The World According to Clarkson (6 page)

So, with no other guests to laugh at, we thought we’d have a giggle at the food. Good idea, but I couldn’t find it.

It turned out that there was a sliver of what looked like corned beef on my plate, but it was so thin that when you tapped it with a knife it made a clinking noise. I tried scooping it up with a fork, and then a spoon, but neither was successful, so in the end I gave up and just licked the plate. What did it taste like? Well, meat, I guess, with a porcelain afterglow.

Then the water came. There had been an enormous song and dance with the wine but this was just a dress rehearsal for the main event. The waiter unscrewed the cap as though defusing a nuclear bomb and for one glorious moment I thought he was going to ask me to sniff it.

But that would have been only mildly ridiculous. So instead, he poured a splash into the glass for me to taste. ‘No, really. Unless you got it out of Michael Winner’s bath, just pour away. It’ll be fine.’

Drinking at the Sandy Lane, though, is nothing compared to what happens when you need to expel it. In the lavatory you are offered a choice of bog roll – plain or embossed. And that is just so Wilmslow.

Before leaving we were given a ballot paper on which we were asked to vote for the evening’s ‘champion’, the waiter who’d impressed us most. The losers, presumably, are lobbed into the shark pool.

And then we got the bill, which was the funniest thing of all because, when translated into English, it came to £220. The lobster-salad starter, all on its own, had been £32, and for that I’d have expected the damn thing to get up and do a song and dance routine. Instead, it had
just sat there, being a dead crustacean. A bit like White Tuxedo Man’s wife.

I don’t care what you read over the coming weeks by hacks on freebies, the Sandy Lane is preposterous. If you were given all the money in the world and told to design the most stupid restaurant on the planet, you wouldn’t even get close. I mean, you wouldn’t think to put the waiters in pink trousers, would you? They have, though. And pink shirts.

But that said, it is a good thing. Every resort should have a place like this, a giant black hole that hoovers up precisely the sort of people that the rest of us want to avoid. Once you know they’re there, you can go somewhere else.

Sunday 29 April 2001

Following the success of last year’s anti-beefburger riot when protesters gave Winston Churchill an amusing Mohican haircut and planted cannabis seeds in Parliament Square I was rather looking forward to last week’s rematch. Obviously I was a little concerned that my car might be turned over and burnt, so I booked a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and spent the day hunting what Jack Straw had promised would be a festival of rubber bullets and Molotov cocktails.

Secretly, I was hoping for some water-cannon action. There is something really funny about the sight of an angry young woman being hosed into the gutter by a tank. If Jimmy Savile could be coaxed out of retirement, this would be top of my
Fix It
hit list: the chance to propel a vegetarian into the middle of next week.

I was also hoping that at some point I could sneak off and lob a brick through Pringle’s window on Regent Street. Just because.

But London was as quiet as the grave. All morning we cruised the streets and all we saw was a man in a kaftan posing for photographers at Marble Arch. And, like every other shop in town, Pringle had boarded-up windows.

Eventually we found the mob and I would like to
bet that if I gave you 2,000 guesses, you’d never guess where they were. What symbol of capitalism had drawn them to its portals: Nike Town, McDonald’s, the American Embassy? Nope. They were outside New Zealand House.

Except they weren’t. I counted 17 television crews, well over 100 reporters and photographers, 75 policemen and… 14 protesters.

Disappointed, I went for lunch at the lvy hoping that something would kick off in the afternoon. But it didn’t. I heard on the radio that Regent Street was closed and so, keen to see if Pringle was under attack, I hurried over there to find 2,000 policemen dressed up as navy seals surrounding two women who were so angry about something or other that they had decided to sit down in the middle of the road.

Unbelievable. The police had rented every van in Europe, there was a helicopter chewing fuel in the sky and why? Because two women were cross about men, or student loans, or East Timor or whatever it is that angers women at university these days.

So what’s the problem here? How come every other city in the world staged a pretty good riot and all we got was a brace of lesbians – and I quote from radio reports – ‘throwing paper at the police’?

