Jeremy Clarkson

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My castaway this week is a journalist and a television presenter. He's done for boys' toys what Pavarotti did for opera. His image is that of the likable lout. His penchant for fast cars and his conservative approach to dress, sex and race are tempered by wit and irony, with very engaging results. He was expelled from public school, got a job on a local newspaper, started writing for car magazines and graduated from that to become presenter of the BBC's Top Gear programme, which he transformed from an ordinary magazine programme into an icon of popular entertainment. He's done other television series too, and he writes columns in two national newspapers. Laughing is the most important thing, he says. You haven't got time to be stuck in traffic jams or to be sad. He is Jeremy Clarkson. But no matter how fast your car, Jeremy, if you're stuck in a traffic jam, which most of us are in Britain the whole time, what is the point of having a fast car? You can't move. You can't do 0 to 60 in two seconds.

Jeremy Clarkson1:22

Well, you can't when you're stuck in a traffic jam. You're absolutely right. But eventually the traffic jam will end.

Presenter1:27

But the what is the real point of having a car that can do whatever it is, 170 miles an hour? I mean, it just.

Jeremy Clarkson1:33

But more than that.

Presenter1:34

Really?

Jeremy Clarkson1:34

Mine does over two hundred.

Presenter1:35

But do you ever do it?

Jeremy Clarkson1:37

Um, no, it's difficult in this country. There's a place in southern Italy where it's physically possible to go that far.

Presenter1:42

So what is the point of having such a car? It's just image, isn't it?

Jeremy Clarkson1:44

It's just image, isn't it? No, well if I'm in a pub with some not that I go to pubs anymore, but if I were to be in a pub and somebody says my car goes 190, I'm a better person because mine goes 200.

Presenter1:55

Come on, answer me seriously. I mean, as we know on your programme you have this whole cool ball. What is cool, what is uncool. Is that what it is? It's all about what makes you look best, is it?

Jeremy Clarkson2:05

It's much the same as clothes. I think it's that some people are interested in clothes. I'm not, as you can probably tell. But the thing is, is that people go and they try on clothes which may be a little bit uncomfortable. I mean, I see some of these shoes which are now popular with women, very, very pointy toes and boots that come up over the knee and so on and so forth. And it must be jolly difficult in a mini skirt sitting down and not showing your knickers and all those sort of things. And yet, you wear them because it makes you feel different than you really are or happier in some way. And a car does the same for me. My car, I'm afraid to say, is always absolutely filthy dirty, full of Coke cans and so on and so forth, and old newspapers that I've read in traffic jams.

Jeremy Clarkson2:46

But it makes me feel very happy. And going back to that speed business

Jeremy Clarkson2:52

People say what's the point? But to get from the motorway to where I live, I'm always cutting it fine to get home before the children go to bed, which I always try and do if I'm going home.

Speaker 12:59

Uh

Speaker 32:59

Uh

Speaker 12:59

Yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson3:02

And if you get stuck behind someone who's doing 30 on that road, which often happens, somebody in a Beijing Iraq, you know, with ears that have grown out of all proportion to the size of their heads, bit of a scrape over, I'm in no rush, I'm simply waiting for the Grim Reaper to come, I'm going to do 30. I miss my children. Now, if I haven't got 500 brake horsepower, I can't get past. And I will miss them. That car means I can...

Presenter3:25

Yeah, but you risk the Grim Reaper, you might meet him.

Jeremy Clarkson3:27

Now you'd be surprised how fast it overtakes a slow-moving Rover 200, there's a my car.

Presenter3:32

Is your music, is th I mean, is this the stuff you would play in your motor car that you've chosen here, or is this desert island music? Which is it?

Jeremy Clarkson3:40

This is desert island music. Some of it I do play in the car, but it rarely I to be honest these days I only ever listen to the radio in the car.

Presenter3:47

We will judge whether your music is cool or not as you reveal it. One behind man. Tell me about the first one.

Jeremy Clarkson3:52

It won by

Jeremy Clarkson3:55

It's Billy Paul's version of Elton John's song, Your Song, which I think is a great song anyway when Elton John did it. I remember I think it was seventy one. I remember it coming up, I think that's a really nice song, even at eleven, I was old fashioned.

Jeremy Clarkson4:08

But Billy Paul, who is most famous for Me and Mrs Jones, which is another terrific song, he has this fantastic voice, and he's done an almost sort of gospel version of your song.

