If You'd Just Let Me Finish

by Jeremy Clarkson

  And I scoffed because it seemed ridiculous. And yet now it doesn’t seem ridiculous at all. I mean, would you go to Bali for a holiday? Exactly.

  So it’s Greece then? Nope. Not unless you want to share the beach with a tidal wave of migrants. And life is equally distressing in large parts of what used to be called Yugoslavia.

  And that’s because the creation of the Islamic superstate has caused millions of people who don’t want to be crucified or pushed off a tower block to up sticks, load their meagre possessions into a leaky Rib and head for Europe. Where some have discovered that the best way of fending off starvation is by hitting holidaymakers over the head and stealing their wallets.

  This time last year you’d have gone for a mini-break to Belgium. And why not? It is a wonderful place. All those cobbles and all that mayonnaise. Yum, yum. But now?

  Then there’s Paris. My daughter and her boyfriend went there recently for a weekend and that sounds lovely. But it isn’t great any more. It’s frightening. I know we are supposed to stand up to the terrorist threat by deploying the Blitz spirit, keeping calm and carrying on. But when it’s your daughter on the Métro it’s bloody hard to keep your upper lip stiff.

  And things aren’t much better even closer to home. We like to think of London as a tourist hotspot. We tell the world about Changing the Guard and the Queen and Top Gear. But there’s no getting round the fact that the terrorist threat in the UK is ‘severe’. Most of us accept that one day, sooner or later, someone’s going to explode on the Central line. And that makes it hard for visitors to relax.

  So south-eastern Europe, Belgium, Paris, London, Bali, the Middle East and northern Africa. You can cross that lot off the holiday destination list because of ISIS and its affiliates. Which, you might imagine, is not the end of the world because there are plenty of other alternatives.

  Really? I only ask because I’ve spent the past week trying to find somewhere I can take the children in August, and it’s all hopeless. Italy and Spain have migrant issues and terrorism threats as well and, while I love the south of France, my kids can’t afford to pay €1,000 for a bottle of vodka. So that pretty much counts out the Med.

  Germany? Hmmm. I’d like the plane I take to go on holiday to have been made there. But I don’t want to spend my free time in leather shorts eating sausages to the strains of an oompah band. Scandinavia? Too cold. Eastern Europe? Not really. India will give you diarrhoea and, for well-documented reasons, I think Argentina is a non-starter.

  Chile is lovely in every way. It’s a tremendous place. One of my favourite countries in the world. But it’s not realistic for a two-week holiday in what’ll be winter anyway.

  And that’s the thing. When you bring realism into the equation, when you look for a destination that’s safe, clean, accessible and cheap, there is only one viable option: America.

  Which has caused me to sit back in my chair and have a Biro-sucking moment of thoughtfulness. Because we have it in our heads that George W. Bush didn’t really know what he was doing when he invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. But maybe he did.

  Maybe he’d worked out that down the line, after he’d made a complete Horlicks of everything, America would become the world’s only realistic holiday destination.

  10 April 2016

  I refuse to dry my teabags for Osama Binman

  As a general rule, I’m not in favour of the death penalty. However, I would make an exception for people who drop litter. There should be on-the-spot executions for people who do that. No excuses. No trial. You drop a pizza box on the pavement and straightaway you get a bullet in the back of the head.

  I went to Hatfield in Hertfordshire last week and, as I turned on to the slip road off the A1, I could not quite believe my eyes. Because the grass verges looked like a Brazilian favela. I’ve seen less messy downed airliners. And I’m sorry, but if I were running the council, I’d shoot someone in the town square on the hour, every hour until the culprit owned up.

  Except that’s not going to happen, because actually the problem of littering is in part being caused by recycling-obsessed councils. And now it’s going to get worse because town-hall chiefs in Hull have just introduced a scheme that means homeowners who don’t recycle properly face having their bins confiscated. Yup, the city council is saying that if you can’t do it properly, you can’t be allowed to do it at all. And that’s probably the stupidest idea in the whole of human history.

