And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson (16 page)

Permit me then to suggest something better than they’ve managed, something more exciting than anything you’ve ever done. Or even heard about.

Find a group of friends, preferably people you don’t like much, and catch the next flight to Los Angeles. Once there, hunt down the company that organises dog fights for paying customers, whether those customers have any flight experience or not.

You will each be strapped into a Marchetti trainer and taken by your co-pilot to 3,000 feet where he will open the throttles as wide as they’ll go and ask you to hunt down your friends.

Each plane has a laser on the nose and is coated in the same material you find in those laser-quest games. So, you get another chap in your sights, pull the trigger and, unless he can manoeuvre out of the way, which will involve pulling more Gs than you, he’s toast. His co-pilot releases smoke to show he’s hit.

And, as a side effect, you’ll come back more interested in the science of flight and the theory of aerodynamics than you ever thought possible.

Sunday 5 December 2004

I see that pretty soon parish councillor henchmen will be prowling round our villages at night, handing out £50,000 fixed-penalty notices to those whose lights are keeping people from getting to sleep.

Well, now; I live opposite a football pitch that, each evening, is illuminated by several starburst gigawatt lamps. They’re an eyesore, for sure, but since I understand that it’s jolly hard to play football in the dark, I have not complained. Instead, I’ve simply hung two pieces of material in front of the window. I like to call them ‘the curtains’.

I have tried, really I’ve tried, to understand why legislation is needed to prevent people from using lights at night, but then I’ve tried hard to understand why dogs aren’t allowed to kill foxes any more. And I don’t get that, either. Or why I can’t use my mobile phone when I’m stuck in a traffic jam.

Every single day there is a small piece in the papers that announces the introduction of a law banning something which you thought was harmless. And here’s the thing. You raise your eyebrows momentarily, and then you turn the page.

It’s only when you add up the number of new laws that have come along since His Tonyness grinned his way into No. 10 that you realise just how much of our freedom he’s tried to erode in the past seven years.

Last week Boris Johnson told us that you may not legally fix a broken windowpane in your own home unless you are a qualified broken-window mender, and that when the work is done you must get it inspected by a broken-window inspector from the local council. Furthermore, it is against the law to change or tamper with the electrical sockets in your own kitchen.

There’s so much more to come as well. Greyhound tracks will soon need new super-licences, you will not be allowed to tread on a stag beetle, you will not be able to have unprotected sex or a few drinks with your friends after work. Cheese will have to be marked with a government health warning and you will be prevented from telling jokes about homosexual men, lesbians, Muslims, Catholics, the Irish and foxes.

Gary Lineker will be allowed on television only after the watershed, in case children are enticed into his dangerous salt-and-vinegar world; you will not be allowed to get your dog to kill a rat – because it’s a wild animal – and you will be banned from giving your mum a headstone when she dies in case it falls over.

Naturally you will also be banned from smoking in public, owning a Bible, sending Christmas cards that feature the nativity, and smacking your children. Happily, you will be allowed to drive a car, but not at more than 20 mph, not if you’ve had a piece of sherry trifle, and certainly not if it has four-wheel drive.

All of the above will be covered by legislation; but, where this is not possible, Tony uses the Hoxton Thought Police instead. As a result I was told last week that I am
now ‘not allowed’ to talk about Siamese twins and must in future refer to them as ‘conjoined’.

Why? Down’s babies used to be called mongoloid because it was felt some of their facial characteristics made them look as if they were from Mongolia. And I can see why that might be upsetting. For both Mongolians and those with Down’s.

But the expression ‘Siamese twins’ is used because the first pair ever to reach the world’s consciousness – called Chang and Eng – happened to be from Siam. So who’s going to be upset? Siam doesn’t even exist any more. Are these idiots now saying I can’t refer to Dutch courage? And if so, who will stand up for the right of measles if I call them German?

To be honest, however, none of this interference is going to make any difference to my life. That’s why I’m not whingeing, because I shall continue to call people while driving, and tell them stories that Cherie Blair would find offensive.

