And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson Read online

  And Another Thing

  Book Jacket

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  AND ANOTHER THING…

  Jeremy Clarkson began his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun, the Sunday Times, the Rochdale Observer, the Wolverhampton Express and Star, all of the Associated Kent Newspapers, and Lincolnshire Life. Today he is the tallest person working in British television.

  Jeremy Clarkson’s other books are Clarkson’s Hot 100, Clarkson on Cars, Motorworld, Planet Dagenham, The World According to Clarkson and I Know You Got Soul.

  And Another Thing…

  The World According to Clarkson

  Volume Two

  JEREMY CLARKSON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Michael Joseph 2006

  Published in Penguin Books 2007

  1

  Copyright © Jeremy Clarkson, 2006

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  The contents of this book previously appeared in Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times columns.

  Except in the United States ofAmerica, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way oftrade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  To Andy Wilman

  The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy

  Clarkson’s Sunday Times column. Read more

  about the world according to Clarkson every week

  in the Sunday Times

  Contents

  I’m a nobody, my jet-set credit card tells me so

  Oops: how I dropped the US air force right in it

  Sorry, Hans, brassy Brits rule the beaches now

  Learn to kill a chicken, or you’ll get no supper

  To win a war, first you need a location scout

  Fear of fat can seriously damage your health

  Scotch – stop skiing and return to your sheds

  My son thinks I’m gay, and it can only get worse

  Sorry, but the public apology is a Big Lie

  Calling your kid Noah or Coke – how wet is that?

  Put Piers on a plinth, he deserves immortality

  Hurricane Hank pulls a fast one on the scramjet

  Health and safety and the death of television

  Getting totally wrecked at sea isn’t a crime

  We used to work to live, then we gave up living

  You’re all on probation, this is the British nation

  Comrade Clipboard won’t let me crash the car

  Noises off can turn a man into a murderer

  The lusty lads have left me feeling exposed

  Mobile phones that do everything – except work

  We really have to draw a line under tattoos

  Life itself is offensive, so stop complaining

  Put the panic button down now and walk away quietly

  Yes, it used to be grim up north – now it’s grimmer

  Stars staying alive is really killing rock’n’roll

  Hoon’s thinned red line is facing the wrong way

  Whee, there’s a golden apple in my family tree

  Blame your airport wait on dim Darren and Julie

  Proper writing is like so overr8ed, innit kids

  I have now discovered the highest form of life: wasps

  The doctors are out to get me

  Let’s brand our man’s army

  Go to school, see the world

  Space virgins need chutes

  Call that a list of best films?

  Two fingers to the pension

  This is how the world ends…

  Fight terror and look good, too

  The Cheshire charity rip-off

  Now I’m an artificial hipster

  Bullies were the making of me

  100 things not to do before you die

  Let’s break all Tony’s laws

  Sharks, you’re dead meat

  The ghost of wife’s present

  Who’s afraid of the nice wolf?

  Bowling for the beautiful people

  Wild weather warnings

  Jumbo, a brilliant white elephant

  Jackboots rule the countryside

  Found: a cure for binge drinking

  Custard, my wife’s worst swearword

  Go ahead, lad, be a gay astronaut

  Sticking one on the gum summit

  It’s freezing, so go get your sun cream

  Good riddance to green rubbish

  Bury me with my anecdotes on

  A screen queen ate my pork pie

  Save me from my mobile phone

  Ecologists can kill a landscape

  What we need is a parliament of 12

  Why won’t shops sell me anything?

  Fun: the true sign of a good school

  Nuts and dolts of an eco-boycott

  Small BBC strike, not many stirred

  Twin your town to save Africa

  Rock is dead, long live rock’n’roll

  You are about to be devoured

  Death by 1,000 autographs

  Oops, £25,000 went overboard

  Annoying: I like David Beckham

  My burning hate for patio heaters

  Multicultural? I just don’t see it

  Children really don’t want toys

  The Catch 22 of taking exercise

  A shady person’s holiday guide

  It’s a very fishy world, angling

  The message in a litter lout’s bottle

  Great no-shows of our time

  I’ve been seduced by Beardy Airways

  We are a nation in rude health

  Four eyes aren’t better than two

  Naughty nights in heartbreak hotel

  When the fame game goes funny

  Cornered by the green lynch mob

  What happened? I’m not grumpy

  I’m a nobody, my jet-set credit card tells me so

  I suppose all of us were out and about before Christmas, pummelling our credit cards to within an inch of their lives. So, some time in the next week or so, we can expect a sour-faced government minister to come on television to explain that we are now borrowing more than we’re saving and that it has all got to stop.
/>   In the mid-1970s, shortly after credit cards first emerged, we owed £32 million.

