PROFILE JEREMY CLARKSON:With his lucrative new profit-sharing contract with the BBC, Top Gearpresenter Jeremy Clarkeson has become Britain's highest paid TV presenter. Where along the road does the empire-building stop for this motormouth extraordinaire?
IT'S BEEN a tough few years for people who like to say "it's political correctness gone mad". At work, you face a barrage of health and safety regulations; at play, you can't smoke indoors and you're supposed to "drink responsibly"; foodwise you're up against the disapproving glares of five-a-day, omega-3/probiotic harridans; in society at large you have to grapple with fuzzy notions such as "inclusivity", not to mention being constantly on guard against gender awareness and ethnic sensitivities transgressions.
If you do something as wantonly reckless as driving a car, you're demonised for destroying the planet. At times it must feel you're being nanny-stated back into a helpless foetal position and you daren't even express an opinion about your predicament lest you cause someone, somewhere offence.
Turn on your TV and nine times out of 10 someone is telling you why, where and how you're wrong about most everything you think and do - including what you wear and where you live. There is, though, a corner of televisionland that is forever politically incorrect - and gleefully mischievous about it.
BBC's Top Gearprogramme is watched by over 350 million viewers in 100 different countries. It is now, officially, the most illegally pirated TV show on the internet - well ahead of Desperate Housewives.
Nominally about cars and motoring, Top Gearhas now taken on an almost totemic status for viewers - the three fortysomething presenters display a blokeish irreverence towards all manner of contemporary strictures about "acceptable" behaviour and language.
For the show's star presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gearis, "a relief from the incredibly boring lives we have to lead these days. For the three of us it's like being teenagers again. On the show, smoking is compulsory and high visibility jackets are banned."
If any journalist and broadcaster in the world today doesn't need a high visibility jacket it's Jeremy Clarkson.
Apart from Top Gear, there are weekly columns in both the Sunand the Sunday Timesnewspapers. He's as ubiquitous as the speed cameras he hates so much, appearing on any amount of TV panel shows, while his books have taken up permanent residence in the best-selling lists.
Hundreds of thousands of people have signed an online petition to make him the next prime minister of Britain.
"Clarkson is as close to a god as any mere mortal can get," states the petition. "His straightforward no-nonsense attitude would make our country great once more."
Jeremy Clarkson as prime minister would be interesting. The job, though, needs to be put on hold as just last week Clarkson announced he was going to become an ambassador. Albeit an ambassador for all that he feels is right and good in this world.
Top Gearmakes a small fortune for BBC Worldwide, the commercial wing of the BBC. Up until now, Clarkson and his two co-presenters, Richard Hammond and the one that nobody knows the name of (it's James May) have been paid a standard presenting fee.
For the empire-building Clarkson - who long ago realised his contribution to the show's massive global success - he was basically being paid as a chauffeur. It is believed that he was in talks with ITV (who have deeper, advertising-revenue filled pockets) until the BBC agreed an unusual new contract for the presenter.
Clarkson will now receive a percentage of the profits that Top Gearcreates, rumoured to be as much as 49 per cent of the overall figures.
The BBC says "what percentage he actually gets and how it works needs to remain confidential". However, it was reported yesterday that negotiations with May and Hammond have stalled as they now seek pay rises in line with Clarkson's.
In his new ambassadorial role, Clarkson will not just continue to present the show but will also travel the world promoting Top Gearproducts such as books and DVDs and hosting Top Gearstadium shows. Clarkson's new profit-share contract is believed to be worth more than Jonathan Ross's current £18 million three-year deal with the BBC - and will make him Britain's highest-paid TV presenter.
With his poor man's Leo Sayer haircut, deadpan face and a pot-belly invariably flopping over a pair of ill-advised jeans, Clarkson makes an unlikely celebrity.
Born, 48 years ago, into a comfortably middle-class background, he went to an exclusive fee-paying school where the system of "fagging" still existed. Ever aware of maintaining his blokey image, he's always quick to point out that he was expelled from the school for "drinking and smoking".
After his expulsion, he went into the family business as a travelling salesman selling toy Paddington Bears before becoming an apprentice journalist on a regional English newspaper. He began writing about his great love - cars - and soon he was syndicating his motoring column to various UK publications.
For a while he ran a motoring journalism agency before he found himself sitting beside a BBC producer at a car show. Clarkson kept up a running commentary on proceedings and made the producer laugh so hard that he was instantly offered the presenting job on Top Gearin 1988.
At a time when people become famous despite the lack of any discernible talent, his editor at the Sunday Times, Nicholas Rufford, says he is a consummate professional: "He is an old-school journalist who learnt his craft the hard way. He delivers copy on time, word perfect and can produce stories very quickly."
In a profession where strength of opinion allied with a similar strength of humour is at a premium, Clarkson was effortlessly fluent and entertaining. He adopted the voice of an Everyman, portraying himself as just another regular bloke, with slightly old-fashioned and stereotypical views, who found himself adrift in a politically-correct media environment.
At a motor show a few years ago, he was reported as saying the people who worked on the (Asian) Hyundai stand had "eaten a spaniel for lunch" and those who worked on the BMW stand were "Nazis".
He has gone on to describe how the "boring" Germans were unhappy with him when he wrote that their cars "should be built with a sat nav that only goes to Poland". More recently, he referred to the Daihatsu Copen car as "a bit gay". The ensuing complaints that he is merely peddling racist, xenophobic, bigoted and homophobic sentiments are treated as grist to his liberal-baiting mill.
However, you can only repeat tired music hall jokes so many times and, moving with the times, Clarkson has found a new mother lode with concerns about the environment. "I care more about the colour of the gear knob on my Mercedes SLK than the amount of carbon dioxide it produces . . . I do have a disregard for the environment, I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best we can," he wrote recently as he positioned himself as a "climate change denier".
In a media world populated by so many liberal hand-wringers, Clarkson is lauded by his many admirers asa "voice of commonsense".
While other "why, oh why" merchants come across as peevish and mean-minded, Clarkson is raffishly sportive and has the almost unique ability of entertaining readers and viewers who would be at the opposite end of the political spectrum to him.
He may, though, be heading for a pitfall that is as old as some of his jokes. As evinced by his new BBC deal he knows his worth, but is he mistaking journalism for showbiz?
Clarkson is always the first to witheringly point out how certain media figures have created a melodramatic, almost pantomime version of themselves in the chase for TV ratings and a place in the celebrity pecking order. But when he begins his worldwide Top Gearlive tour later this year, he'll soon discover that the audiences are there not for Jeremy Clarkson the journalist, but Jeremy Clarkson the entertainer.
CV JEREMY CLARKESON
Occupation:Professional polemicist of print and tube - soon to become a stadium act
Likes:Cars, speed and annoying people - preferably all three at the same time
Dislikes:Speeding tickets, traffic police, a clean licence
Media savvy:Just as BBC Worldwide (which makes money for the corporation) announced his new deal, BBC Trust (which upholds values for the corporation) reprimanded him for being "grossly irresponsible" for drinking a gin and tonic while driving close to the North Pole. Double headlines all around
Next:Becomes prime minister, releases all prisoners on speeding charges and later declares war on the EU