Sometimes, it can be very hard to like Jeremy Clarkson. He says some of the worst things imaginable at times, for example referring to former prime minister as a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot‘ and his crass comments about Meghan Markle. Clarkson, who writes for hard right ‘newspapers’ like The Sun and The Times, usually punches down at, shall we say, people without his power, influence and wealth (some £55m at the last count) and rarely if ever up at his fellow members of the establishment. He’s been at it again this year, with his defence of wealthy landowners (he calls them ‘family farmers’: bollocks), using his many media platforms to make his never criticised or even questioned polemic. So, why do I watch his TV shows, particularly Top Gear, The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm? Because despite his terrible bigotry and far right politics, he can be very funny? I think that might be it.
I’m coming to the end of season four of the revelatory Clarkson’s Farm, where he now farms part of the vast acreage called Diddly Squat he bought to avoid inheritance taxes and while it does not pretend to present an accurate and balanced account of the life of a modern day farmer, it nonetheless convinces even the neutral, even anti-Clarkson, viewer that farming is a tough business. Somehow, the show combines very serious issues with knockabout, sometimes crass, humour. I very much doubt that the clumsy, clod-hopping Clarkson we see on his show is the same one who has accrued a large fortune, but the man knows how to make a decent TV show, but sometimes he just can’t help himself.
Throughout the current series, there are relentless digs at local councils and some very personal ones against his current pet hate, the prime minister Keir Starmer, who Clarkson accused of not understanding the working classes Starmer came from and how Clarkson, an elite private schoolboy, somehow does. Similarly, Clarkson proudly describes himself as ‘not a socialist’, which cannot come as much of a surprise to anyone who has watched his shows over the years. ‘Not a socialist’ must mean he is opposed to the NHS, the state education his parents eschewed and every other public service that benefits the many and not the few, like Clarkson himself.
I was never much concerned at some criticism of Clarkson’s shows as being ‘blokey’, just because they happen to have blokes, or men as most of us call ourselves, in his shows. Presumably, the critics would have a similar opinion of dross like ITV’s Loose Women or maybe because the show isn’t about blokes, it doesn’t count?
On balance, by a small majority of like cells (is there such a thing? Probably not) I like Clarkson. Yes, he is filthy rich, he always punches down at the little people and never up against his fellow members of the establishment and he can be a tiresome bigot, but his qualities as a TV presenter take him over the line. And while his writing – or some of it – is quite decent, he spoils it by going for the easy targets, as the upper orders always do. His ‘everyman’ shtick is about as accurate as that of his fellow establishment toad and actual fascist Nigel Farage, but unlike the Fagash Fuhrer Clarkson can be genuinely witty and entertaining. And he hates Brexit.
These days, I simply cannot abide watching and listening to the many voices of hate in our country, whether that’s Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, Kemi Badenoch, every single columnist at the Mail and everyone else who wants to turn our country into a far right dictatorship, but Clarkson isn’t, at least not yet, in that group. And because he isn’t in that group, and he can be genuinely funny, even brilliant, I’ll cut him some more slack.
I’ll leave the final words to Clarkson himself, from an interview he gave with Lad Bible. “I’m not as bombastic as it’s made out,” he points out. “And so you’re playing a caricature, you’re playing a role, you know, you’re there to provoke, you know, be stupid.” And that, dear reader, is why I like Clarkson, warts and all.