Jeremy Clarkson4:18

And it's a really happy thing to put on. It just I don't dance, but if I were to dance it's the kind of song that would cause me to go on a dance floor.

Speaker 34:27

With a dark

Speaker 34:29

The sweetest I've ever seen

Speaker 34:33

I'm watching the combat!

Speaker 34:35

Go back and tell everybody

Speaker 34:38

The Billy Bong got a song It may be a point by the temple but the

Speaker 34:46

That's how we've done things.

Speaker 34:49

I hope you're done tomorrow.

Presenter4:57

Billy Paul and your song, we're not going to have any classical music on your desert island then.

Jeremy Clarkson5:01

Now I I honestly thought about that long and hard. But the problem with classical music is it always seems to me to be the sort of stuff that makes people clap along at the Horse of the Ear Show that you just look and think, Oh, this is just terrible And then you occasionally get bits that are in adverts, but if you put that if I'd have chosen that I'm almost said that well you just heard that in the Pirelli advert.

Presenter5:03

Did you

Presenter5:19

You can't clap along to the duet from Pearl The Pearlfishers.

Jeremy Clarkson5:22

I like that actually.

Presenter5:23

Oh well.

Jeremy Clarkson5:24

I quite like that as a song, but it would come in at about a number 1648 in the best song ever written.

Presenter5:28

48.

Presenter5:29

Okay. So if you're looking for classical music, you can turn off now.

Jeremy Clarkson5:33

Yeah, sorry. And you know, I think that classical music, when when the Who came along, that was thank you, Beethoven, but we finished with you.

Presenter5:40

We will come to the Who. Let's come to you first. Bill back to Doncaster in the nineteen sixties, where you were born and you were brought up, and your mother has said you always had uh the gift of the gab.

Jeremy Clarkson5:50

She'd know.

Presenter5:52

You you inherited it from her, I dare say

Jeremy Clarkson5:55

She likes to chat.

Presenter5:56

Uh-huh. And she was a teacher, is that right?

Jeremy Clarkson5:59

She was a teacher and I think she's described herself actually as the world's worst teacher. She taught art.

Jeremy Clarkson6:07

latterly, um, and then started making little bits and bobs that my father, who was then a salesman, could could sell while going round the country, one of which was a a bear in a duffle coat with a hat and a pair of Wellingtons, which then became Paddington.

Presenter6:21

So it was her original idea at this point.

Jeremy Clarkson6:23

Well, it was, yeah. It was, she came out. Well, Michael Bond obviously wrote the books, but then

Jeremy Clarkson6:28

She went to see or my father actually went to see Michael Bond and Michael said, I really like this, let's do it.

Presenter6:33

So he licensed her, as it were.

Jeremy Clarkson6:35

So he licensed it and it became the sort of I think pretty much the dawn of character merchandising.

Presenter6:40

In your house.

Jeremy Clarkson6:41

Pretty much. Yeah, it was all in the house. It started out with three or four and then it became the dining room became the stuffing room, the kitchen became the sewing up room, the spare bedroom was where everything was kind of cut out. There was a cutting table and there were big cutting machines. My bedroom and my sister's bedroom were the storage rooms. We we were living in a factory.

Presenter6:59

So did the parents is that what they both did in the end? It was a sort of family cottage industry.

Jeremy Clarkson7:02

Yeah, dad gave up his family cottage industry. Absolutely, dad gave up his job and then there were some cow sheds at the at the bottom of a fold yard which they bought and converted into and then of course it outgrew that and it grew and grew and grew. Is it big yeah Paddington was very very big and in the late seventies really honestly you could hardly move for the best.

Presenter7:14

Very fair.

Presenter7:19

This was all, as I understand it, though, because they were desperate to send you away to boarding school. They wanted you to be privately educated and your sister, yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson7:27

They did. They really didn't want me going to the local state school in South Yorkshire, which w was rough. It was a rough school. Did you want to go there? I had no opinion. I didn't know.

Presenter7:32

Did you want to go there?

Jeremy Clarkson7:36

And I know that they put me down to go away to to Repton, or or a number of schools, with absolutely no idea how they were going to pay for that. I mean, just no idea. And then it was just a the sort of it was the start of my good fortune, which is which has followed me all the way through life.

Jeremy Clarkson7:54

Um that they just happened upon Paddington just as I was getting to thirteen. So I was able to go away and the school fees were were able to be paid.

Presenter8:04

Just uh one other thing, I haven't quite got the picture of of the household. I mean, was it sort of rumbustious and everything happening and get out of the way? Or was it a sort of quiet, neat, tidy, middle class? What was the atmosphere?

