The most shocking thing to me about Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension is that he is even still a thing.
Each day at lunch, I sit in the staff room reading Four Four Two whilst one of my colleagues watches repeats of Top Gear on Dave. This is annoying but a vast improvement on the Vernon Kaye fronted Celebrity Family Fortunes with some of the worst joke writing ever known to mankind.
So as I lunch, I am “treated” to a large number of Clarkson’s “witticisms.” The fact that the Metro was able to come up with a list of the top 10 gaffe’s that he has made which barely scrapes the surface of his bigotry should give an idea to anyone who isn’t completely familiar with him just what a massive twazzock he actually is.
It is 2015. It astounds me that there is such a bigoted presenter being given £8.4 million of licence payers money (around 0.25% of all fees collected) to basically offend everyone in the entire universe under the guise of being funny. I’m amazed even more that people still find it funny. But then I guess I’m a liberal with too much faith in people who likes to think no-one fines bigoted humour funny any more. I wonder if he realises that in this day and ages, it’s actually possible to be funny without offending people.
I used to watch Top Gear. I liked the challenges they do. This is the entertaining part of the show to me. I really don’t care about cars (I actually got rid of mine in August and have felt liberated since doing so, but that’s a different story).
However, I gave up watching the show around 7 or 8 years ago because I could no longer deal with Clarkson any more. Which is a bit of a shame as I actually quite like Hammond and May as presenters.
I have seen petitions to have the overgrown hobbit reinstated. No only are they generally poorly written but a number of them are supported by the same people who have vilified footballers such as John Terry and Luis Suarez for racist behaviour previously.
It seems to me (and I am not saying that I am not guilty of this myself) that people will – at least up to a point – support transgressions of individuals that entertain them so that they can continue to be entertained.
This lack of objectivity is something that perhaps we all – myself included – need to be aware of when making judgments on celebrities.
For me, however, Clarkson being suspended is not enough. The Sixth Circle of Hell would be a more fitting punishment.
I hope the BBC gets rid of the knobchunk nice and quickly and spend the money saved on making something at a similar intellectual level, such as In The Night Garden.
“Jeremy Clarkson has three daughters, and I hope they all go blind. Not one of them, in one eye – all of them, in all their eyes! Come on! It’s just a joke, like on Top Gear!” – Stewart Lee