And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson (31 page)

Then a Liberal Democrat MP called Tom Brake, who has the silliest teeth in politics, said he was going to table an early-day motion and drag me to London to watch him doing it. Now look. I don’t want to see anyone’s early-day motion, least of all a Liberal Democrat’s, which would be full of leaf mulch. And I especially don’t want to see it on a table.

Why can’t these people write me a letter saying, ‘I don’t agree with you’? Why do they have to pie me and make me stand around watching a Liberal with mad teeth doing his number twos? It’s beyond comprehension.

But last week the environmental protest about my way of life took an altogether more sinister turn when a Labour MP called Colin Challen made a speech in which he said he wanted me to be killed. No more pies. No more early-day motions.

Executed. Maybe he was joking, maybe he wasn’t.

Strangely, he’s on record as saying he doesn’t believe in capital punishment, so he doesn’t want Peter Sutcliffe dead. He doesn’t want Ian Huntley dead. And he thinks
Gary Glitter should evade the firing squad. But he does want to see me swinging from the rafters in Wormwood Scrubs. He wants to see the faces of my distraught children on the television news and laugh at my wife as they cut me down and feed my limp, lifeless body to the prison pigs.

Now, presumably before calling for my death he’d have done some research, in which case he’d have noted the way I use sheep to keep the grass down on my land rather than driving around in a lawnmower, which uses fuel and minces all the beasties that so amaze us in David Attenborough’s new programme.

What’s more, a man who charges the taxpayer £64,000 a year to pay for staff would surely have had the human resources to find out that this year I grew some totally organic, fertiliser-free barley. It didn’t go well. Come autumn, I had six acres of what looked like soggy grey drinking straws, which I sold for exactly £325 less than it cost to buy the seed and rent a combine harvester.

But no matter. I didn’t do this out of the goodness of my heart, and nor did I do it to save the world or the whale. I did it because barley attracts lots of interesting birds that I like to look at. Selfish, I know, but, ecologically speaking, I like to think I achieved a little bit more than Colin Challen, who stomps round the Yorkshire Dales in a hideous purple cagoule, dreaming up new and interesting people he’d like to kill.

So is he mad? Well, he can’t be a complete window-licker because he managed to convince 20,570 people in the last election that he should be a member of the governing party. But then again, he does have a beard, he is
called Colin, and he is a member of something called the Socialist Environment Resources Association.

This is the key. On the face of it, SERA sounds like a fairly benign organisation – it raises sponsorship, for instance, for people to host low-carbon-transport dinners. Mmmm. They sound like fun.

But nothing with the word ‘socialist’ in its name can ever be truly benign. You may remember the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for example, where people were sentenced to death for arguing with the leadership. That’s what Beardy is doing here. Like that fellow member of the face-hair owners’ club, Stalin, he wants me dead for disagreeing with him.

I love arguing. I love filling my dining room with social workers and foxhunters so everyone can roll up their sleeves and have a damn good row. That’s because I believe in freedom of speech.

Plainly, the honourable member for Morley & Roth-well does not. And nor does Tom Brake from the Liberal Democrats, and nor does that girl with the big bum who pushed a pie in my face. In fact, no one from the environmental bandwagon has even half an inkling about the concept of debate.

I do not believe that man is responsible for global warming. There are many eminent scientists who would agree. And I believe that western governments are in the process of spending billions of pounds trying to stem something over which we have no control. I believe that this money could be used to make the world a fairer, more peaceful place.

I would much rather bring clean drinking water to an
impoverished village in Sudan than bring a wind farm to the shores of Scotland. You might not agree, but surely you can see it is a reasonable argument.

Tom Brake can’t. That bird with the pie can’t. And certainly Colin Challen can’t.

Plainly, he doesn’t mind if all the Africans die of disease and hunger because, like all socialists, he wants to help the poor only about half as much as he wants to hurt the rich.

I respect that argument. I respect the people of Leeds who listened to it and voted him into office. And I’d love to chat to him about it. But that’s hard when you’ve got a face full of banana pie, you’re faced with a pile of Mr Brake’s veggie droppings and you’re dead.

