The latest utterances from motor mouth Jeremy Clarkson have divided the nation. Which is just as it should be. He is just part of a long tradition of exaggerators-for-effect.


The biggest gob in Chipping Norton has found himself all over the papers again – such bad timing when he has new books and DVDs to shift for Christmas, but hey ho.

Opinion seems to be divided between:
1 This is an affront to hard working public servants everywhere, lets sue the bastard.
2 The bloke just tells it how it is, leave him alone. And
3 Stop giving him the oxygen of publicity.

Of course all three are absolutely right. And absolutely wrong. It just depends on your perspective – and Clarkson’s particular schtick of saying outrageous things (all of which have a grain of truth) is what makes his aforesaid books and DVDs fly off the shelf, and helps the BBC earn zillions from overseas sales.

In fact, lots of people WERE upset about the public sector strike. And while only the odd psychopath felt sufficiently miffed to load up and discharge a rifle, there must have been plenty of those (many fuelled by the more insidious antipathy blaring out of our most putrid of press) cursing the strikers or saying they’ve got a good deal, get back to work you idle bastards. So for them, his utterances simply took their sentiment to the stretched extreme.

But while I personally think that Clarkson is a bit of a smug bastard who probably looks in the mirror each morning (the one downstairs – not the one in his attic) and says: “Mmmm, not bad”, and who I really wouldn’t enjoy meeting, I will defend his right to exaggerate. Because (even if doesn’t realise it himself) he is carrying on something of a tradition.

Back in the pre-Twitter days when everyone with a view to promulgate would dash off a pamphlet at their local printers and pass them around their friends, Jonathan Swift generated a humdinger of one. In it he advocated that anyone in Ireland short of a decent lunch could always eat their children.

We know it’s satire now. Lots of people then didn’t get the joke. Many still don’t. If a similar situation arose today and a comedian or commentator suggested a similar solution he/she would be boiled in tar.

I’m not bracketing Clarkson with Swift, in that one was a mighty wit, writer and social commentator who raged against the hypocrises in his society, whereas the other is a bit of a jumped up twit. But both succeeded in bringing to the fore an important subject and getting people in pubs/coffee houses to discuss it. Even if they then disagree. And that has to be a ‘good thing’.