Jeremy Clarkson8:14

No, it was a very old farmhouse, four hundred years old. I couldn't stand up in it. Well, I could if I stood between the beams. I just couldn't move about very easily.

Presenter8:22

But the family was happy within

Jeremy Clarkson8:23

Oh, very much so. And the nice thing was, is everyone was at home all the time. I mean, my dad went off and well, he was selling them, but there was no need'cause the orders were rolling in anyway. So he was sort of going off and trying to

Presenter8:23

Oh very much.

Jeremy Clarkson8:36

Trying to keep everybody happy.

Presenter8:37

And he was also quite a cook, apparently, wasn't he, your dad?

Jeremy Clarkson8:39

Dad, yeah no, he became ill and then just decided that what he wanted to do was cook and he I've never seen anything like it. In terms of volume, he just cooked non-stop from six o'clock in the morning until going to bed at night. He cooked and when he ran out of people to cook for, he'd cook these incredibly elaborate cakes for the birds. He wouldn't just go out with seed and put it on the bird table, he'd actually make cake.

Presenter8:39

Uh

Presenter9:01

It's amazing.

Jeremy Clarkson9:01

Easing, really amazing to watch.

Presenter9:03

Have you inherited that bitch?

Jeremy Clarkson9:04

No, absolutely. We've got an auger at home, which may as well be an airy cupboard. I've simply no idea how it works. It gently warms things until Christmas and then it breaks.

Presenter9:14

Record number two.

Jeremy Clarkson9:15

The Who Behind Blue Eyes. This was, I'd love to say this was the first album I ever bought Who's Next? It wasn't actually, it was a but my first one was by Bankle Greenslade, but I'd like to try and forget that. It was the second album I ever bought, and it's still to this day the only album where I really like every single track on it. Who's Next? I mean not just mildly like, or I can tolerate, I love every single one of them. And it was really difficult trying to think which one would I take to the desert island with me. And I've decided it's this one.

Speaker 39:44

No one knows what it's like to be the Batman.

Speaker 39:51

To be the sad man.

Speaker 39:55

Behind blue eyes

Speaker 310:00

No one knows what it's like to be hated.

Speaker 310:07

To be paid in.

Speaker 310:10

Tell me only lying

Presenter10:13

The Who and Behind Blue Eyes from the album Who's Next. So you were sent away to school, Jeremy, to Repton in Derbyshire, aged thirteen, and you set about breaking every rule in the book. You just w do you just do it because suddenly you're a small fish in a big pond or what?

Speaker 110:21

Thank you.

Jeremy Clarkson10:31

I've tried to work that one out. I face close family. We all got along terribly well. Very happy.

Jeremy Clarkson10:38

And then suddenly I found that I could misbehave without the embarrassment of a parent finding out, a teacher finding out, who cares, really? I mean, who cares that the guy, you know, your English teacher knows that you've had a fag?

Jeremy Clarkson10:51

Not well, when I say had a fag, I'm talking about had a cigarette, obviously.

Jeremy Clarkson10:55

But what did you do worse than me?

Presenter10:56

But what did you do worse than I mean smoking behind the level, you know, but smoking was just

Jeremy Clarkson10:59

Oh, but smoking was just considered to be the absolute worst thing that you can I never really got it.

Presenter11:06

But you did do worse than that.

Jeremy Clarkson11:07

Yeah.

Presenter11:07

No.

Jeremy Clarkson11:07

Not really, no. I was I was absent a lot. My mother used to say she could tell how much trouble I was in by how far down the road I'd meet her at at a weekend or the beginning of a holiday. If it were just half a mile, she'd then drive me back to go and pick up my belongings and I'd only have half a mile to explain what it was I'd done and my side of the story before she was summoned to see the house or the headmaster. If it were, say, five, ten miles away, she knew I was in big trouble. And of course, as the years roll by, I was meeting her just outside the drive-in Donkerstyne, and it was seventy miles away. Here it is, mother, the headmaster wants to see you and

Jeremy Clarkson11:42

Now before you send this is what happened.

Presenter11:43

But after all that effort, you know, after all the Paddington Bear stuffing and the scrimping and saving to get you there, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sounding rather kind of adult about this, but did you never

Jeremy Clarkson11:48

Say

Jeremy Clarkson11:53

Well, I'm an adult now and I'm going to have to face it with my children. No, I mean sh they were so cross with me.

Presenter11:55

But now

Presenter11:58

Were they?

