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Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born April 11, 1960 in Doncaster) is a British writer and broadcaster who specialises in motoring issues. He writes weekly columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun, but is most associated with the BBC motoring programme Top Gear, which he presented from 1989 until 1999, and then again from 2002 onwards. The show has 350 million viewers worldwide and won an International Emmy in 2005. "Not a man given to considered opinion," according to the BBC, Clarkson is known to be opinionated and forthright in his views, he was once summed up in an English newspaper both as a "dazzling hero of political incorrectness" and "Jim Davidson with a driving licence".

Biography

Clarkson was educated at Repton School, although he claims to have been expelled for drinking and smoking . His first job was as a travelling salesman for his parents' business selling Paddington Bear toys, after which he trained as a journalist with the Rotherham Advertiser.

In 1984, he combined his writing skills with his love of cars, and together with a business partner (Jonathan Gill) they formed the Motoring Press Agency (later MPA Fingal); conducting road-tests for local newspapers, and wrote for specialist car magazines such as: Performance Car from 1986, until 1993.

He married his agent Frances Catherine Cain on 8 May 1993. They have three children: Emily, Finlo, and Katya. The family lives in the Cotswolds near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. They also have a house on his wife's homeland of the Isle of Man, a place described by Clarkson in 2004 as "a thorn in the side of Tony Blair's nanny state," because of its lack of an upper speed limit.

His wife's father, Major Robert Henry Cain, was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. When Clarkson presented a documentary about the Victoria Cross he highlighted the story of Major Cain, only revealing at the end that he had married Cain's daughter and that she hadn´t known that her father had won a Victoria Cross until after his death.

In 2004 during an episode of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, Clarkson was invited to investigate his family history; including the story of his Great-Great-Great Grandfather; John Kilner (1792–1857), who invented the Kilner jar; a receptacle for preserved fruit.

Engineering interests

Clarkson is passionate about engineering, especially pioneering work, as his television programmes about Brunel and the Colossus computer have shown. Clarkson was awarded an honorary degree from Brunel University on September 12, 2003, partly because of his work in popularising engineering, and partly because of his advocacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 100 Greatest Britons programme.

In April 2004, he appeared on the talk show Parkinson and mentioned that he was writing a book about the soul he believes many machines have. He cited Concorde as his primary example: when people heard it had crashed, quite aside from the sadness they felt for the loss of human life, there was almost a sadness for the machine. The book, titled I Know You Got Soul, was published in October 2004.

Clarkson owns various cars including Ford's latest supercar, the Ford GT, a Mercedes SL55 AMG, a Volvo XC90, and a Ford Focus. His experiences with his Ford GT are well documented, having had many issues with the satellite tracker/alarm system - he reported that it would tell him the car had been stolen even when he was driving it. As a result of what he called "the most miserable month's motoring possible", he returned it to Ford for a full refund. After a short period, including asking Top Gear fans for advice over the internet, he bought back his GT. He also owned a Ferrari 355 for a short while. This was sold to make way for an SL55 AMG to which an SLK55 AMG was subsequently added.

His known passion for single- or two-passenger high-velocity transport led to his brief acquisition of an English Electric Lightning F.1A jet fighter, which was installed in the front garden of his country home. The Lightning was subsequently removed on the orders of the local council, which "wouldn't believe my claim that it was a leaf blower", according to Clarkson on a Tiscali Motoring webchat. In fact, the whole affair was a setup for the programme Speed, and English Electric Lightning XM172 is now back with the Farnborough preservation group.

Controversy

Clarkson has often been the focus of controversy. His comments on various subjects have caused serious offence, and while some have seen them as humourous, many have - in some cases, very personally - been offended by them; in the UK as well as abroad. Whether he believes all that he espouses, or if he is acting as a 'professional controversialist', is hard to judge, and it is not clear whether his comments are tongue-in-cheek, or that his own fixed opinions should be taken literally.

Rover

Clarkson was know for his relentless criticism of Rover cars which were manufactured at Austin's Longbridge car plant. After BMW pulled out of Longbridge (taking with it the Iconic Mini brand) Rover was bought by the Phoenix Consortium and the English MG and Rover brands merged becoming the last major British owned and built car manufacturer. Despite some moderately successful models and continued success in touring cars, Clarkson was still among many of the MG Rover brand detractors both on TV and in the papers. However, he did reserve some sympathy for the Rover workers left jobless, saying in his Sunday Times column, "I cannot even get teary and emotional about the demise of the company itself - though I do feel sorry for the workforce."

