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

by Jeremy Clarkson

  ‘Hello, it’s Jeremy. Is it all right to land?’ is a much easier way of saying, ‘Weston Tower, this is Charlie Victor Tango on 8453.113 requesting a westerly approach to runway 27.’

  But private pilots love all this sort of stuff. They love doing utterly pointless pre-flight checks, tapping dials and making sure that a bunch of goblins didn’t come in the night and chew through all the wires.

  They never think: ‘I bought this plane to make my life more convenient but in the time I’ve spent checking it, I could have driven to Leeds.’ And nor do they ever think: ‘If these checks are so foolproof, how come that in the western United States, more small planes fall out of the sky than rain drops.’

  No, really. In America, more than one person a day is killed in private-plane crashes. Light aircraft, over there, are known as ‘dentist killers’.

  And try this for size. You don’t have to check your plane if you leave it alone for a few hours in the day. But you do if it’s been left alone at night. Why?

  Do the plane goblins only come out when it’s dark? No. Will a comprehensive pre-flight check keep your plane in the air? No. The fact is that pilots love checking things. They love details.

  I know this from glancing at the magazines they read. Boat magazines are full of boats skimming the waves with naked girls on the foredeck. But plane magazines are filled with lists of serial numbers and adverts for stuff that no one could conceivably ever want to buy. Quarter-scale cockpit models, for instance. And hideous pictures of Lancasters, at sunset, over Dresden.

  Just last night, I spent some time in the company of two private-plane enthusiasts who never once talked about the speed of their machines, or the convenience, or the sheer, unbridled fun of skimming the treetops at 150 mph. Instead, they talked for hours about parking and refuelling. I bet they think the best bit of sex is unwrapping the condom.

  Certainly, they seem to have a weird love for the medical, which they must take every 15 minutes. I can’t see why this is necessary because medicals cannot predict a heart attack, which is about the only thing that will affect someone’s ability to fly a plane.

  And you know what. Hardly anyone with a plane ever uses it to go somewhere useful.

  Instead, they take ‘the old kite’ from their flying-club headquarters to another flying-club headquarters where they have some cheese and Branston pickle. And then they fly home again. What’s that all about?

  And while they’re flying around, spoiling the peace and quiet for everyone on the ground, they are having absolutely no fun whatsoever. This is because they are at 3,000 feet, where 100 mph feels like you’re standing still. And they can’t come down low for fear of the man with adenoids.

  So, the recipe for flying, then. You drive to an airfield, check your plane for two hours, take off, sit still, speak gibberish into a radio, land, eat cheese and then sit still again till you’re home again. Repeat until one day you hear a loud bang…

  Sunday 23 September 2007

  The kids are all right with lousy TV

  Oh deary me. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth last week when the most extensive report ever compiled into the state of children’s television found that our kids are being brought up on a diet of American violence, schmaltz and pink fluffy nonsense.

  The figures were terribly gloomy. Just nine years ago, 22 per cent of shows made by the BBC and ITVwere for kids. Now it’s just 4 per cent. And as a result, fewer than one in five children’s programmes on British television are actually made here.

  This produced a torrent of angry missives to the nation’s blogs. Angry middle-aged people from all over Surrey and Sussex raged furiously, saying that children should be made to watch wholesome Enid Blyton stories. And that they must be broadcast mute and with subtitles in Latin.

  Oh for heaven’s sake. Yes, Enid Blyton was tremendous 40 years ago. I particularly enjoyed the Famous Five series. Especially, although I did not know why at the time, when the smugglers took the tousle-haired Georgina to a cave and tied her up. But times change.

  And children change too. My grandfather was born up a chimney and was only allowed out when it was time for him to be beaten. My father looked forward to the orange and piece of string he was given every year at Christmas. I spent most of my childhood watching television. And my kids pass the time doing anything but.

  Apart from The Simpsons and Doctor Who, I cannot get them to watch it at all.

  The rot set in during an episode of Planet Earth. David Attenborough had just shown us a charming little bird of paradise that danced about in a funny way and my youngest daughter was much taken with it. ‘I’d like to see that again,’ she said, happily.

  But of course, this being television, she couldn’t. So on to the internet she went, where, hey presto, she found the clip on a BBC website. And then she found lots of other clips as well. Just the good bits with all the talking taken out.

  This, to her, was perfect entertainment. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s how we watch porn films. You fast-forward through the bits where the plumber comes up the drive, and the lady in a nightie makes him a cup of tea, and slow it down when the action starts.

  Now my daughter only really watches YouTube. There’s no plot. No Attenborough explaining stuff. No tedious instructions on how to make a space helmet out of a squeezy bottle. No adverts. Just loads of people falling off their bicycles and catching fire. And when she finds one she likes a lot, she watches it over and over again. For nothing.

  How can television possibly compete with that? When I was eight, I watched Marine Boy because on a wet Thursday afternoon in October, there was absolutely nothing else to do.

  Now kids have got YouTube, Xbox, MSN, MySpace, text, email, PSP, DVD and SkyPlus.

