickly and read more easily. Nobody, for instance, complained when the Carolingian minuscule came along. They simply used it until they decided Gothic angularity was better. And then they used that.

  The alphabet, too, has been endlessly altered to contemporary demands. Not until the invention of the settee and the dimmer switch and thus the introduction of Nancy Mitford’s guide to what’s in and what’s not was the letter U deemed necessary. It was not until the fifteenth century that we were given a J, and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say ‘vanquish’.

  Geoffrey Chaucer wrote ‘nostrils’ as ‘nosethirles’ and Shakespeare spelt his name differently on each of the five occasions he is known to have written it. Spelling was not an issue until the invention of school and the consequent need to fill the children’s day with something other than rotational farming methods.

  Now our days are filled with distractions. You’ve got to locate a signal for your BlackBerry, download some garage on to your iPod and still find time to work, cook, clean the house and kick someone’s head in on the PlayStation. Speed writing is therefore a damn good idea.

  At journalism college I was taught Teeline shorthand and although I wasn’t very good at it – I cheated in my final exam by using a tape recorder, long hair and an earpiece – I did recognise that it made a great deal more sense than the traditional phonetic alphabet.

  Some people, even without the benefit of long hair and earpieces, were happily writing at 110 words a minute, more than twice what could be achieved if they were writing ‘properly’. So why, I figured, if this works so well, do we still persevere with ABC, the language of the quill?

  We changed the way we wrote when steel-nibbed pens replaced feathers, so why not change now that silicon impulses have replaced the Biro? You can’t write shorthand on a conventional keyboard but you can write txt spk. And it is perfectly legible. ‘2day i wnt 2 c the dctr who sd my bld prssur ws gr8’. What part of that can you not understand? A language without vowels: it’s never done the Welsh any harm.

  Adopting txt spk as the new alphabet would mean that I could say more each week in this tiny creased corner of your newspaper. And because I’m paid by the word it means that I’d be better off too. This would be ‘cool’. And the lovely thing is that the newspaper’s accountants would have to dismiss the pay rise by saying it’s ‘like, whatever’.

  Sunday 29 August 2004

  I have now discovered the highest form of life: wasps

  There was much talk in the scientific community last week about the origins and meaning of an interstellar radio message picked up by a telescope in Puerto Rico.

  To the untrained ear it sounds like a Clanger talking to the Soup Dragon, but to those who run Seti, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, it could well be ‘first contact’, the first real evidence that we are not alone in the universe.

  The temptation is to reply, but how do we know the message was meant for us? What if it were directed at some other species on Earth? And how would the sender respond if he were to discover that his intergalactic email had been intercepted? I have a horrible feeling that the real recipient may be the wasp, which this year seems to be around in greater numbers than ever. Come on, you must have noticed that since the signal was picked up it has been impossible to go outside without being buzzed.

  There’s plenty of evidence that wasps are not of this earth. Unlike any other animal, with the possible exception of the owl and the Australian, they serve no purpose. They’re not in the food chain, they can’t make honey and they’re not fluffy. Nature has a habit of extinguishing its more useless experiments. The dinosaur went west when it grew too big and the dodo when it mislaid its wings.

  But the pointy yet strangely pointless wasp soldiers on. Why?

  There’s more, too. Wasps can smell a bowl of sugar from five miles away. How? Sugar does not smell. What’s more, they can organise flight paths from their nests to known sources of food. Again, how, unless they have been trained in the complexities of air traffic control?

  Here’s another nugget. Wasps are vindictive. Pretty well every creature will attack when it’s hungry or threatened whereas a wasp will attack if you’ve annoyed it in some way. Local councils, which tend to be staffed by animal-loving eco-mentalists, are forever producing leaflets portraying the wasp as a benign part of the British summer – a sort of airborne nettle – forgetting perhaps that each year wasps kill more people than sharks, alligators, lightning, scorpions, jellyfish and spiders combined.

  And try this for size. A wasp can lay its eggs inside a caterpillar, knowing that when they hatch the baby wasps will be able to eat the creature from the inside out. And here’s the really clever bit. Normally, the host’s immune system would destroy the eggs before they had a chance to hatch; so, to get round this they are coated with a virus that genetically modifies the caterpillar to ignore the invasion. In other words, a wasp can alter the very being of another creature.

  Biologists have examined this virus and found that it exis
ts nowhere else on Earth. They’ve also worked out that it’s been around for more than 100 million years… which is when that strange radio message from the stars was sent.

