Clarkson's Way

    
                                                 Another light has gone out

It was pretty much an open and shut case from the start. 

After a day’s shooting at the BBC studios at Dunsfold, Surrey, Clarkson and his two Top Gear cronies arrogantly left their helicopter waiting while they sunk a few pints at a local pub. 

Then two hours later at 10pm the boozed up trio turn up at their hotel and Jeremy Clarkson goes into a spoilt-child rant at his producer, Oisin Tymon, because he couldn’t have a hot meal. 

During the tirade he uses some dreadfully crude and racist language against his timid target who he holds responsible for the absence of the £21.99 steak dinner from the hotel’s menu. 

Clarkson also darkly promises to have Tymon fired. At one point Clarkson even turns violent and punches the hapless man leaving him with a split lip and dizziness.

What else could the BBC do but fire this arrogant prat? It is really irrelevant that Clarkson is popular and extremely profitable for the corporation. In such a brazen case the BBC really must be seen to act. In fact it casts the BBC in a very good light in that it is seen to side with the bullied little guy against the big star.

As the BBC’s director general had it:

'For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.”

Is there any other way of looking at it?

Well, how about this.

In what the director general called “a heavy schedule” of shooting, Clarkson and his co-presenters take a well earned break in a pub after another long day’s filming. A couple of hours later they arrive at their luxury hotel at around 10pm. Unbelievably,  there is no hot food available.

If you think I'm going too far with my "unbelievably", consider this.

Jeremy Clarkson is not only the BBC’s biggest star, he fronts the most successful TV show on the planet. Top Gear is watched in by 350 million people in 170 countries. The Top Gear magazine circulation of 1.7 million even puts many national newspapers to shame.

So Jeremy Clarkson, the biggest TV star on the planet comes back to his hotel and the BBC can’t even come up with the £21.99 steak dinner from the menu. The talent is unhappy, and quite frankly he’s got every right to be. Despite the democratic pieties our media and governmental elites endlessly drone on about, get this. We are not equal. If you are largely responsible for a fantastically important show, with hundreds of millions of viewers, generating £67 million in revenue, and have created hundreds of well paid professional jobs you really do deserve more consideration than the cleaner or cameraman. At the very least after yet another gruelling day doing all that job creating, wealth creating, entertaining stuff you merit at least the consideration of a hot meal.

What you don’t expect to get is a supercilious smirk and be told that the chef has gone home. Okay, I added that bit about the supercilious smirk. It just seemed a likely accompaniment to the incredibly shoddy treatment doled out to the BBC’s biggest star. Scrub that. The BBC’s only star.

Then to the question of the producer’s guilt in the affair. As Clarkson himself concedes Tymon was entirely blameless. But the BBC is not. If it wasn’t the producer’s job to ensure a hot meal was available for the team on their return then it sure as hell should have been somebody’s. Is there a manpower shortage at the BBC? Was it just impossible to find somebody to act as personal assistant to Clarkson? And if that person was busy what about employing 5 or even 10 people to keep the talent happy?

After all the BBC has now lost a revenue stream of £67 million a year because it couldn’t be bothered to employ somebody who would have come up with that paltry £21.99 steak dinner that Clarkson wanted.

But then you might say that that is all by the by. The main reason that Clarkson had to be fired was the assault on Tymon and the crude and racist language he used.

The racist language allegedly included calling Tymon a “lazy Irish cunt”. This is  doubly damning for Clarkson, of course, because in the field of geographical invective he has a form sheet as long as the service history of an Austin Maxi. In the context of Clarkson’s record of insulting poor benighted foreigners from Berlin to Bombay, the BBC simply couldn’t ignore this latest example. You see he’s offended so many millions ... he's offended so many millions that Top Gear is the most popular TV program all around the world from Berlin to Bombay. 

Hmmm. Something wrong there.

But then as Patrick West puts it in an excellent piece in Spiked:

Yet it is paradoxical, ironic even, that a TV presenter charged with today’s most grievous transgression – racism – has been responsible for creating a show that has an appeal that transcends borders, race and national divisions. Clarkson helped to turn Top Gear into the world’s most successful non-fiction TV programme: in 2013, Guinness World Records proclaimed it the most widely watched factual TV show on Earth.

The BBC must be confused and not a little miffed. In the area of reaching out to the world they try so hard. Thousands of the BBC’s intense, caring journalists fan out around the world hugging and blubbering over every ethnic they can catch in their camera lens and the world switches over to Al Jazeera in droves. It’s entertainers burn the midnight oil to find some new way to express their hatred and disgust with being white and British and yet the world is unmoved. Then this ignorant, old-fashioned, offensive, and unashamedly British oik mocks  everybody unmercifully, including the English, and those cuddly little brown people can’t get enough of him. 

I guess it must be yet another example of the need to raise awareness. Better try that than think about the implications too deeply. If the BBC looked into the psychology of this it would blow their tiny liberal minds.

In short most the complaints about Clarkson’s racism are from the fake offended who are just exploiting the political possibilities and the rest are ridiculously thin-skinned people with a chip on their shoulder. The truth, as Clarkson’s hundreds of millions of fans obviously appreciate, is that the Top Gear presenter is just joking when he takes the piss out of national stereotypes. Clarkson is no racist, which is more than can be said of his legion critics who spend every waking hour obsessing over racial categories with more attention than South Africa’s apartheid regime ever did.  

Ah, but what about the vicious 30 second assault that left Tymon with a split lip? On that point consider the two following personnel management methods.

The BBC Way:

Some dreadful little man annoys a big cheese at the BBC.

“Sorry Anthony, er, Mr F, F, Ffrench, sir.”

“That’s okay, Wallid. No harm done. And remember, call me Tony.”

Later that day.

“I want that snivelling idiot sacked a.s.a.p., Rebecca. I tell you I won’t dine till I’ve seen his P-45!”

“Yes, Anthony, er, Mr F, F, Ffrench, sir.”

“I told you before, Rebecca. Call me Tony.”

The Clarkson Way:

Clarkson gets back tired and very, very hungry only to have his producer Oisin brightly inform him that the chef’s gone home, but:

“I saved you a couple of slices of ham and a bowl of soup, Jeremy”

“You lazy Irish cunt! Take that (whack).”

Next day.

“Sorry Oisin. I was a bit of a prat yesterday. Obviously I didn’t mean what I said about firing you. Friends?”

Speaking as a lazy Irish cunt, I say give me the Clarkson treatment every time.