The World According to Clarkson

by Jeremy Clarkson

  Meanwhile, the 130,000 Americans with their Apache gunships and their limitless supply of money are bogged down, trying to work out if Saddam Hussein had anything more dangerous in his chemical cupboard than aspirin.

  The war is over, said Bush. Well, you may have stopped playing, matey, but trust me on this: what you have left behind are 187 different teams all playing different games on the same pitch.

  Sunday 16 November 2003

  The Juries are Scarier than the Criminals

  One day, many years ago, when I was a trainee reporter on a local newspaper in the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, a woman telephoned the newsdesk to say her house ‘were disgusting’.

  I went round, and sure enough it was very dirty and full of equally dirty children, some of whom belonged to the caller.

  She wasn’t sure which ones exactly, but she was very sure of one thing: cockroaches were burrowing into her head, through her ears, and laying eggs behind her eyes.

  She wasn’t mad. But she was thick. Thick enough to believe she was thin enough to wear a miniskirt. And thick enough to believe her head was full of maggots when, in fact, it was full of nothing at all.

  She wasn’t unusual, either. Every day back then I would meet people who knew only to eat when hungry and lash out at anyone who they suspected might be ‘looking at them’. People, in other words, with less capacity for logical thought than a dishwasher.

  They haven’t gone away. Just the other night I was watching a police programme. A young man had been apprehended after he was seen driving erratically and he was, not to put too fine a point on it, incapable of either coherent thought or coherent speech.

  When the policeman asked if the car was his, he looked like he’d been asked to explain the atomic properties of lithium. He had the IQ of a daffodil, the conversational ability of a cushion and the intelligence of his mother who, at the time, was standing outside the police car shouting ‘Oi, pig!’ over and over again.

  And yet because this man wasn’t a vet or a vicar he could be selected for jury service. Yup, this man, and the woman with cockroach eggs in her forehead, are deemed bright enough to determine the outcome of what might well be a multi-million-pound fraud trial.

  Now you may not have noticed, but in between the end of the last parliament and the Queen’s speech, when everyone was focused on the big issues of foundation hospitals and university funding, the government was struggling to shove through its new Criminal Justice Bill.

  The held view is that trial by jury is the cornerstone of British democracy and if you take it away the whole building will come crashing down.

  But actually, when push comes to shove, you don’t give a stuff about democracy. If it means getting a few more burglars off the street, damn fairness and decency.

  What you want is a system that works. In the wee small hours you can admit that previous convictions should be made known to the court before the case is tried.

  You also know that the jury system is a farce.

  How can you let a woman who thinks she has insects in her head decide whether it’s legal to move a pension fund through the Cayman Islands? In certain parts of Somerset I suspect that imbecile and embezzle sound exactly the same.

  And it’s not just fraud either. Back in the olden days when a man was accused of stealing a goat you listened to people who’d seen him do it and made up your mind.

  But now you have to have a basic grasp of forensic science.

  I can see why Labour MPs are so concerned. They must see many idiots in their surgeries. But the ones who go to a surgery are the gleaming white tip of the iceberg. I’m talking about the sort of people who have no clue what an MP is or what he does; people who you thought existed only in a Viz cartoon.

  The Tories should be concerned, too, though. I know one upright shires lady who sat on a jury and said afterwards: ‘Well, I could tell the little devil was guilty. You could tell the moment he walked into the court.’

  A jury is supposed to be made up of your peers, and peers means someone who is equal in standing or rank. Well, I’m sorry, but on that basis the man with the allegedly stolen car on television the other night could only be trusted to try plants.

  Terrifyingly, my equal, in terms of someone who writes about cars and occasionally appears on television, is Stephen Bayley. And I wouldn’t want to be tried by him either.

  At the moment a jury trial has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with sheer blind luck. But what do we replace it with?

  The judge? Ooh, no. Professional jurors? What sort of person’s going to sign up for that? It wouldn’t even work, I fear, if we tested the heads of those called.

  Because all the bright, intelligent people would pretend to be stupid so they could go home.

  I think you may be worried where this is going to end. There’s talk at the moment of allowing television cameras into the courts. So how long will it be before the viewers at home are asked to ‘press the red button now’ and vote? You read it here first.