To understand why the British are so hopeless at getting off their backsides, we need to go back to the summer of 1381 and the so-called Peasants’ Revolt. A mob, seeking equality for all, had sacked London. They had burnt the houses of the rich, beheaded anyone
dressed in velvet, opened prisons, drunk John of Gaunt’s wine and scattered financial records to the four winds. These guys were on a roll. The army had fled, the king, Richard II, was just fourteen years old and his bodyguards were so scared they had gone into hiding. Then the mayor of London compounded the problem by sticking his dagger into the neck of the protesters’ leader, Wat Tyler.

Now you would think, wouldn’t you, that this would inflame the situation somewhat. (If Ken Livingstone had stabbed one of the lesbians, the other would have become incandescent with rage.) But no. Ten days later, the rebels confronted the king who told them: ‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live.’ So they all went home.

How come? What was it that extinguished the fire in their bellies? Well, I have no proof of this because nobody was keeping meteorological records in the fourteenth century but I’d like to bet that it started to rain.

A lot of people with vast foreheads have, over the years, wondered why Britain has never had a successful uprising. Some say it’s because the monarchy was too powerful. Others argue that you can’t have a revolution if you have a strong and contented middle class.

Pah. I say it’s because of the drizzle. Last year’s May Day riot was a success because it was dry and quite warm. This one was a washout because it rained and we are brought up on a diet of party invitations that always say ‘If wet, in the village hall’. And you can’t change the
fabric of society from a venue that’s also used for parish council meetings and line dancing.

There is some evidence to back up this theory. The night of 11 April 1981 was dry and unseasonably warm. I know this because it was my twenty-first birthday. It was also the night of the Brixton riots. Then there was Toxteth and it wasn’t raining on the television coverage of that, either.

Aha, you might say, but what about the Russian Revolution? They also have rubbish weather so how did they get it together? Well, look at the dates. It began in early spring and it was all over by October. And when did the French storm the Bastille? It was 14 July.

Here’s a thought: the only reason why the Arabs and Jews have managed to keep their nasty little war going for 50 years is because it never bloody rains. If the post-war powers had put Israel in Manchester, there’d have been no bloodshed at all.

Sunday 6 May 2001

So, the other night, I was sitting around after dinner playing the board game of
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
with Hans and Eva Rausing.

At first, I was slightly bothered that they didn’t seem terribly interested in getting the questions right but then, of course, it struck me. As builders of the TetraPak fortune, becoming a millionaire means taking a significant step backwards.

It made me laugh. And then it made me think. Even if we leave billionaires out of the equation, who does want to be a millionaire these days? I mean, £1 million is just enough to ensure that you lose all your friends but not quite enough to buy anything worthwhile.

You see those poor souls with Chris Tarrant, shuffling up to the centre of the stage with their shirts not tucked in and their dreadful shoes, saying that, if they won the big prize, they’d buy an island and move there with Meg Ryan. No you wouldn’t.A million doesn’t even get you a decent flat in Manchester these days and, even if it did, you’re not going to pull Meg Ryan with it.

The simple facts of the matter are these. Fifty new millionaires are created in this country every day. When American Express launched its plutocratic black card, the initial print run of 10,000 was snapped up in days.

According to the Inland Revenue, more than 3,000 people earned more than £1 million last year, which means there are now 100,000 people across the country who have a million or more in liquid assets.

But if you include people whose houses or shares in companies are worth more than seven figures, then you arrive at an alarming conclusion. There are probably half a million millionaires in Britain.

So why, then, can you hear yourself think this morning? Why is the sky not full to overflowing with Learjets and helicopters? How come your dog is not cowering under the table in case someone tries to turn it into a coat? Why isn’t everyone married to Meg Ryan? Why does Pizza Express not offer a panda-ear and tiger-tail topping?

These days, to live what we still perceive to be a millionaire lifestyle, you need to have a damn sight more than £1 million.

How much more, though, that’s the question. Back in 1961 Viv Nicholson won £152,000 on the pools and promptly embarked on a pink and furry spending spree, commensurate with what in today’s money would be £3 million. And it lasted precisely fifteen years before she went broke.