Jeremy Clarkson11:58

Yeah.

Presenter11:59

And were you I mean, presumably humiliated when you got expelled, or angry, or what?

Presenter12:05

G item.

Jeremy Clarkson12:06

It didn't register. Really? It just didn't register. I went home.

Jeremy Clarkson12:10

And I was walking down the village street at home and this chap came along and he was the general manager of the local newspaper.

Jeremy Clarkson12:15

The Dong Street New Post. So he said, What are you doing here? I thought you were at school. And I said, Well, you know, I've been thrown out. And he said, Oh, you've been thrown out of school. You've got to be a journalist. And that was the first time I'd thought about it. And so he.

Jeremy Clarkson12:25

Right, I'll go and do that.

Presenter12:26

So your parents never told you about the misery, the upset, the distress, the everything.

Jeremy Clarkson12:31

Yeah, they did. They did all that. But I knew something would come along. Something always comes along. Well, it does in my life, anyway.

Presenter12:37

Mm.

Jeremy Clarkson12:37

Something always turns up.

Presenter12:40

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Jeremy Clarkson12:42

Record number three, really simple one.

Jeremy Clarkson12:45

1976, just the hottest it was still hotter than the sum we've just had even, by a small degree.

Jeremy Clarkson12:53

And it was the first year when I started kind of going out. It was it was parties. I was going to parties. I was an independent free spirit. Girls were important. And this song by Bob Seeger is about starting out on that voyage.

Speaker 313:09

She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes.

Speaker 313:13

And points all our own setting way up high.

Speaker 313:21

Well confirmed and high.

Speaker 313:25

Our dance of Crone Fields When the Woods got heavy!

Speaker 313:29

Out in the back seat of my sixty Sheriff

Speaker 313:33

Working on mysteries without any clue.

Presenter13:37

Bob Seeger and Night Moves. So, um, you were told to go into journalism. How did you talk your way onto the Rotherham Advertiser, Jeremy?

Jeremy Clarkson13:45

Oh, that was easy.

Jeremy Clarkson13:47

I went for an interview

Jeremy Clarkson13:49

And the then editor.

Jeremy Clarkson13:52

who was called John Bedford. He

Jeremy Clarkson13:55

I'd written in my application letter that if I got the job, then I would be the third generation of um of my family to be associated with newspapers in Yorkshire.

Jeremy Clarkson14:05

Because my cousin had worked for the

Jeremy Clarkson14:07

Donster Evening Post, I suppose, or the South Yorkshire Times, one of the two. I parked the South Yorkshire Times, whatever. And then my grandfather had been, in a small way, had the the doctor on the Donkster Gazette.

Jeremy Clarkson14:17

So this chap said, was he called Dr. Ward? And I said, yeah, he said, he came out in an air raid during the Second World War to deliver my first child. He'd start on Monday.

Jeremy Clarkson14:27

Like I say, something always turns up.

Presenter14:28

You are blessed.

Jeremy Clarkson14:30

No, that was it. You get expelled from school and because your grandfather, forty years earlier, had got up in the middle of the night and delivered a child, I got a job in journalism.

Presenter14:38

One of the grisly tasks of new recruits on a newspaper is, of course, bringing people up, um relatives of the recently deceased, and having to be very sensitive, but get a quote. I can't imagine you were very good at that.

Jeremy Clarkson14:45

Eastern Happy.

Jeremy Clarkson14:50

The worst the worst I ever did on the advertiser was we had this little booth in the corner of the room and I went in there one day and the phone that I the person I was ringing rang and rang and rang until I forgot.

Jeremy Clarkson15:02

who it was I was ringing. And finally this this lady answered and said, Hello and I said

Jeremy Clarkson15:07

I can't remember who this is. So I said, I'm awfully sorry. My name's Jeremy Clarkson from the Worldhram Advertiser. Can you think of any reason at all why I might be phoning you up? She said, well.

Jeremy Clarkson15:16

Could it be that my husband died this morning?

Jeremy Clarkson15:18

That'd be it, yes. That'd be it. And he was who again?

Presenter15:22

No, I was. I was

Jeremy Clarkson15:22

No, I was I was a useless

Presenter15:24

Didn't you also get into trouble for laughing at inquests?

Jeremy Clarkson15:27

Oh, it was a never ending stream of being in trouble. I d honestly, I was rubbish. I really was properly rubbish at it. I was made to go to inquests with a senior reporter, and he be he became a very good friend, actually, and um

Jeremy Clarkson15:41

We just got hysterics once in an inquest and were thrown out and then summoned back again by the coroner who informed us that we were undoubtedly in contempt of court, which carries a limitless jail sentence.