  You may be interested to learn that wasps eat garden furniture. They chew the wood, mixing it with saliva to make paper for their nests. And we think dolphins are intelligent. Furthermore, wasps are pretty much indestructible. I now have an electric tennis racket that turns the art of insect control into a sport. Instead of catgut, the strings are made from metal strips connected to a powerful battery. One touch will kill anything up to and including a large dog, but wasps? They sit there, jiggling around, until you take your finger off the power button, whereupon they simply fly away.

  Only the other day, after what I have to say was a damn good shot, I cut a German Yellowjacket in half with a carving knife. Such a devastating blow would have killed Flipper instantly, but the wasp? Its head remained alive, its antennae wiggling, perhaps sending messages to outer space, pinpointing my position.

  We need at this point to examine the mating characteristics of the wasp, which are, to say the least, odd. As summer draws to an end the males produce a huge semen duvet in which the queen will hibernate. When she wakes for the spring, she uses the sperm to fertilise her eggs and the cycle is repeated.

  This process poses a few questions. How, for instance, does a wasp produce semen? This would involve masturbation, and that’s a concept which is difficult to visualise: 10,000 wasps in a nest all taking Captain Picard to warp speed. We know they are making paper for their nests, but what else are they using it for? To print some copies of Asian Babe Wasps? ‘Ooh, Adolf. After you with that picture of the Norwegian queen.’

  It sounds unlikely. It sounds even more unlikely when you discover that having spent the summer collecting proteins for their young, adult male wasps are free, as autumn approaches, to gorge themselves on rotting apples. This renders them fat, lazy and drunk.

  Perhaps this is why the radio message has been received. Perhaps the alien beings that put the wasp on Earth are calling to find out why world domination has not yet been achieved. I doubt they’ll be pleased when they find that their army has been defeated by Granny Smith.

  Sunday 5 September 2004

  The doctors are out to get me

  Yesterday I spent the afternoon pretty much naked, in a darkened room, while an attractive blonde applied lashings of warm lubricating jelly to most of my soft underbelly. Sounds like fun. But unfortunately this was an ultrasound test, part of my fourth medical so far this year.

  I have been sucked dry, pumped up, bent double and asked a range of questions so impertinent that even Paxman would blanch. I’ve been probed, hit, tickled, smeared and X-rayed, and I’ve forgotten what it’s like to pee in a lavatory. These days, I only ever relieve myself into small plastic vials.

  The problem is that insurance companies like to be absolutely sure you’re not at death’s door before providing cover. Which, surely, is a bit like asking to see the dealer’s cards before making a bet.

  To make matters worse, insurance is far from the only reason why you need a medical. You need one for an HGV licence, or a mortgage, or a job. And every single organisation insists that you undergo its bespoke check-up.

  Things are so stupid that my local practice employs someone who spends half her working week dealing with nothing but people who want to borrow five grand for a kitchen extension. And she can’t even do that properly, thanks to me. Because I have so many contracts with so many people, and because I’m forever climbing into jet fighters, I have become The World’s Most Checked Man. As such, I am a leading expert on medicals.

  When I went away to school, the doctor held my testicles and asked me to cough. He could have established my reflexes were fine by tapping my knees gently with a small rounders bat, but hey, this was a public school, so into the pants he plunged.

  Would that it were that simple these days. Today, the first question you’re always asked is, ‘Have you got Aids?’ Well unless you can catch it from slobbing in front of the television, or going to Cotswolds dinner parties, I very much doubt it.

  The second question you’re asked is whether you’re partial to a bit of same-sex heroin. Can we just get one thing clear. I know there are no Conservative voters in the media, but there are several heterosexuals and I’m one of them. And no, I’ve never slept with an East African prostitute, and the only hypodermic needle I’ve seen all week is the one you’re about to plunge into my arm to check I’m not lying.

  The fact that I smoke 60 cigarettes a day and drive like a maniac for a living doesn’t seem to bother them. Not until you get to page 442 on the form.

  When they’re absolutely convinced that you’re not a Glaswegian smacked-up rent boy with a girlfriend in Nairobi, they move on to check your blood pressure. Mine is 100/60, same as it was last week, when the Norwich Union asked the same damn thing.

  Then you pee in another jar, and then you sit back as the nurse hunts around for the tiny bit of blood you have left after the Scottish Widows had their fill the previous month. After all the blood tests this year, I couldn’t even be a donor for an injured field mouse. Small wonder the pressure’s so low: I’m empty.

