Comment - Columnists - Jeremy Clarkson

Call me a spoilsport but I’m glad my dad wasn’t a lesbian

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT

When it comes to sweeping generalisations, I am the daddy. All Germans have no sense of humour, all instruction manuals are pointless, all cruise ships are ghastly, every single American is fat, all golfers are boring and all Peugeots are driven by people you wouldn’t have round for dinner.

Stop the game, ref. We’re all too cross to play by the rules

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT

Last weekend a man in a blue shirt fell over while playing a game of football. And a free-kick was awarded by the referee against the team playing in red shirts. This made the man who manages the team in red shirts very furious. “Och aye the noo,” He told waiting reporters, angrily.

Get me a rope before Mandelson wipes us all out

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:01:40 GMT

I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I’m afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more.

I’ve got a solution for the rainforest: napalm the lot

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks in Bolivia, and I didn’t shoot a baboon. This is because there aren’t any. In fact, there is no evidence of intelligent life at all. Let me give you a small example. I was lying in my hotel room one morning when, without so much as a knock, a cleaner walked in. With a mumbled, “Buenos dias”, he went into my lavatory, closed the door and took a dump.

Cleverness is no more. This is a dumb Britain

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:01:00 GMT

Forty years ago, my dad came into my bedroom and made me get up.

Help, quick – I’ve unscrewed the top on a ticking bomb

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:01:00 GMT

Like any responsible parent, I would not leave a loaded gun in the children’s playroom or keep my painkillers in their sweetie tin. But it turns out that for two years there has been a nuclear bomb in one of my kitchen cupboards, between the tomato ketchup and the Rice Krispies.

Up to the waist in Brown’s slurry on my new farm

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:01:00 GMT

Last week I bought a farm. Though financially speaking, it’s entirely possible I’ve bought the farm. But let’s look on the bright side. I can’t possibly make as much of a hash with the investment as the bankers made when they had the money.

Mad Johnny Baa Lamb is here to save the pit bulls

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:57:26 GMT

Last week the ringleaders of a Lincolnshire-based international dog-fighting gang were found guilty of various offences and warned that they faced lengthy jail terms. Needless to say, the whole country is now in a state of shock, completely at a loss to understand why on earth someone would get pleasure from watching their much-loved dog being ripped in half in someone’s front room.

Forget Antigua, 007 – all the real action is in Acacia Avenue

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve always known that in reality not one of Britain's secret agents has ever successfully fought a shark or garrotted Robert Shaw on a speeding train. In fact, we are told, over and over again, that most of what our secret agents do is boring; that instead of trying to stop Spectre stealing our nuclear bombers, they actually spend most of the day trying to stop their wives checking Max Mosley’s hair for nits. To hammer the point home, they even advertise for new agents these days in The Guardian.

Jeremy Clarkson: Not fair – donkeys get all the breaks

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Like most people, I can wire a plug and change a wheel. These are simple things. But I cannot reassemble the coffee machine that I took to pieces this morning, and I cannot drill a hole in a wall. Anything even remotely complicated and I’m stumped, which is why, when I came home yesterday to find one of my donkeys in the middle of the road, I knew the day would not end well.

What’s the Canadian word for ‘lousy care’?

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

While I was away, there was a big debate about how Barack Obama might sort out America’s healthcare system, which, say the critics, is chronically awful and fantastically unfair.

Nurse! The OAP mods are bashing the wrinkly rockers

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:19 GMT

We learnt recently that despite the best efforts of Herr Pope and Jude Law, there are now more old age pensioners in Britain than children under the age of 16.

Soaking up the raw emotion of the best in beetroot contest

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:56 GMT

As I write, millions and millions of pounds are being spent* developing new stunts for this year’s Top Gear Live events in London and Birmingham. The reasoning is simple. Audiences are no longer happy to see a car behind a rope on a stand. They want to see it barrel-roll and explode. They want to see fire. They want to see Richard Hammond’s head come off.

The conquerors are coming, Pierre – we Brits need more land

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, we heard about two neighbours fighting over a bit of lawn with a bush on it. And, at a cost of God knows how much, the case has ended up in the High Court in London. A court case. Over a shrub. It beggars belief.

Stop, you’re digging an early grave with that garden trowel

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:18:00 GMT

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is plainly a bit stuck for something to do now there’s plenty to eat, the environment’s knackered and the Labour party thinks a rural affair is something that happens in Jilly Cooper’s head.

Just one word and my T-shirt offends the whole of Japan

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:09:32 GMT

There comes a point in a man’s life when he is no longer able to wear a T-shirt. You have only to see an overweight American tourist wobbling around looking like Winnie-the-Pooh to know that I’m right; to know that T-shirts are fine for schoolboys on sports day. But not fine thereafter.

After three brushes with death in planes I want a parachute

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Can you imagine what it must have been like on board that Air France aeroplane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean last month? Rather dreadfully, I can.

Why do the police need a spy drone for hippies?

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I have only ever given my children one piece of advice. Other parents I know talk solemnly about drugs, sex, pregnancy, work, manners and the importance of good A-level grades. But all I’ve ever told my kids is this: “No matter what, never salute a magpie.”

Jeremy Clarkson: No, I won ’t wear a tiara, if it’ s all the same to you

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:21:31 GMT

Back in the 1980s, I seemed to spend half my life traipsing to Covent Garden to hire a dinner jacket and the other half mournfully explaining to the man on the returns desk that it was covered in sick when I rented it.

Now there’s a first – my elephant has just exploded

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, a friend bet me that I would never begin a newspaper column by suggesting that the musical score of Ondine, a little-known ballet, is virtually identical to side one of Works: Volume One, the Emerson, Lake and Palmer double album from 1977.

Save the photos - not that they're worth it

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:54:32 GMT

One of the things I’d most like to do is force the people on Desert Island Discs each week to actually live on a desert island with nothing but the music they select. Then we’d be able to see how wacky and interesting they feel after 20 years of Two Little Boys by Rolf Harris and the Love Song from Sanders of the River.

Letting beavers loose in Scotland is dam foolery

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As we know, the economy is stagnant, we are up to our shoulders in debt and things are likely to get worse. So imagine my surprise to find the government has decided to spend £275,000 on 11 Norwegian beavers that will be freed to roam wild in Scotland.

I’ll be right there, Sir Ranulph – must conquer the sofa first

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sir Ranulph Fiennes explained last week that he reached the summit of Everest by imagining it wasn’t there. He said he was prepared simply to “plod for ever”, never once allowing himself the luxury of thinking about where he was going, what he was doing or whether he was halfway to halfway yet.

Okay, you’ve got me bang to rights – I’m a secret green

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:13 GMT

Last week, in this newspaper, I was outed as a recycler, a man who composts his tea bags, eats wasps and spends most of his days tutting in supermarkets at the Day-Glo orangeness of the carrots. Or, to put it another way, a damned hypocrite.