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Clarkson, Cameron and Sheikh Hani Al-Siba'i: Nobody is bigger than television

Jeremy Clarkson isn't the only big dog currently being brought to heel by a newly assertive broadcaster

Friday 13 March 2015 01:00 GMT

Jeremy Clarkson with his Top Gear mates, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig (BBC)

"There's no one show or person that's bigger than the BBC, and that's made clear to anyone who works there." Ha ha! Yeah, good one, Danny Cohen. The director of BBC Television made this joke (presumably) in August last year, shortly after Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson besmirched his bosses' reputation for the umpteenth time by using racist language on camera. Then, for the umpteenth time, Clarkson kept his job, Top Gear continued and so too did the embarrassments, culminating in last week's 'fracas', reportedly over a lack of free food.

TV thrives on big, bold, argumentative personalties. They are credited with generating ratings and revenue and with turning unremarkable programmes into hits - no matter how many other, lesser-paid mortals may also have contributed their labour to the success. But what happens when big personalities grow so large they cast a dark shadow over TV as a whole? They block newer talent from rising to the fore, waste money and, if allowed, can even divert a broadcaster from the principles which were supposed to define it. Surely, at this point, it’s better to get rid, safe in the knowledge that short term costs will be redeemed by long-term integrity. In the case of Clarkson and the BBC, the 'get rid' moment arrived about three years ago. But better late than never.

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

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1/26Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"Short people. When you've finished using a car, put the f**king seat back, so humans can use it afterwards," he posted on Twitter. Offensively.

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"Honestly, the burka doesn’t work. I was in a cab in Piccadilly the other day when a woman in a full burka crossing the road in front of me tripped over the pavement, went head over heels and up it came, red G-string and stockings."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

Driving a Jaguar round a toilet in India: "This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots."

Getty

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"The only person who looked good in a 4-seated convertible was Adolf Hitler."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

As a Thai man walked over a bridge he had built during a Top Gear challenge: "That is a proud moment - but there’s a slope on it."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the Ferrari F430 Speciale: "it was a bit wrong ... that smiling front end ... it looked like a simpleton ... [it] should have been called the 430 Speciale needs."

Getty Images

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the Renault Clio V6 handling bends: "In typical French fashion it just gives up! A bit like the French did with the Germans."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"I'm thinking. If you had gone to the trouble of making a chemical bomb, why would you detonate it on a coach from Preston?"

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On public sector workers in 2011: “I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"I don't understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?"

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"The only reason the Arabs and Jews have managed to keep their nasty little war going for 50 years is because it never bloody rains there. If the post-war powers had put Israel in Manchester, there'd have been no bloodshed."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"If all the creatures on earth were the same size, it's said a lobster would have the smallest brain. But then someone invented Wayne Rooney."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the invention of the segway: "They're made in America, of course, so fat Yanks can go to the fridge without expending any energy."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"I’m sorry, but having an Aston Martin DB9 on the drive and not driving it is a bit like having Keira Knightley in your bed and sleeping on the couch. If you’ve got even half a scrotum it’s not going to happen."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On a caravaning holiday: “You aren’t allowed to have a party, you aren’t allowed to have music, you aren’t allowed to play ball games, you aren’t allowed to have a camp fire, you have to park within two feet of a post, you have to keep quiet, you have to be in bed by eleven. This is not a holiday, it’s a concentration camp!”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"Britain’s nuclear submarines have been deemed unsafe… probably because they don’t have wheel-chair access."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

“If we are being honest HIV is a pathetic virus, it can only live in the air for 6 seconds and it does what ebola does to you in 10 days in 10 years.”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the Lotus Elise: “This car is more fun than the entire french air force crashing into a firework factory.”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On actress Sarah Jessica Parker: “People think ‘oh she must be pretty’. She isn’t – she looks like a boiled horse."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On Liverpool: "People up there earn less, die more quickly, have fewer jobs and live in houses that are worth the square root of sod all."

Getty Images

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the BMW Z3: "And if you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning and think you are an onion, here’s your car."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the Ferrari 430 Scuderia: “It’s like God having really unusual sex… it should come with toilet roll.”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

"If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth."

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

On the N-word row: "I’ve been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked."

PA

Is Philip Schofield the most dangerous man on television?

Of course, Clarkson is a harmless teddy bear when compared to the most dangerous man in television, Philip Schofield. Yes, you read that right. As Ofcom investigates complaints about a 50 Shades of Grey-themed sex toys segment, which This Morning saw fit to air at 10.30am, Schofield has been boasting about all the other times he danced on the knife edge of decency.

"As far as I’m concerned, This Morning has always pushed the boundaries," he told the Radio Times. "The first time we did an examination to hopefully safeguard yourself against breast cancer, people were outraged, up in arms. This was shocking, shocking television." For those who rarely switch on a television during working hours, the biggest shock is that he’s right. Daytime TV is racy stuff.

Perhaps because it airs at a time when innocent children are presumed safe at school, This Morning regularly gets away with filth that would make a Soho madam blush. For every scandal - like that time when Schofield accidentally flashed a list of alleged sex offender names to camera - there are many more auto-cue innuendos, which - without fail - cause Schofield and co-presenter Holly Williams to dissolve into fits of giggles.

So while 'Bondage for Beginners' may have been a particular cringer, it was hardly unusual, and OfCom complainants should consider their good fortune - at least Richard Madeley wasn’t still presenting at the time.

CATCH UP

Nurse, BBCiPlayer

Many Radio 4 comedies lose something in their transition to television, but new four-part series Nurse is an exception. Paul Whitehouse's virtuoso performance as several different patients of one community psychiatric nurse is even better with prosthetics, while Esther Coles as nurse Liz remains the heart of the show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

Masterchef, BBCiPlayer

With Australian and Irish versions currently on air, MasterChef fans are never at a loss, but the original is still the best. When home cooks are put under pressure to experiment, there's always the possibility they'll serve up something truly disgusting. And Greg Wallace is the one who has to eat it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix

With so much top-notch drama on Netflix, it would be easy to overlook the comedy. Don't. Tina Fey's new sitcom is brilliant, as fans of her last one, 30 Rock, will easily believe. Ellie Kemper stars as a women who’s recently re-entered society after 15 years captive in an underground bunker.

http://www.netflix.com/

Stop Cutting Our Girls: A Comic Relief Special, BBCiPlayer

Get your laughs from tonight's Comic Relief extravaganza, but get your information from this grim, but necessary documentary presented by Fresh Meat actress Zawe Ashton. She does a great job of communicating with both UK activists and confused teens before setting of to Kenya to meet a "cutter". Harrowing stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

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