  After my fluids have been checked, the doctor normally sticks his whole head in my bottom. Well, that’s what it feels like. ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh,’ I normally say, until he comes out again to explain that it was only his finger.

  Soon, you will be led to the scales which, in doctors’ surgeries, are always set to over-read. I am 15 stone, minus a few pounds for all the blood and urine that’s been extracted. But in a doctor’s surgery, I weigh about the same as the Flying Scotsman. This, to an insurance company, is a good thing. Whoever heard of a fat heroin-user? And what’s more, fat people are ipso facto unattractive, which means they’re less likely to be having much in the way of man-on-man action.

  At the end of the session, by which time everyone in the waiting room has died from whatever it was that brought them there in the first place, you will be asked for the medical history of your entire family, back to the middle of the eighteenth century.

  Why? Even after the doctor has hit you in the elbow with his hammer and asked you to read his wall, he will still not know if there are tumours the size of conkers dangling from your brain, but the form will be completed anyway.

  And you’ll be on your way to a new conservatory.

  It’s all a complete waste of time, and I haven’t finished yet because at some point in the procedure, the GP is bound to uncover something that warrants further investigation. This will mean a trip to the hospital where you will get lost.

  I did, and that’s how I came to be lying in a darkened room, with a pretty blonde smearing me with KY Jelly. She then ran her ultrasound detector all over my belly, before turning on the light and giving me the good news. I’m not pregnant.

  Sunday 12 September 2004

  Let’s brand our man’s army

  A new type of training shoe was introduced this week. It is grey, made in Vietnam and costs £39.50. Or £79 if you want one for the other foot as well.

  In a world of Nike Motion Control Air Sprung Hi-Loaders, you might expect this rather dour and expensive new product to be a commercial flop. But, because the shoe was tested by someone’s mate in the forces, it’s being sold with an army insignia on the box. That makes it a ‘British Army’ training shoe, and that gives it an appeal Nike can only dream about.

  Branding has now reached the point where the product doesn’t matter; only the logo. Already you can avail yourself of a JCB cardigan and pop down to the off-licence for a litre of Kalashnikov vodka – guaranteed to blow your head clean off. And how long will it be before Cadbury gets into romantic fiction, and Louis Vuitton into cars?

  Even the dullest and most useless products are enlivened by the right name. A hotel, for instance, can raise its prices if it provides Gilchrist & Soames shampoo in its bathrooms. Who are Gilchrist & Soames? God knows, but the hand
le has a nanny-knows-best ring to it. There’s a sense that it’ll bring a well-scrubbed gleam to your secret gentlemen’s places.

  I have no problem with this. If I’m in a shop, faced with a choice of two cardigans that seem similar, I’ll go for the JCB option because there’s a subliminal assumption that Anthony Bamford has personally inspected the sheep from which the wool came and his wife, Carole, has done the knitting. For sure there’s a suggestion that the company wouldn’t waste 50 years of hard graft by sticking its badge on rubbish.

  A prestigious badge gives clueless shoppers a sense of well-being, a sense that their money is not being wasted on tat.

  The perfect life, then: suit by Knight, Frank & Rutley, mobile phone by Boeing, car by Bausch & Lomb, furniture by Holland & Holland, kitchen utensils by Mercedes-Benz, children by Uma Thurman, armpit hair by the mysterious Gilchrist & Soames and, best of all, shoes by the British Army.

  This is the first time the service has endorsed a commercial product and there’s no doubt it’s entering a minefield. Colonel Robert Clifford, head of the Queen’s Own Light Sponsorship Brigade, said this week: ‘We need to be exceptionally careful about what we link ourselves to.’ Too right, matey.

  You could probably get away with a ‘British Army’-branded Land Rover or some green ‘British Army’ binoculars – the Swiss Army has sponsored penknives for years. I think ‘British Army’ lager might be worth a go, too.

  But I don’t think ‘army’ meat pies or ‘army’ haircuts would go down well. Also, I probably wouldn’t want to spend time on an ‘army’ holiday. It might have worked 100 years ago when they were in Ceylon and half the Caribbean, but today they only go to Belfast, Belize or Basra.

  This leaves us with a problem.

  The small income that could be generated from Land Rovers, binoculars and lager would in no way compensate for the inevitable outcry that such a scheme would provoke.