Vauxhall

One of his most infamous road tests occurred during the filming of a Top Gear episode featuring the Vauxhall Vectra. Clarkson mainly walked around the car silently, because he couldn't think of anything interesting to say about it. Angry Vauxhall workers later blamed him for the Vectra’s poor sales and it is alleged, even to this day, that Clarkson single-handedly destroyed Vauxhall´s reputation. Ironically, officials from General Motors - who own Vauxhall - invited Clarkson to the launch of the much-improved Vectra, although it is not known whether he attended. Another incident occurred when he tried to prove that a Vauxhall could be driven from the back seat; eventually crashing it after claiming the only good thing about the car was the legroom in the back. When asked where he was by an insurance company when the car crashed he replied, "In the back seat". In one episode, he went so far as to dump nearly half-a-ton of manure on a Vauxhall van during the annual "Top Gear Car Of The Year" awards. However in recent years Clarkson's view on Vauxhall has significantly changed. He praised the VX220 Turbo (even throwing a fan out of the studio when they said the VX220 was "uncool"), and is a big fan of the Monaro. However, neither of these cars were manufactured or designed solely by Vauxhall; the VX220 was designed and manufactured by Lotus Cars, and the Monaro by Holden Special Vehicles. He also gave the Astra VXR positive reviews, though (surprisingly for Clarkson) he felt it had far too much power for a front-wheel drive family car. It suffered from Torque steer and traction problems, which Clarkson demonstrated on Top Gear by smoking the front wheels with the traction control off. The Alfa Romeo 147 GTA has similar issues.

Foreigners

Clarkson has spurred another controversy in his capacity as a presenter for BBC2's Top Gear. During the 13 of November, 2005 episode, a news segment featuring BMW's MINI Concept from the Tokyo Motor Show showcased what fellow-presenter Richard Hammond quoted as a "quintessentially British" integrated tea set. Clarkson responded by mocking that the German designed-and-owned MINI Cooper should be fitted with "a quintessentially German... sat-nav that only goes to Poland" in reference to the Nazi invasion of Poland that started World War II, and saying that " fan belt will last a thousand years", a reference to Adolf Hitler's propaganda slogan of "the thousand-year Reich". These statements gained negative attention in the British and German news media and was the victim of much unbalanced reporting with many publications not stating the preceding comments. He made similar remarks about the new Mercedes S-Class when he used the car's speech recognition system, inbuilt into the SatNav, to take him to Warsaw; the capital of Poland

In October, 1998, Hyundai cars complained to the BBC about what they described as "bigoted and racist" comments he made at the Birmingham Motor Show, where he was reported as saying that the people working on the Hyundai stand had "eaten a dog" (due to the fact that Koreans are known for their consumption of dog meat), and that the designer of the Hyundai XG had probably eaten a spaniel for his lunch. He also allegedly referred to those working on the BMW stand as "Nazis". . He has also described some BMW vehicles as "Nazi staffed cars".

His typical view of American cars is that they are poorly built, and have terrible steering and interior design. Despite this he himself owns Ford's new GT supercar (left-hand drive, something else he could be critical of as well as the electrical problems) and is a big fan of the classic Ford Mustang. In September 2005, Clarkson wrote an editorial for The Sun, criticising Americans after the Hurricane Katrina rescue response, and included the comment: "Most Americans barely have the brains to walk on their back legs".

Clarkson constantly makes references to the French. For example when he was driving the £7,000 Maserati, he said "Now when the French and the Italians come together to do cooking, that's great. When they come together to make cars...run, run for your life."

Minorities

In the Sunday Times on June 2, 2002, he joked that he had spent the day hunting rats using tennis racquets and croquet mallets. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issued a warning to him as a result of this comment.

Clarkson's views on cyclists and promotion of motoring have caused concern among cycling and road-safety organisations. Transport 2000 have called for Top Gear to be replaced by a more safety, and environmentally-aware, motoring programme. In February of 2004, Clarkson rammed a 30-year-old horse chestnut tree with a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck to demonstrate how rugged the vehicle was. This led to the BBC having to compensate the local parish council who, until they saw the Top Gear broadcast, thought that the damage had been caused by local vandals.