Speaker 115:53

Does it?

Jeremy Clarkson15:53

Yeah, you can download whatever you like from the internet and only get 30 minutes in a cell. Laugh in an inquest, you'd be there for the rest of your life. Life in Scripture.

Speaker 316:01

What?

Presenter16:01

However, you were not. You moved on from the rather than

Jeremy Clarkson16:03

Well, I just all my friends were in London and they would say, God, you should have been with us last night. We went to a bar, we went to a club, we went to a casino, and we did this, and we did, and we ran into all these people, we went to Brighton, we came, and I thought,

Jeremy Clarkson16:14

I went home actually, and it was a moment. I had a girlfriend at the time, and I remember going home and actually saying to her one evening.

Jeremy Clarkson16:21

We've got some new um furniture in the office today.

Jeremy Clarkson16:25

And I knew at that moment I had to leave, because when the new office furniture becomes so important that you even mention it.

Jeremy Clarkson16:32

Pack your bags, get out, move two hundred miles away.

Presenter16:36

Record number four.

Jeremy Clarkson16:38

It's from Dark Side of the Moon, for which I apologise to everybody because I know it's such a cliché. But the thing is, is that the song Time.

Jeremy Clarkson16:45

Everybody should listen to the words of this, because it's about not wasting anything.

Speaker 316:51

Here is getting shorter and seem to find the time.

Speaker 316:57

Hands that neither come to hold or have the play of sign.

Speaker 317:05

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

Speaker 317:12

The time is gone, the song is over. I thought I'd something more to say.

Presenter17:21

Pink Floyd and Time from the Dark Side of the Moon. A song about wasting time. What was this you said? You don't like wasting time. I mean.

Jeremy Clarkson17:29

Do you know how long you've got if you live to be seventy? Six hundred thousand hours. And you're asleep for two hundred thousand of those.

Presenter17:35

But how different is this from the guy we've been hearing about so far, who just sort of mucked around and wasted not only his own time, everybody else's, but ran his parents' money?

Jeremy Clarkson17:40

Wasted.

Jeremy Clarkson17:42

They were very far out of their time, really, the Pink Floyd, because they can't have been more than in their early twenties when they wrote that. You know, that sort of kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown and suddenly ten years have got behind you, and no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. All of that is just.

Jeremy Clarkson17:59

I see people now in their late forties still messing around, Heathy.

Jeremy Clarkson18:04

You're wasting your f you've only got one.

Presenter18:08

Dot

Jeremy Clarkson18:08

Uh

Presenter18:08

In Gungjer

Jeremy Clarkson18:08

Yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson18:09

I suppose it was when I it was when I got busy.

Jeremy Clarkson18:14

I got busy probably ten years ago, and now my life is it's it's hysterical.

Presenter18:20

This is just called middle age.

Jeremy Clarkson18:22

I think people are starting to back off in their middle age. But even now it's not.

Presenter18:26

But what happened? Look, you missed ten years out there, didn't you? Because you know, you so you leave the rather remadiser age, whatever, twenty one, something like that, by my calculation, and then you've just leapt to sort of nineteen eighty nine when or nineteen ninety when you start making it.

Jeremy Clarkson18:34

Yeah.

Speaker 118:34

Yeah.

Speaker 318:35

Uh

Presenter18:40

What happened in between? I mean, was there at some point there, or did you just come to London and muck about in car?

Jeremy Clarkson18:45

I d I did a thing where I thought I'm going to have to I couldn't really work this notion of working for someone else. I was living in Fulham, which is south west London, which was very I mean, Thatcher

Jeremy Clarkson18:55

Heartland, and everybody had their own little business, doing up houses.

Jeremy Clarkson19:01

This, that I mean just a million different things, print shops and so on and so forth. And I thought, I've got to do I've got to have one of these little businesses, so I forced myself to have an idea a day, and then came up with this idea of writing about cars.

Jeremy Clarkson19:14

You'd write one piece about a car and then syndicate it to lots of local newspapers. So I figured that's fantastic. It's 20 minutes work a week.

Presenter19:23

But the drive was there. I want some more music, but I just want you to tell me quickly, how do you get then from running this sort of twenty minutes a week news agency in Fulham into television?