  I’m ashamed to say that I don’t understand recycling. It’s just not one of my specialist subjects. I’m dimly aware that if I throw away my kettle, it could one day be turned into a Volkswagen or a Boeing 737, but that, I’m afraid, is the full extent of my knowledge.

  My kitchen bin is divided into four compartments. One is for general waste, one is for chicken food, one is for recycling and the other is for recycling stuff that won’t be recycled if I put it in the other recycling compartment.

  All of this means that when I open the bin lid to throw away some onion peelings, I spend several minutes wondering whether the chickens would eat such a thing or whether they could be used to make a Volkswagen, before giving up and putting them in the general-waste compartment.

  And now I won’t be able to do that any more because my efforts will be judged by the dustbinerie. And if it decides I’ve put something in the wrong section, it’ll confiscate my bin and I’ll be forced to throw my waste out of the car window when I’m driving down the motorway.

  Because I’m not prepared to do this, I decided to try to learn a little bit more about recycling. But it’s too confusing for words. Council experts in Hull tell us that one or two baked beans that you’ve not scooped out of the tin properly can contaminate everything else in the ‘blue bin’, as if we know what a blue bin is or means.

  They also say that a used teabag can make cardboard soggy and therefore non-reusable. So where do the teabags go? Or are we supposed to dry them before we throw them away? Because I am trying to make a new television show and I’ve children to raise and three newspaper columns a week to write. So I really don’t have time to dry my teabags.

  Retired people do have the time for this kind of thing, which is why your local tip is always full of elderly people putting everything in the correct bin. They seem to enjoy this: getting everything right and tutting scornfully at those who don’t. In their minds, it’s a sort of golf club.

  I once saw an elderly gentleman turn up at a tip with a small plant pot full of gravel that he emptied into the bin marked ‘gravel’. He then drove home, pleased, no doubt, that apart from the fact he’d driven to the tip in a Mercedes, he’d done his bit for the environment.

  The rest of us, though, don’t even have the time to work out what’s what. Take cotton wool as a prime example. It’s a natural fibre, so surely it could easily be recycled into a jumper or the sole of a training shoe. But no. My local council’s website informs me that it contains fibres of some sort and must therefore go in general waste.

  Doors? You’d imagine that a door could easily be turned into something else. A table? A rabbit hutch? Or maybe a new door for an immigrant? But for some reason the council will only take three. If for some reason you want to throw away four doors, you have to give it some money.

  Garden waste? Apparently, this can be handled by the council’s composting facilities, but not if you’ve put it in an actual composting bag. I don’t understand that rule either. But you’d better not get it wrong because you’ll be judged by the dustbin men and, if you fail, they’ll take away your bin. Probably on the day they come round for the Christmas bonus.

  You might imagine that while all this is annoying, it’s necessary, because we can’t simply chuck the refuse away. But we can, actually. The maths show that every single thing America throws away in the next hundred years – even if the population in that time doubles to more than 600 million – could be placed in a hole that’s four hundred feet deep and five miles across.

  In a country the size of Britain, all
our waste for the next century could be buried in an area no bigger than Jeremy Corbyn’s back garden.

  There is, however, a better solution. We simply put a 1 million per cent tax on all unnecessary packaging. Starting with Gillette. And then moving quickly to tackle those companies that sell microscopic camera SD cards in two square feet of what feels like steel-reinforced titanium.

  That’s a much better idea. Instead of taking away our bins when – let’s be honest – the dustbin man can’t be bothered to do his job, why not take away the houses of those who create all the waste in the first place? And the lives of people who think that a single green pepper needs to be sold in its own plastic mackintosh.

  17 April 2016

  Coming soon to Amazon it’s … er … Cary McCarface

  So the votes are in, democracy has spoken and, with a crushing majority, the public has decided that Britain’s new polar research vessel should be called the RRS Boaty McBoatface.