  Now we’ve managed to get ourselves into debt to the tune of £50 billion, which works out at about £1,140 for every adult in the land.

  As a result, the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse and little old ladies are having to sell their cats for medical experiments. And children are being lured into prostitution and up chimneys. It’s all too awful for words.

  But there’s a darker side to credit cards. A sinister underbelly that is rarely talked about. I’m talking about the misery of not having the right one.

  We’ve all been there. Dinner is over, the bill has arrived and everyone is chucking their plastic on to the saucer. It’s a sea of platinum and gold. One chap has produced something with a Wells Fargo stagecoach on the front. Another has come up with an HM Government procurement card, just like James Bond would have.

  And then it’s your turn. And all you’ve got is your green NatWest Switch card.

  Socially speaking, you are about to die. Or are you?

  A couple of years ago I read an interview with some chap who’d got a fistful of cards in his pocket and claimed that the more shiny examples, specifically the much-coveted black American Express, gave him ‘certain privileges’.

  Obviously, I had to have one. So I lied about my salary, handed over 650 bleeding quid, and there it was, in a leatherette box, presented like a fine Tiffany earring. My very own passport to the high life.

  A few weeks later I was flying economy class to some godforsaken hell hole – I forget where – and found myself sitting in one of those oyster bars at Heathrow, fielding questions from men in nylon trousers about Volkswagen diesels. After a while I remembered the black ‘key’ in my wallet and recalled a bit in the booklet that said it opened the door to airline lounges around the world.

  So, I plodded over to the club class lounge with my cattle class boarding ticket.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the woman cheerfully.

  ‘Aha,’ I countered, ‘but I have a black American Express card which affords me certain privileges.’

  It didn’t. So I went back to the diesel men at the oyster bar.

  A month after that I was checking in at Blakes Hotel in Amsterdam when, again, I remembered the card and thought: ‘I wonder if this will get me a room upgrade.’

  Joy of joys, it did. All I had to do was check into one of the emperor suites at £1 trillion a night and I would be automatically upgraded to a maharajah suite, with the enlarged minibar, at no extra cost. So, off to the economy broom cupboard I went.

  As the months went by, I kept producing the jet-set, jet-black Amex and the result was pretty much always the same. ‘Non.’… ‘Nein.’ And in provincial Britain: ‘What the f***’s that?’

  Actually, I’m being unfair. It wasn’t only provincial Britain that was mystified.

  Pretty well everywhere east of New York and west of Los Angeles doesn’t take Amex, no matter what colour the card is. Some say this is because Amex charges too much.

  Others because the Americans are infidel dogs.

  Eventually, I found a fellow customer and asked what she saw in it. ‘Oh,’ she said, tossing a mane of pricey hair backwards, ‘it’s marvellous. Only the other day I needed 24 variegates and my local florist didn’t have them in stock. So I called the Amex helpline number and they got them for me.’

  Great. But I have never ever felt a need to fill the house with variegates. More worryingly, I seldom have the courage to produce the black plastic on those rare occasions when I find myself dining in a restaurant that accepts it. Because what message would I be giving out?

  When you produce a black Amex, what you are saying is that you earn £1 million a year. Is the waiter really going to be impressed? And what about your friends? They either earn a million too, in which case so what, or they don’t, in which case they won’t be your friends for much longer.

  Having a black Amex is not like having a big house. That’s useful. And it’s not like having a big car. That’s more comfortable than a smaller one. The card exists, solely, to impress. It has no other function.

  If I were the sort of person who had clients, then maybe this would be useful. But a word of warning on that front. I lied about my salary to get one, so who’s to say that the sweating golfer who whipped one out over dinner last night didn’t lie, too. A. A. Gill has one, for God’s sake.

  As a result, I shall be getting rid of it. This will help Britain’s economy in a small way. But more importantly, it will do wonders for my self-esteem.

  Sunday 11 January 2004

  Oops: how I dropped the US air force right in it

  Given the American military’s dreadful reputation for so-called friendly fire incidents, many people will not have been surprised last week when it was revealed that one of its F-15 jets had dropped a bomb on Yorkshire.

  I wasn’t surprised either, but for a different reason. You see, a few years ago, when I was flying an F-15, I inadvertently dropped a bomb on North Carolina.