Jeremy Clarkson19:23

The drive

Jeremy Clarkson19:33

Because car firms run this ridiculous system whereby anyone who writes even so much as half a paragraph about a car, they will invite you to the launch of their next product, which is almost always in America or France or Germany, which is everywhere. And they fly you first class and put you up. And so I was on one of these things thinking, this is amazing. I'm staying at the Carlton in the south of France. And I bumped into the producer of Topgear, who was looking at the new car, and he said, come for a screen test.

Jeremy Clarkson20:03

Now now I'm doing desert island discs.

Presenter20:04

Come on, record number five.

Jeremy Clarkson20:06

Oh, Detroit. It's I'm not because of the cars actually, it's because of the city. I love Detroit and I love Motown. I love I love again, so you don't waste time listening to a Motown record. Poof, on, off, out, done, happy.

Speaker 320:20

I get to you before they do pray, I pray

Speaker 320:25

Light aside.

Speaker 320:27

So tweetly, tweet down

Speaker 320:31

Baby, does it

Presenter20:51

Get ready from the temptations. So Jeremy Clarkson, I should say, just in case anybody's not sure who I'm talking to here, Top Gear was um a pretty tame programme when you joined it. The programme that it is today is your right, isn't it? I mean, if cars could sue for libel, the BBC would be broke by now, wouldn't it? The manufacturers must ring you up and complain all the time.

Jeremy Clarkson21:06

Yeah, pretty much.

Jeremy Clarkson21:10

It's sort of stopped. The pro the problem with this whole car industry malarkey is though, is that you get these guys who are desperate to work, you know, young

Jeremy Clarkson21:19

journalists who are desperate to work with cars'cause they love cars and they get a job doing it and they're paid absolutely nothing, but they get a different car every week, Porsche, Bentley, Ferrari I mean sometimes in this in micro for sure, but always with a full tank of fuel delivered to your house, insured.

Jeremy Clarkson21:36

clean and when you when it's run out of petrol

Jeremy Clarkson21:39

Somebody comes and takes it away and another one arrives.

Presenter21:42

But now, I mean, why do they let these cars still come onto your program? Because I mean, you can be absolutely filthy about them, or you can call the manufacturers, you know, you're very racist about some BMW, you know, you go on about

Jeremy Clarkson21:53

No, it won't be raised.

Presenter21:54

You mentioned the war.

Jeremy Clarkson21:55

No, you can only be racist about people who have been persecuted. And I'm sorry, that doesn't include the Germans or the Americans.

Presenter22:02

Well the point being, why should anybody allow their product to come on your program because they risk being rubbish to hell?

Jeremy Clarkson22:09

There's always that hope that it's going to be okay. But I work on a very different principle. I just work on the it's either the best car in its class, in which case it's a very good car, or it isn't, in which case it's just not worth the metal it's made out of.

Presenter22:22

Mm. But of course your other critics accuse you of oh other another kind of criticism is sexism, isn't it?

Jeremy Clarkson22:29

Oh wool, does it?

Presenter22:30

Does it?

Presenter22:32

But if you have, you know, women with different sizes of breasts lined up in the studio to describe exactly what different makes, models of Porsches are, then, you know, you're asking for it really, aren't you?

Jeremy Clarkson22:41

Yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson22:43

Well, we could have done it with men.

Jeremy Clarkson22:45

With

Jeremy Clarkson22:47

We could have done it with men in the different size of part, but.

Jeremy Clarkson22:53

I just I find the the female breast a more attractive thing to look at than a gentleman.

Presenter22:58

But people say you know what they say cheap sexual metaphor.

Jeremy Clarkson23:02

Oh yeah, that was Muriel Gray. I've made a career out of cheap sexual metaphors, which is why when she said it and I thought I puffed and puffed and drew one and thought, actually, do you know, I do do that. And that was way back, so I've never done one since. It was it was around that time of, you know, snap knicker elastic at fifty paces. No, I'm not going to do any more of that.

Presenter23:18

You don't do that. Oh, so they've they've seen you off on that one, have you?

Jeremy Clarkson23:20

Yeah, no, I was I was became conscious of it. I became conscious of doing it. But it was many, many years ago. So kind of stopped.

Presenter23:26

So

Presenter23:27

Well, there are people out there on the internet who say the most terrible things about it.

Jeremy Clarkson23:31

Things are

Presenter23:32

Do mine?

Jeremy Clarkson23:34

I know they don't just say it on the Internet, people say it in shops.

Presenter23:36

Do you mind?

Jeremy Clarkson23:38

Of course you mind. You do mind.