In 2005, the School of Technology at Oxford Brookes University awarded him an honorary engineering doctorate, leading to protests from green organizations, who objected to his statements about the environment and his advocacy of car use. He has said: "I do have a disregard for the environment. I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best as we can". After the ceremony, he was hit in the face with a banana-meringue pie by a protester. Clarkson took the insult with humour, commenting that the pie had too much sugar.

Clarkson has often said that bald, bearded, pipe-smoking blokes wearing sandals with a caravan and a bike, who believe that "the speed limit is there for a reason", are not amongst his circle of friends. Despite Clarkson's apparent dislike of speeding restrictions, he holds a clean driving license.

Celebrities

Clarkson has also made numerous remarks on Have I Got News For You that have raised controversy. He once famously jested, during a dispute that Paul McCartney should be credited before John Lennon on many of The Beatles' songs, that he believed Paul should have been listed above Lennon on Mark Chapman's hitlist. He also joked that Paul McCartney has offered a date to a woman who used her prosthetic leg to fend off a burglar, in relation to his failed marriage to Heather Mills. Clarkson also defended Camilla Parker-Bowles on an episode. "People often criticise her (Parker-Bowles) because she's approaching 60", he said, "but they forget that Princess Diana was approaching 120 when she went into the tunnel."

He has had a long-running public feud with Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror. In October of 2003, on the last Concorde flight, he threw a glass of water over Morgan while the two were exchanging insults. In March of 2004, at the British Press Awards, he cursed at Morgan and punched him, apparently angry that the newspaper had published photographs of Clarkson with a woman who was not his wife.

Comedian Sean Lock unsuccessfully attempted to put Clarkson into Room 101. Since then, they have appeared together on numerous television programmes, including an episode of QI, where Sean repeatedly mocked and belittled Clarkson. He admitted the rift between the two is good humoured.

Trivia

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• Clarkson was one of the passengers on the last BA Concorde flight on October 24, 2003. He paraphrased Neil Armstrong to describe the retiring of Concorde: "This is one small step for a man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind".
• According to The Sun newspaper in the UK, Clarkson appears in the Pixar movie Cars as Lightning McQueen's wheeler-dealer agent Harv, but only in the British release- Harv is played by Jeremy Piven in the North American release.
• His book The World According to Clarkson was at number one in the UK charts for eight weeks.
• He, amongst others, has been blamed for poor denim sales. Draper's Record, trade magazine to the fashion industry, ran an article on Clarkson's poor fashion image: "For a period in the late Nineties denim became unfashionable. "501s — Levi's flagship brand — in particular suffered from the so-called 'Jeremy Clarkson effect', the association with men in middle youth." He was also featured on What Not to Wear, where he was named as one of "the world's worst-dressed celebrities".
• During a guest appearance on QI, screened on the November 11, 2005, he said that seal flipper tastes "exactly like licking a hot Turkish urinal". He also ate whale (which he said tastes like steak but with an iron tang), covered in grated puffin. He said, "The waiter asked if I wanted some grated puffin on my whale and how do you say no to something like that?"
• In his book The World According To Clarkson, he wrote: "I've eaten snakes, dogs, small whole birds in France and crocodiles, but Tommy Turtle is my line in the sand. I don't care if turtles turn out to be the antidote for cancer, I'm not eating even a small part of one and that's that."
• After testing the Bugatti Veyron, he pondered and announced that he felt sorry, now knowing he would never drive a car again that would match this car's skills and offerings to a driver like him. 2 years earlier on Top Gear he declared the car would never exist.
• Clarkson is 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m) tall.
• Clarkson visited New Zealand in 1997. He was not impressed to see the number of Austin Allegros, Maxis, Princesses, Hillman Hunters, Avengers and older Ford Cortinas amongst other British relics (long since recycled in Great Britain) still being driven daily by New Zealanders.
• In 2005, Clarkson filmed an item for Top Gear where he drove a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow into the Chipping Norton Lido, achieving a long-time ambition to recreate the urban legend of Keith Moon driving into a swimming pool. Clarkson is a regular supporter of the Lido, having hosted several "auctions of promises" and the stunt was carried out with full co-ordination of the Lido management, Top Gear producers and a stunt team.
• He claimed that he passed his driving test in his grandfather's Bentley R Type on one occasion; on another he alleged that he had passed his test in his father's Bentley S Type.
• Clarkson has always been noted for his pro-smoking viewpoint, even publicly smoking as much as possible on National No Smoking Day. However, he announced in his column in the Sun on 22 April 2006 that he had given up smoking. He cited the death of one of his female friends from lung cancer shortly after giving birth as the main reason.
• It was revealed, during The F word on July 5 2006, that Clarkson's house on the Isle of Man is a lighthouse.