  Sunday 30 November 2003

  They’re Trying to Frame Kristen Scott Donkey

  I’ve had a horribly busy week and quite the last thing I needed was a directive from the European Parliament that I must get passports for my three donkeys.

  I tried to argue that I have no plans to take them abroad, or even out of their paddock, but it was no good. Council Directive 90/426/EEC says that anyone with any horse, mule or donkey must get a passport. At twenty quid a go.

  This was going to be a pain in the backside. Geoff, my grey donkey, is so stubborn that he won’t even go into his stable, so how in the name of all that’s holy was I supposed to get him into one of those photo booths?

  I suppose Eddie, who’s a playful soul, might have been up for it but then he’d have pulled a silly face every time the flash went off. And let’s not forget the beautiful Kristen Scott Donkey who, when the pictures were delivered, would have stood there in tears saying ‘they make my nose look too long’.

  It turned out that the European Union had thought about this and decided that instead of photographs a simple silhouette drawing would suffice. This makes life easier but I am a trifle worried that silhouettes aren’t a terribly good means of identification.

  First of all, if I attempted to draw the outline of a donkey, it would end up looking like a dog. Everything I draw looks like a dog.

  My vet says this is no problem so long as I get the markings in the right place.

  ‘But what if my donkey has no markings?’ I asked. ‘Quite,’ he said. Small wonder that Princess Anne called the whole scheme a ‘nonsense’.

  So what, you might be wondering, is happening here? Why has the EU decided that all equine or asinine species, except those which live in the New Forest or on Dartmoor, must have a photo ID?

  Well, and I promise you’re not going to believe this, the idea is that each passport will carry details of the animal’s medical history. This way you’ll know at a glance if it has been fed harmful drugs, should you decide to eat it.

  Oh good. So, if one day I suddenly come over all peckish and decide that Geoff’s front leg would go well with the veg and gravy, I’ll be able to make sure that his previous owner did not feed him a drug that would make me grow two heads.

  I think it’s worth pausing here for a moment. You see, over the years I have eaten a puffin, a snake, a whale (well, a bit of one), a dog, a crocodile and an anchovy. But I would sooner eat a German than tuck into my donkeys. And I don’t think I’m alone on this one either.

  For sure, there are problems when a horse dies. You are no longer allowed to bury it in your garden, so you must rely on the local hunt to come and take it away.

  But what happens when hunting is banned?

  Is the EU saying that we have to break out the carving knife and warm up the sauce?

  I don’t think so. In Britain we have a line in the sand when it comes to what we will and what we will not put in our mouths. We will eat rats, so l
ong as they’re called ‘chicken madras’. But we will not eat horses.

  Unfortunately, however, the line in the sands of Europe is a little further away.

  And consequently those buggers will eat anything.

  In France you often find horse on the menu and in Germany, as we discovered last week, it’s not against the law to eat your dinner guests. Furthermore, I know they make salami out of the few donkeys in Spain that have not been hurled to their deaths from the nearest tower block.

  Over there across the water there is perhaps some argument for equine passports.

  Being able to tell if the horse had been on ‘horse’ at some point in its life would be reassuring. You need to know if the pony’s been smacked before it’s smoked.

  But do you believe for one minute that the farmers of Andalusia are actually going to act on the EU directive? Or do you think the letter will simply be fed to the mule?

  That was my first reaction, I must admit. I thought it was a stupid joke and if I did nothing it would go away. But no. It turns out that in Britain, the only country in Europe where we don’t eat Mr Ed or Eeyore, local authorities will be employing ass monitors to scour the countryside for unregistered donkeys and horses. And owners will be fined for non-compliance.

  Again. Can you see that happening in Europe? I can’t. I’ve seen those massive aquatic vacuum cleaners that Spain calls a fishing fleet pulling into the port of La Coruña and unloading fish about 2 mm long. And there wasn’t an EU inspector within a million miles.

  I can’t even see it working in Germany. The Germans love a rule more than anyone, but when they tried to introduce a similar scheme a few years ago only 50 per cent of the nation’s horses were registered. And all the inspectors who were sent out to check on the others mysteriously never came back.

