Engine Stall

Some people are effortlessly insufferable on television. That can be said for Jeremy Clarkson. I happen to quite like his articles in the newspapers because they bring a degree of humour and sophistication to what is basically saying "this car goes faster than that one but I like that one anyway because it's red and it has a Ferrari sign on the front". He's got an excellent flair for satire and biting humour, his vocabulary is inexhaustive and ultimately, he makes boring machines fun.

He is also part of the media - which has been campaiging steadfastedly ever since Henry T. Ford sold his first automobile - to make cars sexy. Let's face it; an engine is not cool. It's a complicated piece of machinery and understanding it, however a commendable achievement, is not going to get you laid. However, after a century of oil, deadly crashes and advertising, we now think - all of us - that driving a car over the allowed speed limit and therefore endangering children, senior citizens - everyone - is awesome. That's why Top Gear continues to linger on with its staple diet of drag races, recycled Stig-similes and short films consisting of Richard Hammond shouting exaggerations about a car that goes faster than last week's car.

The reason Clarkson is annoying on Top Gear is because he drops the clever jokes and the genuine expertise he demonstrates in his articles. He's a proper journalist and bantering with James Blunt about his ten Land Rovers should be beneath him. It is obnoxiously self-centered ("Let's discuss how many cars we have") and the oafs in the audience clearly worship him with the same kind of unswerving devotion that spurred the Church on to burn witches in the Middle Ages. And what's seriously foul-smelling is the impotent political rants he has. The odd joke in the Telegraph doesen't matter because the Telegraph is already on a right-wing slant and is steadily wading into Daily Mail territory. But the snide comments he makes while driving are just stupid and immature; yelling "HAHA I'm over thirty in a residential area" when the production team have obviously closed the road off. I bet Gordon was shaking his fists at that, you modern-day Robin Hood!

And when he blew up that speed camera in that advert of his - what a crusader against 'elf-n-safety he is! Exploding deactivated government property on a private racetrack! Rage Against The Machine eat your heart out, because with political firebrands like Jeremy, it's a mystery where all this apathy comes from.

Anyway, to conclude, I hope he goes for a country drive with Cameron in the back seat and crashes and dies and gets set on fire. And I hope David survives and sparks a speed camera-campaign in the Express and "Middle England" wherever the hell that may be (I assume it's some landlocked Saxon paradise where "indiginous" inhabitants can drink tea and scones and crush the proletariat with rolled-up copies of the BNP constitution) suffers a horrible famine.