See also

• J. Bonington Jagworth, "militant leader of the Motorists' Liberation Front" — character invented by Peter Simple who bears a strong resemblance to Clarkson.

Works

Non-motoring shows

• Clarkson (1998-2000): A chat show that ran for three series.
• Jeremy Clarkson's Extreme Machines (1998): where he rode all manner of machines, including a plane, and an airboat.
• Robot Wars (1997): Clarkson presented the first series of the UK version.
• Jeremy Clarkson Meets The Neighbours: A notorious Europhobe, Clarkson travelled around Europe, confronting (and in some cases reinforcing) his prejudices.
• Speed (2001): A series about the history of fast vehicles, including aeroplanes, boats and cars.
• Have I Got News For You: hosted four episodes, the first in 2002, two in 2005 and one in 2006. Also appeared as a guest in 2003.
• Inventions That Changed the World (2004): five episodes featuring the invention of the gun/computer/jet engine/telephone/television from a British point of view.
• Top of the Pops: co-hosted one episode on July 24, 2005 with Fearne Cotton.
• QI: appeared as a guest on four occasions.
• Room 101: appeared on this in 1995 when Nick Hancock was host. Clarkson's choices were caravans; flies; Last Of The Summer Wine; the mentality within golf clubs; and vegetarians.
• Grumpy Old Men (2003-4): Clarkson appeared alongside his friend, the food critic A A Gill, in a christmas special and then in the second full season of this series.
• Jeremy Clarkson: Who Do You Think You Are? (2004): Clarkson traced his family tree for one episode the popular documentary series.
• Great Britons : In a poll to find the greatest historical Briton, Clarkson was the chief supporter for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who came second.
• The Victoria Cross: For Valour (2003): Clarkson presented a one-off documentary about the history of the Victoria Cross.
• Never Mind The Buzzcocks: Guest presenter April 10,2006

Videos

Clarkson has produced the following:

• Jeremy Clarkson's Motorsport Mayhem (1995)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Unleashed On Cars (1996)
• The Best Of Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld (1996)
• More Motorsport Mayhem Featuring Jeremy Clarkson And Steve Rider (1996)
• Jeremy Clarkson's Unlimited Extreme Machines (1997)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Apocalypse Clarkson (1997)
• The Most Outrageous Jeremy Clarkson Video In The World...Ever (1998)
• Jeremy Clarkson Head To Head (1999)
• Jeremy Clarkson - At Full Throttle (2000)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Top 100 Cars (2001)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Speed (2001)
• Jeremy Clarkson - No Limits (2002)
• Jeremy Clarkson's Shootout (2003)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Hot Metal (2004)
• Jeremy Clarkson - Heaven And Hell (2005)

Books

• Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld (1996)
• Clarkson on Cars: Writings and Rantings of the BBC's Top Motoring Correspondent (1996)
• Clarkson's Hot 100 (1996)
• Jeremy Clarkson's Planet Dagenham: Drivestyles of the Rich and Famous (1998)
• Born to Be Riled: The Collected Writings of Jeremy Clarkson (1999)
• Jeremy Clarkson's Ultimate Ferrari (2001)
• The World According to Clarkson (2004)
• Clarkson on Cars (2004)
• I Know You Got Soul (2004)
• Motorworld (2004)

References

1. Top Gear series 7, episode 3, star in a reasonably priced car

• "Celebrity Gallery" by Dan Waddell, BBC, undated, retrieved December 9, 2005
• "Jeremy Clarkson, Presenter, Top Gear" no byline, BBC World, undated, retrieved December 9, 2005
• "Clarkson hit by pie at degree ceremony" by Polly Curtis, The Guardian, September 12, 2005
• "Clarkson in the doghouse", no byline, BBC News, October 28, 1998
• "I should have been fired years ago, to be honest" by Lynn Barbber, The Observer, November 20, 2005

Further reading

• Jeremy Clarkson at IMDb
• Archive of Clarkson's Sunday Times columns
• Petition opposing Clarkson's receiving an honorary degree
• Banana meringue news story from The Sun
• Some best bit of Clarkson

Template:Persondata

• 1960 births
• Living people
• Natives of South Yorkshire
• British journalists
• English television presenters
• Top Gear