How can you turn four letters and three numbers into one giant diplomatic incident? Simple, really: get Jeremy Clarkson involved.
Like the parents of an unruly child waiting to hear from the headmaster what the brat has done now, the BBC must view Clarkson through its fingers, cringing, worried by what he’ll do, or whom he’ll offend, next. But, like those parents, the BBC will stand by its child because he’s loved and adored. Trouble he might be, but he also brings the corporation plenty of benefits.
Clarkson, though, is definitely neither loved nor adored in parts of Argentina, which became obvious this week when reports emerged that he and the rest of the Top Gear production team were set upon by a large, angry mob of locals and government officials. They were incensed not only by the crew’s presence while filming an edition of the programme (to be broadcast at the end of this year), but by the number plate attached to Clarkson’s car, an elderly Porsche 928 GT.
Conspiracy theorists can turn any bit of trivia into something preposterous and this they did with H982 FKL. The objectors claimed it referenced the 1982 Falklands War. Top Gear claimed it was the plate attached to the car when it was new, in 1992. It was all, in other words, an unfortunate coincidence.
"It all started to go wrong while we were filming on a mountain in the world's southernmost ski resort, just outside the city of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego," said Clarkson in his Sunday Times column this week. "We knew Ushuaia was the port from which the General Belgrano had sailed on its doomed voyage at the start of the Falklands War and we knew that anti-British feelings still run hard and deep, here at the bottom of the world."
As a result, he said, the team were on their best behaviour, posing for photographs and signing autographs. “Certainly, there was no suggestion that we had walked into the middle of a war we thought had ended 32 years ago.”
But a minor war was indeed brewing, and a mob arrived at the ski resort, angry that the team’s presence was an insult to Argentina and the war it had waged – and lost – with the United Kingdom over the “Malvinas” (the local name for the Falklands) in 1982. Escaping to their hotel didn’t work, as a gang was waiting for them when they arrived.
By this stage, it wasn’t even the number plate that was causing the problem as, days before, it had been removed after someone on Twitter pointed out that it could be deemed antagonistic to locals. “When we arrived in Tierra del Fuego, the car had no plate at all on the front and a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers on the back. And no, it wasn’t W3WON. Which it would have been if I’d been trying to ruffle feathers. The number plate, then, wasn’t the issue. But something was causing more and more people to arrive at the hotel. Twitter was rammed with messages from locals saying they wanted blood. One said they were going to barbecue us and eat the meat.”
Somehow, the presenters and some of the production team made it out of the country alive, while another 29 (who’d have thought it took that many?) were left to fend for themselves with some help from the British Embassy. Wherever they went on their escape route, people were lying in wait, throwing rocks, baying for blood. Clarkson, who has for years traded on upsetting people, looked to have finally bitten off more than even he could chew.
As the outspoken host of Top Gear, Clarkson has become known for his often acerbic, always un-PC criticisms of anything (not just cars) that gets on his nerves. And, while he occasionally tries to distance himself from the fires he stokes by claiming that even he doesn't agree with some of his remarks, his irreverent journalism, in print and on television, has made him by far the wealthiest motoring correspondent in history. Loved and loathed by the car industry in equal measure, his opinions are dissected by PR professionals and car enthusiasts alike, although he claims his personal likes and dislikes don't influence anyone at all.
He was born Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson on April 11, 1960, into a middle-class household in Yorkshire, England. His father, Edward, and his mother, Shirley, were both hard- working – he was a travelling salesman and she was a teacher – and together they ran a business that sold tea cosies. They enrolled their son at a private school but had no idea where the fees would come from. By the time Clarkson was 13, however, his mother crafted two stuffed Paddington Bear toys, for him and his sister.
The stroke of genius was that Mrs Clarkson made the bears with wellington boots on their feet, which meant they could be stood up. An iconic children’s toy was born, a company (Gabrielle Designs) was set up and the Clarkson family’s financial position was, from that point on, totally secure.
Their teenage son, however, was proving to be a handful and he was eventually expelled from Repton School. His first job, unsurprisingly, was in the family business, and Clarkson became, like his father, a travelling salesman. Selling stuffed bears obviously did little to fire his imagination, so he decided to train as a journalist with the Rotherham Advertiser, a small-town newspaper where he eventually began writing car reviews.
His material proved popular and interest began to come in from other parts of the country, leading him and another journalist to set up the Motoring Press Agency in 1984, which supplied regional newspapers with syndicated content. This, in turn, led to regular columns and features with national car magazines, with Clarkson making a name for himself in Performance Car in the late 1980s.
But it was Top Gear that really put him in the spotlight. He joined in 1988 when it was little more than a consumer programme in which cars were compared to each other with little thought for wider entertainment. Most critics would probably have agreed that Clarkson's on-screen persona was awkward at best. That all changed in 1995, with a six-minute review of the Vauxhall Vectra.
Clarkson claimed that if Vauxhall couldn’t be bothered to design and build an interesting car, then he felt no compulsion to bother reviewing it. Instead, he blathered on about the weather and whatever music was on the stereo, with precious little about the actual car (an extremely important one for the British car industry). The public were astonished; Vauxhall, understandably, went into meltdown; the tabloid press voiced their disgust; sales of the car were allegedly harmed – but Jeremy Clarkson became a household name. Never before had anyone made a review of a mundane automobile so divisive. Britain, it seemed, was ready for Clarkson’s approach to cars and presenting.
He stayed behind the Top Gear wheel for another five years, but in early 2000 Clarkson left the show and Top Gear didn't last much longer, the BBC axing it in 2001. A year later, Clarkson brought it back with the producer Andy Wilman and its format was markedly different. There was a studio audience, Clarkson was the main presenter but there was another presence on set: The Stig, a disguised racing-car driver used for testing each car on a track. The rebadged Top Gear was an instant hit and quickly found a worldwide audience via internet sites such as YouTube.
Clarkson had already tried his hand at chat shows, with the eponymous Clarkson. It lasted two years and 27 episodes between 1998 and 2000 and resulted in mainly forgettable television, although its host at least honed his presenting skills, emerging with a newfound confidence and a seemingly never-ending ability to offend people.
Under his stewardship, Top Gear has produced some jaw-dropping television. The team are regulars in the UAE, first coming here to film in 1996 when Mohammed bin Sulayem showed Clarkson around his substantial supercar collection and talked about car culture in the country. Then he took him for a blast in his Ferrari F50. Since then, some of Top Gear's best moments have been shot on our doorstep and this, in turn, has increased the worldwide audience's understanding and respect for a previously little-seen part of the world. As such its importance shouldn't be underestimated – nor should its value to the BBC.
The show is a major part of its brand identity and it rakes in massive amounts of money for the corporation. Last year, the BBC's online streaming site hit a record three billion viewing requests. The most-asked-for show by far was Top Gear.
While its main presenter is on his “final warning”, according to a BBC grown weary of perpetually fighting Top Gear’s fires, it does appear that this latest incident is a huge case of misunderstanding compounded by decades-long resentment. Clarkson, though, cannot complain too loudly about being misunderstood. Controversy, after all, is what he is known for.
khackett@thenational.ae
