Say what you like about Jeremy Clarkson, he knows his audience and he knows his brand. Today’s Sun column does more than just flirt with self-parody as he takes aim at cyclists.
London’s Boris Bikes are his main concern. He questions the worth of last year’s 10.3 million hires on the basis that “eagle-eyed researchers have discovered that nine of the ten most popular trips on the bikes in the past five years were around Hyde Park.”
His position therefore is that “the bikes are mainly being used by tourists who just want to pootle around looking at Mrs Queen’s swans.”
But then he broadens things out, asserting that “the only people who use bikes instead of cars are lunatics who are waging some kind of idiotic war with anyone normal.”
Odd, considering that Clarkson himself was out on his bike one day after being fired by the BBC.
He goes on to describe last week’s video of a truck driver losing it with a bunch of cyclists – one of whom had been hit after going straight on from a left-turn lane – and presents it as if it were a typical example of the kind of thing being targeted by West Midlands Police’s close-pass operation.
He describes the case of Dean Littleford, the truck driver who was baffled to become the operation’s first court conviction, and takes issue with the recommendation that drivers allow 1.5m when passing cyclists.
“So let’s just work that out,” he writes. “The bike needs to be two feet from the kerb to be safe. It is a foot wide and it needs five feet of clearance. That’s eight feet for a bicycle, which on most normal British roads leaves two feet for the car or truck to get past safely.”
You’d think after all his years of driving, Clarkson would have discovered that those broken white lines down the middle of the road aren’t actually impenetrable.
Or perhaps he’s just adopting an exaggerated and confrontational position purely for his column.
It’s worth remembering that the presenter has previously spoken effusively about the cycling-centric nature of Copenhagen and said that he would move there “in a heartbeat”.
Perhaps his position is best summed up by his assertion that in Britain “cycling is a political statement” whereas in Copenhagen “it’s just a pleasant way of getting about.”
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48 comments
Love him! He is the consumate idiot when he wants to be and has made a very good living out of being outragous for the sake of it. And now let us not forget who he is writing for - The Sun. Need I say more
Ban Jeremy Clarkson
Is that to the tune of Seven Nation Army?
Baaan Je-re-my Claark-son
Baaan Je-re-my Claark-son
...
It's his followers I can't stand.
You lost me as soon as The Sun was mentioned.
Thing is, Jezza is right about a lot of it. As we know, there are thousands of cyclinsts in London who ride like complete assholes. So we shouldn't be surprised if there are people who dislike us because of it. And it is a political statement in a huge way here, in a way it's not in many other places. I don't know much about Copenhagen, but I lived in Bruge for a while, and cycling is a complete non-event. Virtually veryone does it as a way to get around, and many additionally as sport/exercise. And poor/anti social cycling is cubject to the same lack of tolleration and poor/anti social everything else. Talking about it is regarded as about as interesting as discussing the latest addition to one's toothpast top collection.
I was reminded of this thread on todays ride when white van man passed me with cm's to spare ( then turn off).
So it may not be real and just a front to sell clicks but thats not how its taken by the empty heads who read the nonsense.
Fair enough Brooksby, sorry you got caught in the backwash of my rant.
It was late, and you had to mention Katie Hopkins...
No problem
In the interests of accuracy can you please change the head line to read:
"Cyclists are.... - Jeremy Clarkson's ghostwriter"
It occurs to me that a hundred years ago, newspapers would have been commenting that people buying automobiles were waging a war on normality. Just saying... "Normality" appears to be "whatever the majority of people do".
Seems to be some truth in that. But 'normality' can always be changed if you have enough power.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/
Infuriating stuff to read but the optimist in me says maybe it's better we have idiotic pieces like this for the penis-size issue drivers out there to vent, rather than them take their pent up aggression out on a real life unsuspecting cyclist.
What would Matt LeBlanc say?
I've tried so hard not to post a comment on here... Look: Clarkson is paid a lot of money to express and to create outrage on a given subject , with the sole aim of creating clicks and making money. He doesn't need to actually believe what he's writing, and I doubt anyone (even he, by now) knows what his real opinion is. Like Katie Hopkins in dad jeans.
All well and good if he bashes it out on his Amstrad in the privacy of his smelly bedsit, and then tears it up and cries himself to sleep because nobody is listening, but he (and Katie Hopkins et al) know full well that thousands of impressionable people do read them and then let those nasty ramblings inform their opinions and actions.
Next time some entitled fucker close passes you, or throws a Coke bottle of piss at you, or beeps their horn aggressively at you just for having the temerity to check over your shoulder at the traffic lights (other car based acts of intimidation are available..), ask yourself ; where does all this aggression come from and who is perpetuating it?
Jeremy and Katie might just be making an honest living, but I manage to house and feed a family without being an utter c..t. Why can't they?
Now let's not go too far: I didn't say it was an *honest* living. And I don't disagree with your other points either. I wasn't defending him, just trying to explain him.
Obligatory link to Stewart Lee on Top Gear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CnMQ4L9Pc
But yes, his outrageous polically incorrect opinions that he has every week to a deadline ...
I remember yet another Top Gear episode whose goal was to determine once for all which car was the best. All time.
Two finalists were Ford Transit and a typical Japanese Honda bike because both contributed to let people just get the stuff to one's door. In other words, the best car is the one you don't have.
Clarkson. LOL. It's just noise.
I'm a petrol head like JC, I'm also a motorcyclist and a cycling enthusiast, I love anything with wheels. JC is just a whiffy leftover from an age long gone, and well, he's a big nobhead too. Nothing he says can be taken with any credibility or seriously.
“So let’s just work that out,” he writes. “The bike needs to be two feet from the kerb to be safe. It is a foot wide and it needs five feet of clearance. That’s eight feet for a bicycle, which on most normal British roads leaves two feet for the car or truck to get past safely.”
Isn't that the point? You can't squeeze past a person on a bike; you have to overtake using the other lane. As a car or truck is wider than 2 foot.
There are two possibilities: either the Sun have threatened to drop him unless he gets more clicks, or he's got a new book coming out.
Either way, he's an arrogant, pathetic producer puncher.
I think he's funny. I don't agree with him, but he does make me laugh. As Stewart Lee says, he holds his views weekly, in the Sun, for money. That millions of people are unable to see that and follow the cult-of-Clarkson says more about them than him.
He's brilliant, love him to bits. The simple answer to all those who don't like him, don't watch or read about him because regardless of your views on him he ain't going to change.
Into his fifties, career on the wane, pulling power diminishing in proportion to his weight; I'd be looking for cheap shots too.
Another public-school-educated member of the 1% who claims to speak for the "normal" silent majority despite not having had to work a nine-to-five job for decades, if ever. People like him and Nigel Farage represent everything that is sick and wrong in the British psyche. And yet, like Toad of Toad Hall, people love them. Ha ha ha, he said something rude about a group to which I don't belong, making me feel a bigger man by comparison, give him a knighthood. Pathetic.
Well said!
I actually enjoy his brand of humour. The only problem is when people mistake his rhetoric for sincerety.
Well exactly. The guy was trolling for decades before trolling even became 'a thing', he knows exactly what buttons he's pressing.
The rules of satire make for great fun - take Alf Garnett for example. All the 'clever' people who get that the joke is on him as he's a bigot, are happy. All the people who take it as they see are happy as their bigot views are confirmed by someone else. EVERYONE'S A WINNER! Clarkson is a master of the game and a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE.
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