A recent report said that, to live the super-rich lifestyle today, with a personal stylist to do your hair and a fast, convertible car to mess it up again, you actually need£5 million, but I’m not sure that this is going to keep you in pointy shoes and Prada.

I mean, Mr Blair is going to help himself to 40 percent,
leaving you with£3 million, which becomes£2.5 million once you’ve set aside a little something for school fees.

You then buy the big house in the country, and that leaves you with liquid assets of£1 million, which sounds great. But hang on a minute: you’re part of the so-called super-rich now, so you can forget about holidaying at CenterParcs. You’re going to be taking the family and the nanny, in the front of the aeroplane, to the Caribbean every year.

Lovely, but do that for twenty years at £50,000 a pop and you’ll get home one day to find a letter from the bank manager saying he is ‘disappointed to note that you have no money left’.

All you’ll have to show for your£5 million is a suntan, a terraced house and surly children who would rather have gone to the local comp.

I suspect that to live a boat-filled, choppery existence off Venice one minute and St Kitts the next, you actually need £10 million. But then, if you have this much, if your bank balance is bigger than your account number, you’re going to spend every night for the rest of your life at charity auctions being expected to stick your hand up and buy the big lot: the signed Frankie Dettori underpants.

Every day you’ll be approached by people who either need backing for their new publishing venture in Azerbaijan or an operation for their not-very-ill six-yearold niece.

Oh sure, other very rich people will ask you to come
and stay at their Tuscan villas but, when you get there, you’ll have to share a breakfast table with a man who runs guns for the Iranians, a woman with an Argentine accent who’s permanently bored and a gaggle of airheads who throw you in the pool.

You’ll ricochet from pillar to post, a one-man social-services department until, one day, your wife shacks up with the under-gardener and you end up alone in the Savoy, knowing that all the friends you used to have are sharing a bottle of Bulgarian plonk in a Chiswick pizza joint, laughing a lot and carefully splitting the bill afterwards.

I therefore have a new idea for a television game show. It’s called
Who Doesn’t Want to be a Millionaire Any More?
All the contestants are super-rich and the idea is to give away as much money as possible in the shortest time.

The trouble is, of course, that nobody would phone the hotline. They’d all be at home with their lovely wife Meg, admiring their signed Frankie pants.

Sunday 13 May 2001

At this time of year
Country Life
magazine swells as its property pages fill to overflowing with six-bedroom manor houses, each of which can be bought for the price of a stamp.

You may be tempted by the notion of a crunchy gravel drive and a selection of stone mushrooms, but before taking the plunge look carefully at the photograph of the ‘far-reaching view’. There’s nothing in it, is there? Just fields, foxes and a millstone grit outcrop on the far horizon.

It may appear to be pleasant and tranquil but it’s going to be a big problem when you’re looking for a restaurant. You see, fields do not eat out. Millstone grit outcrops are not to be found demanding a glass of Sauternes to wash down the pudding. Foxes don’t like cappuccino.

On Tuesday my wife and I were celebrating eight years of perfect wedded bliss and thought it would be fun to toast the moment with a simple but expensive dinner somewhere posh.

Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons is not too far away but frankly it may as well be on the moon because we’re not going again. Why? The last time we went it was hosting a convention for photocopying engineers who spoilt the
evening somewhat by making me pose for photographs with their cars.

No matter. There used to be a great restaurant in Oxford called the Lemon Tree, but now it has new owners who said that if we wished to smoke, we would have to sit in a special raised area. This sounded a bit like a naughty chair. So that was out.

The Petit Blanc was crossed off the list next because, oddly, it only allows smoking at weekends. Owner Ray White should be advised that people who smoke do so because they have to. It’s not like fishing. Tell someone they can’t go to the canal until Saturday and they’ll be fine, whereas smokers won’t. They’ll start eating your tablecloths, and if you object, you’ll be on the receiving end of what I now believe is known as ‘a Prescott’.