  All the world’s ones and noughts have been harnessed for their edification and you’re not going to drag them back to the box with a bunch of jolly-what tally-ho Enid kids in big shorts getting into scrapes with smugglers. That was then, and it’s as gone as the ruffand tuberculosis.

  Every week (starting tonight, incidentally) I make a television programme called Top Gear. But I never watch it. What I do is watch my children watching it. And it’s depressing. Because they only really perk up when someone falls in a lake. Whenever there’s talking, they start to unpick the stitching in the sofa. It isn’t that they have a limited attention span. They haven’t got one at all.

  There is no solution to this. Forcing broadcasters to make shows for children is a complete waste of time. Because to make anything they want to see, it would have to be a non-stop orgy of fire, and people getting their heads stuck in lifts.

  Fearne Cotton would have to be injured every five seconds and then at the end she’d have to explode. And they couldn’t fake it because that’s not allowed any more. She really would have to say: ‘That’s it for this week, kids, and now I’m going to blow up.’

  The best thing I can suggest is not to worry. Ofcom says the vast majority of programmes for children are stupid American cartoons. And this is true. But they’re all shown on faraway distant satellite channels. And no one is watching them.

  If you look behind the hysterical headlines, you’ll discover that the most-watched children’s programme on television is Evacuation, a British-made BBC reality show that gives kids a taste of what it was like to be an evacuee in the Second World War.

  The top 20 is almost all British-made. You’ve got Blue Peter at two, Newsround at three, Jackanory at ten and so on. The old wholesome favourites are still there.

  It’s just that in our day, they were watched by 5 million and today they are watched by about half a dozen. The rest? The missing hordes? Well, they’re doing something else, but we mustn’t worry because, honestly, the kids are all right.

  My big problem is that broadcasters will react to the report by redoubling their efforts to win back an audience that simply isn’t there any more. This will mean there’ll be even fewer programmes for those who really do watch television. People who don�
�t have a PlayStation or an account with My Book. People who don’t go out on a Saturday night. We’re called adults.

  The message, then, is simple. Sod the children. And bring back Minder.

  Sunday 7 October 2007

  It’s a man’s game being a rugby ref

  Unbelievable. What a match. Having proved to the Australians that they aren’t even any good at sport, we took on the French in the semi-finals… and won.

  Or lost. It’s hard to say for sure because today’s Friday and the match hasn’t happened yet. But one thing’s certain: when it does I’ll be there, glued to the screen, with my boy and some beers, talking a load of absolute codswallop.

  The problem is that I like rugby very much and I have many opinions about who should do what and when, but never having played I do not have the first clue what’s going on. I have no idea why the forwards play at the back and the backs at the front. And nor do I understand what’s meant by ‘the blind side’.

  I can’t see why one side of the pitch is blind and the other is in full view. It all makes no sense.

  And it makes even less sense when 140 tons of beef all lands in a big muddy lump on top of the ball and you have no idea what on earth is going on in there. Not until the referee blows his whistle, does some signing for the deaf and decides that someone at the bottom of the pile has let go too soon, or not at all, or come in from the side, or made the ball go forwards and that, as a result, another big muddy lump must be formed to get the game going again.

  Despite all this, though, you have to love the collisions, the moments when someone with thighs made from oak and a chest the size of a tugboat smashes into a winger with such ferocity that you wonder how his skeleton hasn’t just disintegrated into a million pieces.

  That and the fights, those cherished moments when a man-mountain smashes his fist, which is the size of a Christmas ham, into someone else’s face and all hell breaks loose. Brilliant.

  And that brings us on to the referee who, instead of wading into the melee and showering the participants with red cards, simply asks everyone to calm down, pauses while the more badly injured have their noses and ears sewn back on, and then restarts the game.

  Compare this attitude with the homosexual nonsense we see in football. Flick someone’s earlobe in a game of football and some jumped-up little gnome, sweating like a rapist, will mince over and order you off the pitch.

  What’s more, a rugby referee is not so drunk on power that he won’t go to the video ref if he’s not sure. The commentators complain about this but I think it’s marvellous: the chap knows how important this game is to the players and he wants to make sure he gets the decision right.

  Football refs are not allowed to consult technology even though, so far as I can see, they never ever make a correct decision. No, really. They don’t notice when the ball goes over the goal line, they send players off for breathing and do nothing when Ronaldo hurls himself to the ground and claws at his face as though he’s been showered with acid.

  And you can’t argue with these power-crazed idiots because then you get sent off as well.

  Do you know a football referee? Do you know anyone who knows a football referee? Have you ever even met anyone who sold a dog to someone who knows a football referee? No. And don’t you think that’s weird? I know an astronaut. I’ve even met someone who makes a living from sexing the Queen’s ducks. But I’ve never met a football ref.

  Perhaps they’re bred on farms, like The Boys from Brazil. Either that or they all hide behind meaningless day jobs in PC World, emerging only on a Saturday like a troop of SuperNazis with their too-tight Hitler Youth shorts and their silly whistles.

  It’s not just football either. The unseen referees in Formula One motor racing distinguish themselves every year by getting every single decision wrong. Only the other week a Polish driver was made to come and sit on the naughty step because he had the temerity to try to overtake a rival.

