The problem with Jeremys

Why is Jeremy Clarkson in trouble so often? Is it because he often appears arrogant, entitled or untouchable? Or is it for a much simpler reason: he’s called Jeremy?

This week, in a column for the Sun, he suggested a rather unsavoury Game of Thrones-style punishment for the Duchess of Sussex. The article prompted 20,000 complaints to Ipso – more than the press regulator received in the whole of last year – and led to 64 MPs signing a letter of complaint to the paper’s editor.

Clarkson has made a grudging non-apology and persuaded the paper to remove the article from its website, but unsurprisingly this is unlikely to satisfy the lynch mob already digging out those pitchforks ready to march on his well-publicised farm.

As for the man himself, opinions over the years tend to be polarised between those who think he is a bully who once punched a Top Gear colleague for no reason and those who adore him for once punching Piers Morgan for, probably, a very good reason. But I would suggest there’s a much simpler reason why he annoys so many people and, perhaps, why he thinks he can do what he likes and get away with it. And that’s because of the name he was given at birth. 

It is the kind of name one associates with the posh bloke in the pub whose voice is louder than all the others: who discovered late in middle age that he was a lifelong Chelsea fan, thinks Britain’s going to hell in a handcart and, crucially, never thinks he is wrong even when the evidence is overwhelming.

Hear me out. The name comes from Jeremiah, the gloomy Biblical prophet, and it means ‘appointed by God’, which seems appropriately arrogant when we consider Britain’s more famous Jeremys. There’s Bamber who murdered his family, Thorpe who hired someone to murder his lover and Corbyn who murdered Labour’s chances of governing for a generation and is the Jeremy least likely to be invited to a bar mitzvah.

There’s Hunt, with the mad staring eyes, who many hold responsible for the state of the NHS today and the inevitable recession next year; the late Beadle grinning at the victims of his practical jokes on Game for a Laugh; and actor Irons who once suggested gay marriage would lead to fathers marrying sons in order to avoid paying inheritance tax when passing on estates.

Jeremys tend to be barmy, bolshy or belligerent. Perhaps that’s why so many end up on TV. Television has given us not just Clarkson but Vine, Kyle and Paxman as well. They may seem a disparate bunch but actually have a lot in common. All have made their mark as presenters. Along with many other Jeremys, they were all privately educated. All have a strange vocal style one only seems to find on TV, and all were born between 1950 and the mid-1960s when the name Jeremy was at its peak. In fact, Kyle and Vine were born within weeks of each other in 1965.

And all have that air of arrogance that sees them push the boundaries – Paxman’s interrogation of Michael Howard, for instance; Kyle’s antagonistic show which got suspended after a guest took their own life; and Vine’s obsessive cycling videos in which he names and shames van drivers like some ecological copper’s nark – a green grass, if you will.

Future generations may be spared the curse of the Jeremys. Last year just 41 babies were given the name, making it the 790th most popular moniker for British newborns. This is a far cry from its Swinging Sixties zenith when both posh parents and aspirational middle-classes considered Jeremy to be a sophisticated alternative to all the Johns, Steves and Garys out there. This may be why there have been so few Jeremy footballers but plenty in politics and entertainment.

In 1964 it was the 47th most popular name for British babies (Mark was fourth by the way), hence the reason we get so many famous Jeremys today who are around that age. It is more favoured in America, where last year it was the 239th most popular name, but even there it has connotations. 

British cultural references to the name include Jeremy Fisher the frog, created by Beatrix Potter, and Jeremy Hillary Boob, the ‘Nowhere Man’ in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film. In the US the most notable cultural reference is the song ‘Jeremy’ by Pearl Jam, inspired by a high school student called Jeremy Wade Delle who shot himself in front of his class in 1991.

I have no beef with non-famous Jeremys I have met or worked with. For some strange reason my parents chose it as the middle name for my brother, and the few I know are decent enough. A Jeremy I was at school with became an actor whose most famous role was, arguably, providing the hair for a Head and Shoulders commercial in which one half was washed with the shampoo and the other with an unnamed brand, with the H&S half dandruff-free and the other looking like it had been in a blizzard.

However, the one I find most annoying is TV presenter Jeremy Wade, a professional fisherman of some note who fronts a show called River Monsters on the outer reaches of digital TV. In it he travels the world looking to catch fish that are the subject of local legends. Wade, another public schoolboy with a weird, exaggerated vocal style, paints a picture of a giant killer lurking in the depths that you would think had swallowed a man whole from the excitable descriptions he gives – but he ends up catching a catfish. He’s probably a lovely bloke of course – but with that name, you can’t be sure.