CCould Jeremy Clarkson become Prime Minister? I hasten to add that this is purely hypothetical, rather than wishful, thinking. But also not entirely fanciful given these febrile times. I know that Britain’s Got Talent is not exactly a reliable barometer of public opinion, but Clarkson’s own choir, sponsored by Clarkson’s own lager brand, captured the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Britons on Sunday to win first prize in ITV’s talent show. Coming in the week that Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon documentary with a global audience of millions, begins its fifth series, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether there is a limit to this man’s domination of our culture.
I can’t help feeling that if he stood in the Makerfield by-election, he’d be the odds-on favourite to win. After all, his roots are in the industrial north, his populist, tell-it-how-it-is rhetoric would appeal to Labour and Reform supporters alike, and, what’s more, he’s got the secret ingredient that is a certain vote-winner: the pull of celebrity.
The truth is that, for all his practised iconoclasm, Clarkson, whom I consider a friend, attracts a broad coalition. I know that there are a great number of people for whom his views (and indeed personality) are abhorrent, but in many ways, he is the perfect embodiment of an age in which people appear to have lost their faith in established structures and feel that no one speaks for them. Clarkson stands in the public arena on a ticket of no-nonsense authenticity, a defiance of authority and on a belief that the world is basically run by idiots.