  Then there’s Wimbledon. Halfa trillion pounds’ worth of electronic projections say the ball was out. But sometimes, and I often feel for the hell of it, the umpire calls it in.

  And then docks the player points if he objects. But what’s the player supposed to do? He’s been on a court, solidly, since he was old enough to vomit. He’s never been out with a girl, he’s never had a beer, he’s never been allowed to masturbate. He has dedicated his whole life to this match and this moment and now some jumped-up power-crazed lunatic has denied him the point.

  Of course he’s going to be angry. Of course he’s going to throw his racket on the floor.

  If I were in charge of tennis, I would allow aggrieved players to actually punch the officials in certain circumstances.

  Either that, or I would get them all down to Twickenham to see how it should be done.

  They will note that rugby refs josh and joke with the players. They give off a sense that they’re pleased to be out there and – by constantly issuing instructions during rucks and mauls – that they are on hand to offer advice, as much as they are to enforce the rules.

  I was going to say that they are the most important feature in rugby. But obviously that’s not true. The most important feature in the game, of course, is watching Australia lose.

  Again.

  Sunday 14 October 2007

  Feed the world – eat blue whales

  We begin this morning, I’m afraid, with an alarming revelation. Never mind the war, the rugby or gun crime. It has come to my attention that in the whole of the British Isles there isn’t a single eco-nutritionist.

  The government’s Food Standards Agency employs about a million and a half working groups who tour the nation in cheap suits making sure that Bernard Matthews is not filling his turkeys with asbestos and that Sainsbury’s isn’t using polonium to make its bananas more bent.

  But not one of them is thinking: ‘Wait a minute. If we build the 3 million new houses Gordon Brown has promised by 2020, where will we grow all the stuff needed to feed the people who live in them?’

  And worse. Nobody is wondering where we might get the water. Not for our lawns and our lavatories but for the crops, the cows and the piggy-wigs. Like I said, this is an alarming problem.

  Already the Atlantic has fewer cod in it than Elton John’s bath, so we are having to import fish fingers from China. And you may think this is fine. Your underpants come from the Far East, and your mobile phone, so why should we not import our watercress and beef from those industrious little yellow fellows on the banks of the Yangtze?

  I’ll tell you why. Because China’s population is growing too, and soon they won’t be able to send us their fish fingers because they will have been scoffed before they get to the docks.

  It is a fact that the world can just about feed 6.5 billion people. But it will not be able to feed 7 billion or 8 billion. And certainly not if, as the lunatic Al Gore suggests, Canada stops growing food and turns over its prairies to the production of biodiesel.

  Maybe man is causing the world to warm, but we’ll never know because, frankly, we will all have starved to death long before anyone gets the chance to find out.

  Obviously, one solution is to burn the entire Amazon rainforest and turn this rich and fertile place into the world’s pantry. But, unfortunately, this is not possible because Sting will turn up on a chat show with some pygmy who’s sewn a saucer into his bottom lip, arguing that the world’s ‘indigenous tribes’ are suffering because of the West’s greed.

  And never mind that the pygmy is wearing a Manchester United football shirt.

  Another solution is that we all become, with immediate effect, vegetarians. It takes 1,790 litres of water to grow 1 kilo of wheat. But 9,680 litres to produce 1 kilo of cow. Sadly, however, this doesn’t work for people like me who only really enjoy eating something if it once had a face.

  I fear, too, that if we all became vegetablists, the world would smell of halitosis and we’d all start to vote Liberal Democrat. Furthermore, all the veg-heads I know are
sickly and grey and unable to climb a flight of stairs without fainting.

  It all looks bleak. But don’t worry, because I have a suggestion that I worked out this morning.

  At the moment, we eat only a very small number of things. Cows. Pigs. Potatoes. Lettuce. And that’s about it. So what I propose is that we spice up our lives with a bit of variety.

  David Attenborough is forever finding unusual creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean. He tells us how they can see down there in the murky depths and how they mate. He tells us where they live, how they raise their young and how they use their tentacles to find prey. But he never tells us the most important thing: what they taste like.

  It’s the same story with Monty Don. Each week, he crops up on Gardeners’ World and explains how lupins form the perfect backdrop to any rockery. Yes. Fine. But can you put them on toast?

  I’m looking at my garden now and wondering. I know I can’t eat the yew hedge because it will bounce off my diaphragm and come right back out again. But what about the lawn? Would that be delicious and nutritious? And, gulp, what about Kristin Scott Donkey, who died recently?

  Should I have given her poor body to the hunt, or should I have garnished it with some lupins and a sea horse and had her for supper?

  Why not? Over the years I have eaten dog, snake, crocodile, guillemot, whale, puffin and a scorpion. They all tasted like chicken, so it’s a fair bet donkeys would too. Or what about camels, which, as we all know, need very little water?

  This brings me on to the final solution. There are many people who are greatly concerned for the plight of endangered species such as the tiger, the panda and the blue whale. They work very hard doing charity marathons in zany T-shirts to help keep these poor creatures teetering on the right side of extinction.