ON CLARKSON

OK imagine you, yes you, have to go to some family do, a funeral, a christening or Heaven forfend, a cousin’s wedding.

Imagine you had to drive 200 miles to get there and you took the A41, the M2, the M6, the AK47 and finally the B1111111111111118 and it took you four and a half hours.

Imagine then that you get covered by your uncle, let’s call him Uncle Jez.

Imagine Uncle Jez asks about your route and you tell him but he says you’re a fucking idiot because what you should have done is taken the M25, the A11, Route 66 and the Highway to Hell by AC/DC. Or something. And that it should only have taken you 27 minutes because you should drive everywhere as fast as you can, fuck speed camera’s, only asylum seekers and homosexuals think they’re a good for fucksake! Don’t worry about running over children, they love being run over, toughens them up, makes them a man!

Imagine that then he starts talking about engine size and MPG as if that’s a normal thing to want to talk about and then he tells you that you’re car is shit anyway because it doesn’t omit nearly enough bad poisonous gases into the atmosphere you great big poof!

Imagine then that he starts talking about cars that he thinks are “cool”. You notice that he must be cool because he sports a loose greying perm, at plain green Marks and Spark’s shirt, a navy suit jacket, faded blue boot-cut jeans, brown leather lace-ups and a face that even Hammond couldn’t love. Fuck the last two decades, that look never loses it’s cool!

Imagine then that Uncle Jez then starts telling you all about his friends in Chipping-fucking-Norton. There’s James, basically Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen on Promazine, Jez says he’s so uncool because he drives sensibly, the dick! There’s Richard, the cartoon schoolboy who is also the comic genius behind Total Wipeout (not even Christopher Morris could think up a premise as funny as that; hahaha he fell in the water, hahaha he fell in the water, hahaha he fell in the water, hahaha he fell in the water, hahaha he fell in the water……). He then tells you of his neighbours, Dave and Rupert, those bastions of fair play and liberal thought. He tells you about his affair with some slut who’s on the payroll, he says he doesn’t care what his wife thinks because so a woman and women are stupid and a wife’s place in the kitchen anyway. You laugh nervously but can believe what you’re hearing – TWO women were actually prepared to sleep with this cretin!

Imagine now that the funeral/wedding/cousin’s wedding is over and a week later you turn on your telebox. It’s the One Show you’ve heard about this, it’s the program they used to replace the test card. Anyway, Gyles Brandreth finishes his segment on conservative knitwear circa 1986 and who should be sitting on the sofa with Matt Baker and the lady one, who else but Uncle Jez! Matt asks him for his views on the nationwide public service strike early that day. The public walkout being due to, among other reasons, pension cuts, over 300,000 of their colleagues losing their jobs since the last general election, a major freeze on pay rises despite rocketing inflation and a government seemingly not willing to negotiate. Uncle Jez then says this:

“I’d have them (the strikers) all shot, I’d take them outside and execute them in front of their families…..

So to reiterate, these people:

Shot dead in front of these people:

Why would anyone find that unreasonable and not hilarious?

He went on to say:

How dare they go on strike when they’ve got these gilt edge pensions when the rest of us have to work for a living.”

Define “work” Jeremy? Must be hard “work” driving fast cars around a track, smashing up caravans, having books and columns ghost-written for you and being gently interviewed by ex-Blue Peter presenters. The average public sector salary is less than £30,000, a figure no doubt inflated by the employees at the tax payer-funded BBC.

Like Uncle Jez whom Auntie Beeb pays £1,000,000 for his “talents”.

Fuck me!