  Organizers of the poll had hoped the winning suggestion would be the name of a famous explorer or naturalist. They had suggested the Scott of the Antarctic or the David Attenborough. But the public was having none of it. And in the end Boaty McBoatface gained more than 124,000 votes. Almost 90,000 more than its nearest rival.

  I can’t remember – ever – feeling so proud to be British, because nothing sums us up quite so well as this result. It simply wouldn’t happen in Germany. Or America. But here it would. And it did. And if they roll out the idea to the Royal Navy, I’d like to suggest HMS Vulnerable. That’s a brilliant name for a warship. Or HMS Weak – that’s even better.

  But there’s a problem. The Natural Environment Research Council, which runs the new polar ship, is plainly worried that the name will cheapen the important work it does down there among the penguins. So now it is trying to wriggle out of its obligation.

  The organization has looked closely at the rules of the poll and has found, to its relief, that a clause says the final decision rests with its chief executive. And it has pointed out that the former BBC radio presenter who first suggested the Boaty McBoatface handle is mortified by the fact that people took him seriously. So now the council is back to the drawing board, trying to think of a name by itself, and I feel its pain …

  When I first signed up with Amazon Prime to make a new motoring show, I knew all sorts of problems lay ahead. I’d have to start a production company and find potted plants and an office to put them in. I’d have to deal, too, with insurance and health and safety and accountancy and all sorts of other stuff I either don’t understand or hate. There was one problem, however, that I hadn’t even considered. And it has turned out to be the biggest of the lot: choosing a name.

  I spend at least six hours a day in my office – which is insured and smoke-free and resplendent with potted plants – sucking creatively on a corporate Biro as I wait for the daily 3 p.m. ‘Anything yet?’ phone call from Amazon in Los Angeles.

  My original idea was brilliant. The show would be called Speedbird and the logo would be a Seychelles white tern, graceful and beautiful. It would be an image completely at odds with the hour of television that was to follow – and I liked that.

  But it wasn’t to be. Speedbird had already been bagged as a trademark by someone else in the media, so that was that. There was a similar issue with Speedwolf and Ironbird and Wolfbird and everything else I thought of.

  Every morning, I’d make a £7,000 call to the lawyer with an idea, and every afternoon I’d get a £7,000 reply saying the name was already in use by someone in New Zealand or France or Ukraine. Prime Torque. Autonation. Skid Mark. Everything was a no-no.

  To make matters worse, I was told the name didn’t have to exactly match an existing trademark. It only had to sound or look similar in some way to become an infringement. This means every single combination of letters in the English language carries with it some risk of legal action down the line.

  At the end of one lengthy – and almost completely silent – ideas meeting with senior staff, our lead director piped up with Three C**** Driving Along. This, it turned out, was available. But we felt we’d probably lose the family audience, so it was back to staring out of the window and trying not to throw my plant pot at James May whenever he spoke.

  We tried to sound interested as he suggested The Pink Helmet or The James May Show, but then one day he struck gold with Gear Knobs. We all liked it. We thought it was amusing and hurriedly we put in another £7,000 call to the lawyer.

  She said the trademark was available, but it would be an unwise idea, owing to the laws surrounding intellectual property. In short, the BBC not only owns the rights to the Stig and the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car and the Cool Wall, but also to any name that is remotely similar to Top Gear. We tried explaining there’s a show called Fifth Gear that doesn’t belong to the BBC but it was no good. Arguing with a lawyer costs more money than we had, so we hurriedly put the phone down and went back to the drawing board.

  Amazon was starting to find our hopelessness funny and put out a video of James, Richard Hammond and me trying to decide on a name. But behind the scenes it isn’t funny. Because we need a name that isn’t in use by any business anywhere in the world and doesn’t even sound or look like any name that’s in use by any business anywhere in the world. And it can’t even be a minor play on the words Top or Gear. Oh, and it has to be a name that’s liked by me, our producer, Hammond, Eeyore and a billionaire in Seattle.