Presenter23:40

I'm really glad you said that because people always say they don't mind, but you do, don't you?

Jeremy Clarkson23:43

You do mind, of course you do. In the wee small hours you do think, I wish I were a nicer person. I wish I could

Jeremy Clarkson23:51

Be nicer about people and things.

Jeremy Clarkson23:55

But then in the heat of the moment, a month later

Jeremy Clarkson23:58

when you've perhaps had too much coffee.

Jeremy Clarkson24:01

And you're in the studio and something crops up and you say something and everybody laughs and you feel great and go home and actually then you've s uh upset somebody else.

Presenter24:09

Okay.

Presenter24:10

Michael number six.

Jeremy Clarkson24:13

Record number six, it's all to do with one must never be in a bad mood, ever. And if you do find yourself slipping that way, go and dig out your old forty fives and put this on.

Speaker 324:24

There ain't no more, you've taken everything.

Speaker 324:31

My belief is

Speaker 324:33

Mother

Speaker 324:37

Can you ignore my faith in everything?

Speaker 324:44

Cause I know what big things and white kids work

Jeremy Clarkson24:53

Uh I'm going to go home and play that again.

Presenter24:53

My

Presenter24:54

Make you smile. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. So they're your own opinions, but also you, if we're to believe what your mother and your wife tell us about you, are, you know, a nice, industrious, hard-working, nice son, good father. If your fans presumably hear that you're too conservative with a small C and neat and tidy and industrious, they're kind of going to go off you, aren't they? Because they want you to be.

Jeremy Clarkson25:20

Yes, thank you.

Presenter25:24

A big boy.

Jeremy Clarkson25:26

What and have leopard skin sofas.

Presenter25:27

Yeah, they don't want you to have grown up. Exactly.

Jeremy Clarkson25:30

Okay.

Jeremy Clarkson25:32

Um, it's me. It always has been me. It I can't do I honestly can't do anything about it. I like reading Winnie the Pooh stories at bedtime to the children.

Presenter25:40

I hear all that and I understand it. Your mother has been quoted as saying that you do worry about that side of yourself being revealed because it might be a bit dangerous.

Jeremy Clarkson25:43

Yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson25:49

No, I think she does think that, but I don't I'm quite happy to come on and say, No, I am of I do like to kick I like to light a fire at night, sit back and watch her. A nice something on BBC4.

Presenter26:00

And financial security is incredibly important to you, yes?

Jeremy Clarkson26:05

Um

Jeremy Clarkson26:07

Not incredibly, but certainly I I would hate to think that there would be

Jeremy Clarkson26:12

That you wouldn't know where your next fiver's coming from. I don't want to do that. I was brought up in the North, you know, and all that. But th th you do see people, or I have seen people, who really haven't got anything, and you just think, God, I wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want

Speaker 326:14

Bye.

Jeremy Clarkson26:24

I certainly wouldn't want to be there having had some financial security. It isn't incredibly important.

Presenter26:27

No, it doesn't

Presenter26:29

But you know what I mean? I'm sure I get the impression anyway that you're your mother's son, you know, and she was the driving force, as we've heard, behind the Paddington Bear factory and so on. I mean, you would want.

Presenter26:38

to look after her.

Presenter26:40

In her old age, you would want to publicly educate your children, and you've got three of them?

Jeremy Clarkson26:41

You would want

Jeremy Clarkson26:47

Yeah, no, they're going to go away to school. That's inexpensive. If they want to.

Presenter26:48

Which is still expensive.

Presenter26:51

Yeah.

Jeremy Clarkson26:52

Yeah. I mean, if they if they're the right to go away to school, then they will go away to school. And if mother needs looking after in her old age, then they will.

Jeremy Clarkson26:59

Look after mother in old age. So those things are important, but then if you haven't got any money

Jeremy Clarkson27:05

Well, you can't, so I mean something'll turn up.

Presenter27:09

You keep saying this.

Jeremy Clarkson27:10

Well, something will something always turns up.

Speaker 127:10

Uh

Presenter27:13

Yeah, David Bowie's turning up now. Go on, why do you want this one?

Jeremy Clarkson27:17

You know, I found out the other day he used David Bowie shared a flat with Iggy Pop in Berlin, which must have been quite a place. Probably not much food in it. And it overlooked the Berlin Wall and he wrote this song, Heroes, about this young couple who met every day. And I really rather like that story. I just like the idea, you know, this sense of there's always hope from a relationship. Like, there's always hope. And I really like it, because that seems to me to be a lovely sentiment.

