Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I suspected the ‘liberal’ fascists would eventually get Jeremy Clarkson

I read that Jeremy Clarkson had been suspended by the BBC for ‘a fracas’ with a producer. We don’t know what happened yet – but that hasn’t stopped my phone ringing with requests for interviews from Channel Four News (natch) and, yes, the BBC – the producers beside themselves with glee. And already one witless columnist – the staggeringly hopeless Deborah Orr in the Guardian, who nobody has ever read voluntarily – demanding Clarkson resign. Before this imbecilic woman knows even the slightest about what has taken place. Strike one up for the usual ‘liberal’ fascism. What’s he done? Dunno – but sack the bastard anyway. Evil, stupid, people.

I don’t know Clarkson – I met him once, when I interviewed him. He was very likeable. I don’t often watch his show, because I don’t watch much TV. But this is incontestable – Top Gear is extraordinarily successful. Perhaps the most successful programme the BBC has produced in the last twenty years. A humungous, astonishing, success. And part of that is down to the fact that Clarkson is a very good presenter indeed; the best – alongside Attenborough and Humphrys – that the BBC has come up with in fifty years. And part of it is down to the fact that he doesn’t toe the usual PC line, demanded by shrill idiots like Orr – and indeed most of the rest of the BBC and Channel Four News. I don’t know what happened this time around. But I had the suspicion that they would get him, one of these days.

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