  I was making one of those Killer Death Extreme Machine programmes which called for me to go very fast in a selection of different vehicles. So it was obvious I should hitch a ride in the fastest and toughest of America’s airborne armoury. The Strike Eagle. The unshootdownable F-15E.

  What you saw on the television was me flying it, and then me being sick. What you didn’t see – for reasons of time, you understand – was me trying to drop a laser-guided bomb on the ranges at Kitty Hawk.

  Now, you’ve all seen the news footage of such weapons being fired through the letter boxes of various baby-milk factories, so you know how they’re supposed to work. The man in the back of the plane – that would be me – lines up the camera on the target and releases the bomb, which goes to wherever the cross hairs are pointing.

  These cameras have a phenomenal range. The distance they can ‘see’ is classified but I noticed the range dial went up to 160 miles. That means the plane which bombed Yorkshire could have been over Sussex at the time.

  On my first run, the pilot, Gris ‘Maverick’ Grimwald, said he’d come in low and fast, jinking wildly as though we were under attack from surface-to-air missiles.

  In the back seat, I tuned one of the three screens to give me a picture from the plane’s belly-mounted camera, which you then steer by moving a toggle on top of the joystick.

  I’d had two days of training and figured it would be like playing on a PlayStation. And so it is. But can you imagine what it would be like trying to operate a PlayStation while inside a tumble dryer? Because that’s what it’s like trying to operate a remote-control camera in an F-15. More realistically, have your children tried to play on their Game Boys while being driven in the back of a car? And that’s at 60 mph in a vaguely straight line.

  Grimwald was doing, ooh, about 600 mph no more than a few hundred feet off the deck, and to make matters worse he was flinging the plane from side to side so that one second the screen showed the faraway Appalachian Mountains and then the next, fields screaming past in a hyperspace fast forward blur.

  By the time I’d finished being sick, we were over the sea doing a six-G turn to get back to the starting point again. ‘This time,’ said Maverick (or ‘Bastard’, as I liked to call him), ‘I’ll make it easier. We’ll go a little higher, a little slower and I’ll be less violent.’

  It didn’t help. I saw the river where they filmed Deliverance, I saw the swamp that bogged down Jude Law in Cold Mountain and then I noticed the waterfall behind which Daniel Day-Lewis had hidden in The Last of the Mohicans. And then we were over the sea again and I was bringing up some cake that I’d eaten on my ninth birthday.

  Bastard was not pleased. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that each time we do one of these runs we’re costing the American taxpayer $7,000 in fuel?’

  Do you know what? I don’t care about the American taxpayer. So there was no way I could summon up a tear from the back seat of a jet that was, a
t the time, pointing straight at the sun. We were 90 degrees nose high, climbing vertically at a rate that you simply wouldn’t believe.

  Let me put it this way. The lift in the BT Tower is fast. It gives you a ‘funny tummy’ as it climbs 600 feet in 30 seconds. So imagine what it’s like in an F-15 that climbed 17,000 feet in 11 seconds. This was a cosmic zoom, made real.

  It’s the F-15’s party piece. Because there’s so much thrust from its two Pratt & Whitney turbofans, it can not only do 2½ times the speed of sound and carry 9,000 lb more than a Eurofighter, but it can also accelerate vertically.

  We’d gone high for the third run so I’d have plenty of time to locate the target with the camera, release the bomb and then hold the cross hairs in place as it fell to earth. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

  And yet somehow I still managed to make a hash of it. Frantically I swivelled the camera around but could see nothing resembling a target, so I thought: ‘I know. I’ll drop the bomb anyway, because by the time it reaches the ground from this height I’m bound to have the cross hairs in place.’

  I didn’t. Bastard felt the plane twitch as I pressed the release button and said: ‘You have the target?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, swivelling the camera some more.

  But I didn’t, and to this day I have no idea where that bomb went. It certainly didn’t hit the target. I’m not even certain it hit North Carolina.

  So who knows? Maybe the bombing of Yorkshire wasn’t incompetence. Maybe it was payback.

  Sunday 18 January 2004

  Sorry, Hans, brassy Brits rule the beaches now

  When package holidays began, all of a sudden we could experience life at close quarters with people from other nations. We thought the Germans were the most ridiculous people on the beach.

  As Monty Python pointed out years ago, they pinched the sun beds and barged into the queues and frightened the children. And if you weren’t at the buffet spot-on seven, Fritz had wolfed all the sausages.

  But with the advent of the Boeing 747 came the long-haul holiday and we realised that the Germans were country mice compared with the Americans. No shorts were too large, no thong was too small.