  By this stage, Twitter has become involved, and every day my account is full of bright ideas from @M3man45790 and @Zpowerdude45889 and the like. One was good – Two and a Half Pillocks – but that fell by the wayside, partly because Hammond, for some reason, didn’t like it and partly because ‘pillock’ isn’t a word in America, which is where most of our audience live.

  We’ve even had to drop the working title of Currently Unnamed TV Show because, as someone pointed out on the internet, this could be turned into an unfortunate acronym.

  And now, after this polar research ship malarkey, we’ve even had to shelve our plans to put the whole thing to a public vote. Because everyone would vote for Cary McCarface, and then we’d have to wriggle out of the whole thing by handing over the decision to our chief executive, who’s German and would therefore go for something like A Car Programme. Because that’s vot it is, ja?

  Or maybe I’m wrong. The Germans are actually quite good at names. I know this because I’m there now, in the small resort of Wank.

  24 April 2016

  For me, the war is over: let Germany run everything

  As you may have read, I am keen that we remain in the European Union. But not half as keen as I would be if the European Union were made up of just four countries: England, Denmark, Holland and Germany. That coalition of like-minded peoples would, I think, work well. Especially if we put Germany in charge.

  Oh sure, we beat them in two World Wars and one World Cup, but after spending last week on a filming trip in Bavaria I was left with one all-consuming question: how? How does anyone beat this lot at anything?

  I began the trip in a small, guttural-sounding Alpine town and, as I stood outside the hotel, blowing smoke in the general direction of passing American tourists, I noticed that every single shop was small and privately owned and fantastically neat. There was no German Home Stores hosting a closing-down sale, no charity shops and no gaping holes where Woolworths used to be.

  And there was no litter. By which I mean none at all. And because there was none, I had no clue what to do with my cigarette end. Simply tossing it away would have been like taking a dump in the middle of the Somerset House skating rink. I was therefore forced by custom and example to extinguish it in a flowerbed and then put the butt in a passing American’s rucksack.

  The following morning, however, I received a shock. While having another cigarette I noticed that in the middle of the perfectly cobbled street there was a discarded plastic coffee stirrer. Later I told our local fixer about this, imagining she would
find it funny that I’d noticed. But instead she looked shocked. ‘Where was it?’ she asked, in the manner of someone who was going to drive back into town to clear it up. ‘It was in the street outside our hotel,’ I replied. There was a long pause as she thought about that. ‘It must have been dropped by one of your film crew,’ she said.

  We may scoff and roll our eyes at that, but what’s so wrong, I wonder, with living in a country where it is inconceivable that someone would drop a plastic coffee stirrer in the street?

  The next day I pulled on to a grass verge while the film crew waited for the right-shaped cloud to form and, immediately, a local person pulled over and told me that I couldn’t park on the grass verge because I’d leave wheel marks and possibly squash a flower.

  My natural reaction to this sort of interference is to tell the busybody to eff off and leave me alone, and I was on the cusp of doing just that. But then I thought, She has a point. So, with an apologetic wave, I moved on. And as I drove away I looked in my rear-view mirror to discover that, sure enough, I had left marks in the otherwise perfect grass and I had bent a couple of dandelions.

  After this I decided to see whether I could find something wrong with Germany. Apart from the wine. And the pop music. It didn’t take long. It has a truly lousy mobile phone network. Most of the time there’s barely any signal at all, and I never once saw the 3G symbol flash up on my phone. But then, why do you need a fast data delivery service when you can leap into your car and, thanks to the autobahn speed-limit policy, be two hundred miles away in an hour?

  Which brings me on to Germany’s drivers, all of whom are excellent and all of whom have up-to-date car insurance, or, as they elegantly call it over there, Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung. Then there are the roads, which are as smooth as the glass they used to make the Hubble telescope. Every repaired section is as invisible as the tucks on an ageing supermodel’s face. There is not even a word for ‘pothole’.