Speaker 327:48

Will keep us together.

Speaker 327:53

We could still die.

Speaker 327:57

Just for one day.

Speaker 328:01

You can be heroes.

Speaker 328:06

Elbron, Elba.

Speaker 328:09

What you say?

Presenter28:13

David Bowie and Heroes. Okay, Jamie, some desert island questions to end with. If you could take one car with you to a desert island, and if brim you mean, you've got nowhere to drive it and you've got no fuel, it's going to sit on the sand beside you and gently rot. What would you like to watch rot?

Jeremy Clarkson28:27

Um it would

Jeremy Clarkson28:29

To watch rot would be a vauxhall of some kind or some Toyota Corolla or some terrible box that would be.

Presenter28:34

No, no, do enjoy watching Rod.

Jeremy Clarkson28:36

Well, you would want to take it purely for its a aesthetics, and it would probably be something like a Lamborghini Miora or a Ford GT forty, something from the sixties.

Speaker 328:47

Please help me.

Jeremy Clarkson28:47

I think that's when we were at our zenith. E-type chag.

Jeremy Clarkson28:52

There were no computers, there were no wind tunnels, it was just and all carphones usually were run by one guy who would sit down and go.

Jeremy Clarkson29:00

I don't care what anyone thinks that is what I want it to look like. No focus group came along and said, Could you just make the indicator a bit bigger? It was that. Do that. And that was you always got one man's version of it. We'd be like Henry Moore saying, Well, let's go focus group instead. What do you think of this? Well, it should be fatter there and a bit narrower there and make the hole bigger.

Jeremy Clarkson29:17

It was him.

Presenter29:18

So your all-time car is?

Jeremy Clarkson29:20

All-time favourite car is is a is a very difficult. I mean, I've got like a Mercedes now, which I like very much, but it pfft f I'm hard to say. All-time favourite Ferrari F forty. There, said it.

Presenter29:31

Last record.

Jeremy Clarkson29:32

Last record, oh this was a tricky one. Um I wanted to have something like Genesis, but I knew everyone would laugh at me and say it was all prog rot and terribly seventies and I was old fashioned. So I sort of narrowed it down a bit, went for Peter Gabriel, Salisbury Hill.

Speaker 329:45

Climbing up on Salisbury Hill I could see the city light

Speaker 329:55

Wind was blowing, time stood still Eagle flew out of the night

Speaker 130:00

Flew out of the night

Speaker 330:03

Here is something to observe.

Speaker 130:03

He was something.

Speaker 330:07

Came in close, I heard a voice Standing, stretching every nerve

Presenter30:14

Peter Gabriel and Salisbury Hill from that first solo album of his. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Joey, which one would you take?

Jeremy Clarkson30:22

Um

Jeremy Clarkson30:24

Time, Pink Floyd.

Presenter30:26

Dark side of the middle of the middle.

Jeremy Clarkson30:26

Yeah, dark side of the moon. I'd take time.

Presenter30:29

Don't waste it even on a desert island.

Jeremy Clarkson30:31

I wouldn't. You you could come to my desert island, and I've turned it into Hong Kong.

Presenter30:35

What about your book?

Jeremy Clarkson30:37

Oh, that's been tricky. Um am I allowed to take my photograph albums? Or a photograph albums. I'll take that.

Presenter30:42

Yeah.

Presenter30:43

But

Presenter30:44

With the kids. With the family.

Jeremy Clarkson30:45

I've got a photograph album, it goes right back to about 75 to present day. I'd take that.

Presenter30:50

And your luxury.

Jeremy Clarkson30:52

Jetsky.

Presenter30:53

Oh, but of course. Why did I ask? Or or snowmobile or something.

Jeremy Clarkson30:57

Snowmobile would be of limited use, but a jet ski for bombing around.

Presenter31:01

No escaping.

Jeremy Clarkson31:02

No, you c well, you you wouldn't really have the range. I mean, they run out of petrol after five minutes, but you're just bombing about and m and having some enjoyment.'Cause you I like going fast and

Presenter31:11

Do you?

Jeremy Clarkson31:12

Yeah.

Presenter31:12

Oh, I didn't know that.

Jeremy Clarkson31:14

Bit of a secret, but I'll let it in right at the end.

Presenter31:16

Jeremy Clarkson, thank you very much indeed for letting us see your desert island disks.

Jeremy Clarkson31:18

Do you think you'd

Speaker 131:27

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.