Furthermore, I’ll carry on calling two people who share body parts Siamese twins.

I will eat as much cheese as I like and I will still give my dog a whole packet of prawn-cocktail-flavoured crisps whenever she rips a rat to pieces.

This evening I’m thinking of smacking the children. For fun. And then, when I go to bed tonight, after I’ve altered all the wiring in my kitchen and drunk two bottles of wine, I’ll leave the outside lights on. And dream about the glimpse of G-string I saw in the office last week.

In other words, in a single day I will break 14 laws and
seven social taboos that simply didn’t exist before Tony came along. And I shall do so with impunity because there’s no way in hell he can possibly enforce all his Big Ideas.

Sunday 12 December 2004

Last Thursday an 18-year-old Australian surfer boy was eaten by two great white sharks which, according to onlookers, tore his body in half and then spent a few minutes arguing over who’d get which bit.

As usual, various wildlife experts were interviewed, and they all said the sharks in question should be let off with a caution, partly because they’re protected and partly because such attacks are extremely rare.

But they’re not. In fact, not even a week had passed since another surfer had been eaten on exactly the same piece of coastline. Meanwhile, in California the surfing community has reported that shark attacks have tripled in recent years and it’s a similar story in South Africa.

So what’s going on? Well, some say the great white has developed a taste for humans because we’ve eaten all their usual prey – tuna and so on. Others argue that it’s because boards look like seals from underneath. Or it could be these shark attacks are simply God’s way of telling surfers to get a job.

But I think I’ve worked out exactly who’s to blame… and it’s the soppy sentimentality of the National Geographic Channel with its Disney-style ethos of ‘no animals were harmed in the making of this programme’.

When David Attenborough does a wildlife show on the television, we see nature in the raw. We see the little
thing’s big dewy eyes and its wobbly legs when it’s born. We see it finding a mate, and relaxing in the sun after a hearty meal. And then we see it being eaten by a lion.

Who can forget the horror of that poor little penguin in
The Blue Planet
? He’d gone off to find food for his wife and been attacked, in gory, close-up detail, by a leopard seal. Terribly wounded, he tried his hardest to make it home, but the journey was too long and the slope too steep. So he died, pitching, beak first, into the ice.

Now, had this been made by the Americans, Mr Penguin would have found lots of food, all of it organic, successfully swum past the waiting leopard seals and made it back to the rookery where he and Mrs Penguin would have opened a fair trade shop and lived happily ever after.

I watched a wildlife show the other night which had been infected completely with the American Way. It was all about the Andes, and guess what? None of the animals had any sex and none of them ever died. Not even the fish. The gannets dived into the water and came out again.

Pumas chased llamas pointlessly. And the foxes just hung around, looking cute.

This is why we now have a hunting ban: because we’re living in a world where foxes have vegetarian cubs that frolic around in the woods, playing non-competitive tag.

Certainly, I have never seen any footage, ever, of a fox breaking into a chicken run and killing the lot. And it’s why the world is full of surfer boys who scour the planet for decent waves, oblivious to the peril that lurks beneath the surface.

Today, great white sharks are always called ‘magnificent’, and now we have Peter Benchley, author of
Jaws
,
saying he wished he’d never written the book because it gave everyone a sense that the great white was ‘a bad guy’ when really it was ‘fragile’. One can only guess, of course, but I bet the 18-year-old who was pulled in half by sharks this week didn’t think, as those teeth sank into his thighs, that the shark was magnificent or fragile.

It’s the same story with the mosquito. But because it’s never been the subject of a soppy, tree-hugging, natural history show, even the biggest veg-head weird-beard is at liberty to run around his bedroom at night with a rolled-up newspaper and a can of bug zap, shouting: ‘I’ll get you, you little bastard.’

A great white is no different. It’s a dangerous, ugly, killing machine that takes a chunk out of you and lets you bleed to death before coming back and deciding that actually it doesn’t like human very much. It’s a 23-foot aquatic mozzie, an underwater monster with razor-wire teeth, and it should be treated as such.