Sunday 11 December 2005

For the past five years I’ve come into your world on a Sunday morning and moaned about pretty well everything. I’ve complained about the wings on an Airbus and the way foxes keep eating my chickens. I’ve whined about people who turn up late to parties and the stickers they put on spectacle lenses so you can’t see what you look like in the shop. I’ve looked under every conceivable stone and been grumpy about everything I’ve found.

Well, not today. As I write, the sky is a vivid blue and it’s so beautifully warm, all the leaves are still on the trees. In my house a big log fire is roaring and the Christmas decorations are shiny and bright.

My book is still at number one in the charts, my annual DVD is selling well, the children are healthy, my wife is happy and tonight I’m going to a dear old friend’s birthday party, which will be fun.

So, as a result of all this, I’m in something quite unusual. I’m in a good mood.

I looked at the huge explosion that took out half of Hertfordshire last week and didn’t think, ‘Oh no, what about the pollution and the effect on people with breathing difficulties.’ I just thought, ‘Wow. That’s fantastic.’

Normally, of course, I could have filled my little corner of the page with lots of grumpiness about why the police reacted by shutting all roads in the area; but hey, they are
paid to protect and serve. And they wouldn’t be fulfilling their remit if they let people drive near some smoke.

I can’t even get my knickers in much of a twist about the
Space Cadets
show on Channel 4, either. Good luck to all concerned is what I say.

Good luck, too, to David Cameron as he marches into the spotlight and announces that he’ll be pursuing a range of green policies with lots of sustainable, wholemeal growth. Why not? He’s not going to get elected if he comes out saying he’s going to bring back flogging and national service.

It’s the same story with Tony Blair. It must be hard running the country while trying not to laugh at your son’s new face-hair. I think he’s done a pretty good job these past few years. Certainly, I doubt if I could have done any better, chiefly because when I say I’m going to do something I usually do it. It can’t be easy saying every day you’re going to do something and then doing the exact opposite.

Usually I can whip up some ire about his wife, but not today. How would you like to go through life with that mouth? How long would it be before you were taking a big fat fee that left peanuts for a kids’ charity? How else can you be expected to pay for your new house?

Even the news on the state of the planet is cheery this week. It seems the magnetic north pole is moving away from Canada so fast it could be off the coast of Russia within 50 years. So, within our lifetime, the people of northern England will get regular views of the aurora borealis. Unless, of course, they’ve all been killed by bird flu in the meantime, which, to be honest, seems unlikely.

There’s more good news from the top of the world, too. Scientists have found that killer whales in the Arctic Ocean have overtaken polar bears to become the most contaminated creatures on earth. Analysis of their blubber has shown an extraordinarily high concentration of man-made chemicals, including pesticides, PCBs and flame retardants. This means they’ll never get a headache and they’ll never catch fire. And isn’t that a heart-warming tale in this festive season.

It’s nearly as cheery, in fact, as the conversation I had just last week with Britain’s leading expert on face transplants. Apparently it would be very easy to transplant a whole head, which means I could have mine sewn on to Kate Moss’s body, and how much fun would that be.

Obviously, it wouldn’t move about, so I wouldn’t be able to play with the more interesting parts, which is a bit of a shame, but it would keep me alive. Better still, it would even be possible to take the head off a diseased body and keep it for a while on your mantelpiece. Imagine that – being able to chat with a loved one’s head if there’s nothing on television.

You think I’m joking, don’t you? Well, I’m not. We live in an age when surgeons can remove a head and keep it alive. Doesn’t that make you feel proud and happy to be a human in the early part of the best century there’s ever been?

Of course, musically it’s not so good. The battle for the Christmas number one is being fought out by a boy band, the England cricket team and some chap who’s written a truly woeful song about a boy getting a ride in his dad’s JCB digger.

Van Halen it isn’t. But, since I don’t really listen to Radio 1, I don’t really care.

In fact, I’m so cheerful I would like to wish even the world’s most lunatic environmentalists a happy Christmas. I’d extend season’s greetings also to the Health and Safety Executive, cyclists, the woman who’s trying to write a biography about me, American politicians, Piers Morgan and even people who put the stickers on the lenses of spectacles in shops.

Not lawyers, though. You lot sit over the land like a pall of smoke, bringing doom and gloom to even the brightest, sunniest day. You lot can go fooey.

Sunday 18 December 2005