Jeremy Clarkson: the pub bore that we loathe and adore
Posted by: Auto Buff / Category: Motoring
It was there that the young Jeremy acquired the strut, the poise and the
arrogant self-belief of the fourth-form bully, which have constituted his
public persona ever since. It was also where he met Andy Wilman, Top Gear’s
producer: the company the two recently formed (with BBC Worldwide) to
exploit the brand is known as Bedder 6, which is either a reference to the
Repton dormitories, a sniggering soundalike for “better sex”, or both.
Despite his parents’ hopes, Clarkson says he was expelled for smoking,
drinking and making trouble. Like many a misfit before him, he found his
natural home in journalism, first as a trainee with the Rotherham
Advertiser. As soon as he discovered that the motoring correspondent got to
drive a different new car every week, the car-mad young hack decided that
this was the line of business for him.
In the Eighties, the publisher Matthew Carter was a partner with Clarkson in
the Motoring Press Agency, which was his first step up after his regional
apprenticeship. Carter remembers the novice Clarkson as being a dazzlingly
natural and prolific writer. He proved himself equally naturally at home in
front of a camera in the late Eighties, when he began to co-present Top Gear
with the second-hand car salesman Quentin Willson. At that time, the show
was still playing its role as a fusty consumer programme for earnest car
nerds – but the blazingly ebullient Clarkson, 6’5” with his wild curls,
leather jacket, cowboy boots and high-waisted jeans was soon bursting at the
programme’s seams.
After presenting a chat show – which failed because it was blandly produced,
rather than incompetently hosted – Clarkson took a leading role in 2002 in
reinventing Top Gear, alongside Wilman, as a larky lads’ show. Forming a
little schoolboy gang with his uneasy sidekicks James May and Richard
Hammond, he created a format that celebrated arrested development – trashing
caravans and cars they hated, making stinks and whizz-bangs. It soon became
one of the BBC’s most successful global franchises.
The deference and adulation Clarkson routinely commands from the gormless
audience on Top Gear was previously reserved solely for royalty. At the same
time, Clarkson has established himself as a national treasure via his
newspaper columns and best-selling books, in which he combines the
unquestioning certainties of the pub bore with populist
Article source: Article Source
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