We should therefore turn the tables round. Instead of letting the damn things cruise around eating us, we should start eating them. Of course, this would mean hunting them to extinction, which would cause all sorts of loonies to wave their arms around, saying that we were changing the world. To which we could reply: ‘Absolutely. We’re making it better. And then we shall start on the tigers.’

Sunday 19 December 2004

Obviously I know you should never buy your wife anything that needs a plug, but this has always presented a problem. Because I’ve always had some understanding of stuff that needed electricity to function, and had no clue about stuff that didn’t.

Scent, for example. Have you actually been into the perfume department of a shop recently? Not only do you have the traditional choice of about 10,000 from the well-known names such as Chanel and er… Charlie, all of which, to a smoker at least, are exactly the same, but now you have celebrity-endorsed products as well.

Does your wife want to smell like Beyoncé or Celine Dion?

Or would she like to spend the year strutting around with a whiff of Cliff Richard behind her ears?

Horrified that you might trip over the great smell of Kilroy – or Cuprinol, as it’s known in hardware stores – you make a beeline for the clothes department; but this is an even bigger mistake, because you’ll Buy the Wrong Thing. And, to make matters worse, you will Buy the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Size.

So, jewellery then. Well, no, because for reasons I’ve never fully understood jewellery shops never advertise their prices. Which means you need a basic grasp of the Stanislavski technique as you try to pretend the reason
you don’t want the necklace is because of the clasp, not because it costs £16,000.

Personalised luggage or stationery is fine, but this needs to be ordered in March.

And it’s much the same story with furniture. Plus, it’s hard to carry a tallboy home on the train.

Of course, the shop can deliver, but this involves filling out a form, and then another. And then some more. And then the information has to be typed on to a computer, and by the time that’s been done the daffodils are out. Why can’t they just write your address down on a scrap of paper and give it to the van driver?

At round about this point the modern gentleman will start to think about getting some candles. We all know that girls like to spend hours having baths in the semidarkness, and we cannot imagine what they might be doing in there. Well, we can, actually, which is why I always say no to candles.

I’m afraid I’m similarly selfish when it comes to music. My wife is forever buying CDs by bands I’ve never heard of and I know she wants the new Killers album, but if I were to buy it for her, she’d play it, and then I’d have to listen to it as well.

Books? Oh, come on. It seems a bit mean to spend only £7.99, especially as the sort of books my wife likes don’t even come with a plot.

This is why I didn’t even bother window-shopping for my wife this year. I just headed straight for the electrical department in Selfridges, where I knew I would feel safe and warm and comfortable.

Unfortunately, I must have blinked and missed some
kind of technological burp, because it was full of various brushed aluminium boxes that didn’t seem to do anything even remotely worthwhile.

In essence, there are three things you can do with all this modern technology. Listen to music. Take pictures. And communicate with other people while you’re out and about. But the combination of these three things has driven the world’s techno-nerds into a complete frenzy.

Take the much-talked-about iPod as a prime example. Even if my wife had 5,000 songs in her mysterious CD collection, and even if she had the time to copy them all on to the chip, what would be the point exactly? Why copy something you already have?

So we move on to the new breed of three-chip digital video cameras. Yes, the quality is vastly improved, but answer me a straight question. Have you ever watched anything you’ve ever shot on your Handycam? Thought not. So who cares if you can now zoom in on your husband’s nose hairs from six miles away?

And why would you want a phone that can download clips of movies from the internet? When have you ever been in a position that you’re on a moor and suddenly feel the need to watch three seconds of Tom Cruise dangling upside down?

I suppose it might be quite fun to video your genitals and send them to your lover. But if I did that to my wife, she’d think I’d gone mad.

Disappointed, I came out of the electrical department fearing that, while I wasn’t looking, the world had moved on. And that it was still moving on, towards Christmas,
and that I needed to get something. So I ended up buying my wife a dead rabbit.