Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Finally: proof that the ‘Clarkson’ persona was all just an act

To the extent I have ever thought about him, I have always viewed Jeremy Clarkson as a slight irritant. This is largely because he personifies what a type of lazy leftist believes right-wingers to be like (uninterested in culture, cultivatedly thick, casually racist). But this weekend we learnt what some of us had long-suspected: that rather than being a scourge of our dishonest, molly-coddled, excuse-ridden culture, Clarkson may be one of its happiest and most comfortable creatures.

Saturday’s Times carried a long interview with him. It is worth reading not because of Clarkson, but because of what it says about our culture. Because if you fell for the idea of Clarkson as a scourge of political-correctness and leftist groupthink, then one thing you would not expect him to do would be to seek for excuses and self-pitying explanations for bad behaviour. Punching someone in the face and using a racial epithet because your dinner is not hot (the cause of Clarkson’s separation from the BBC) is by any measure somewhat bad behaviour. But in his Times interview Clarkson comes up with an excuse for it. This boils down to the crucial line: ‘In one year I lost my mother, my house, my job.’

Now the second and third things here (losing a house and job) are at least half-lies. If Clarkson did own just one house and lost that house then I am quite certain he would have had no trouble finding and purchasing another.  Certainly he is unlikely to have become homeless in the sense most of us would understand it (which is an implication he seems content to leave us with). It is the same with the claim that he lost his job. The loss of a presenting role on Top Gear does not mean for Clarkson what losing a job means for the rest of the population.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in