  Sunday 7 December 2003

  All I Want for Christmas is a Ban on Office Parties

  It is traditional at this time of year for newspaper columnists to say how much they despise just about everything to do with Christmas. Sadly, this is not an option for me.

  Naturally there are one or two minor irritations. I don’t, for instance, like it when someone throws a model aeroplane in your face the moment you walk through the door of Hamleys. And my wife and I have an uncanny knack of buying one another the same thing every year. It’s why we have two video cameras and two dogs.

  But mostly I get on well with Christmas. My fairy lights work straight out of the box. My tree does not drop needles.I don’t eat or drink too much. I like getting long letters in cards from people I haven’t seen all year. I enjoy the enforced bonhomie of New Year’s Eve.

  I find it satisfying to wrap presents. I like turkey curry in February. The Great Escape is always worth watching. I don’t have any relatives who wet themselves over lunch. I love seeing the children’s beaming faces at 5 a.m. I see nothing wrong with Christmas jumpers. I am grateful for my new socks.

  I adore Boxing Day drinks parties. I think school nativity plays are funny. I don’t get stuck in traffic jams leaving London. I don’t get in a panic about last-minute shopping and I don’t find it even remotely stressful to be with the family for a few days.

  That said, there is one feature of Christmas that fills me with such fear and such dread that I genuinely shiver whenever it is mentioned. It is the damp log in the fire, the mould on the smoked salmon, the advertisement in the Queen’s speech. It is… the Works Do.

  When I was a schoolboy my mum and dad had a toy factory and, starting in January every year, the staff would each save 10p a week for the annual yuletide knees-up.

  By July they would have enough for the prawn cocktail and by September they were dizzy with anticipation about the first glass of Baileys. I never understood why.

  I still don’t. The notion that you turn off your computer at 6 p.m. and at 6.01 p.m. are making merry with people you don’t like very much over a beaker of Pomagne seems odd.

  They are not your friends or you would have seen them socially at some point during the year. So why think for a moment that the evening will be anything other than hell?

  Christmas in Britain these days is almost completely ruined by the office party.

  The streets become full of ordinary people who have suddenly lost the ability to walk in a straight line. And the atmosphere in every restaurant is firebombed by the table of 60 who order food not for its taste but its aerodynamic efficiency.

  What’s more, for the past week it has been impossible to get anyone on the telephone because they’re either choosing an outfit or finding a restaurant to ruin or having their hair done ready for the Big Day.

  I swear some people put more effort into the office party than they do into the family event a few days later. Last year the Top Gear Christmas knees-up was organised, as is the way with these things, by someone who is nineteen.

  So I ended up in a throbbing basement, looking at my watch every few minutes and thinking: can I really go at 10 p.m.? This year I’m not going at all.

  So that’s the first thing. Never, ever let the firm’s outing be organised by the most junior member of the team because their idea of a good night out – lots of vomit and silly hats – is likely to be far removed from yours.

  You think you have nothing to talk about with the man who drives the forklift in the warehouse, but you have even less in common with the office juniors.

  Your house plants, for instance, are alive – but you can’t smoke any of them.

  There is more food in your fridge than booze. You hear your favourite songs when you’re in the lift and, while you still like to see the dawn, you prefer to have had a night’s kip beforehand.

  There is another problem. Wherever the office juniors are, all they talk about is where they’re going next. Wherever you are, all you want to do is go to bed. And they say, the day afterwards, ‘I’m never going to drink that much again.’ You say, ‘I just can’t seem to drink as much as I used to.’

  The second thing about the works party is sex. A survey this week revealed that 45 per cent of people have had it away at the Christmas do. Why? You sit opposite the plump girl for 48 weeks and it never once occurs to you that she is interesting. So how come, after one warm wine, she only needs to put on a paper hat to become Jordan?

  Even this year’s Sunday Times party is likely to be a nightmare, but for a rather unusual reason. You see, the BBC recently said that its staff were to stop writing columns for newspapers. Andrew Marr, John Simpson and our very own John Humphrys are affected.

  Me, though? The BBC is not bothered. My opinion, it seems, is irrelevant and worthless. And I’m sure that Humphrys will be duty bound to bring that up.

  Sunday 14 December 2003

  * These allegations later proved to be completely unfounded, and no charges were ever brought.