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Jeremy Clarkson on Have I Got News For You: The best jibes and jokes

The former Top Gear presenter was the target of some sharp jibes by Richard Osman, who became a favourite on Twitter

Saturday 03 October 2015 10:11 BST

(BBC)

Jeremy Clarkson was never going to have an easy ride on Have I Got News For You but the panel seemed to take particular delight in ripping the former Top Gear presenter to shreds last night.

It was the first time he had appeared on the comedy show since the “fracas” with producer Oisin Tymon that caused his departure from the BBC earlier this year.

Clarkson was forced to pull out of the last series as the furore continued, and it was still the butt of many a joke as he hosted the opening episode of HIGNFY’s 50th series.

Richard Osman and Paul Merton (right) as Jeremy Clarkson hosted Have I Got News For You (BBC)

But under a stream of jibes by Ian Hislop, Paul Merton, Richard Osman and journalist Camilla Long, he managed to roll with the punches.

Asked if he had any regrets about the now infamous row over a steak dinner, he replied: “Yeah – apart from the pay rise.”

Clarkson will be starring in a new motoring programme on Amazon Prime with his former Top Gear co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond.

Minutes into HIGNFY, Osman jibed: “Are you sure it's Amazon Prime and not Amazon past-their-prime?”

Clarkson did not reply to the barb, which was one of many from Osman, who quickly became a favourite among viewers from Twitter.

In a segment about the beleaguered car maker Volkswagen, he made a sly reference to Clarkson's Top Gear successor, saying: “I think it's one of those questions you need an expert on cars to deal with ... Jeremy, have you got Chris Evans' phone number?”

Clarkson replied: “I am not allowed on the BBC to use the C-word. Cars.”

But after a lengthy discussion on motoring, he said: “What are they going to do, f****** sack me? I've just thought of that - they can't, can they? It's quite good fun.”

And when Osman aimed another barb at Clarkson, Long jumped in urging: “Go on Jeremy, punch him!”

“You remember how to punch, right?” Osman replied, starting Merton mimicking a fight scene that had the audience in stitches.

Ian Hislop and Camilla Long on Have I Got News For You (BBC)

Here are some of the best quotes and exchanges from the show.

Hislop on Corbyn and Clarkson: “Old blokes called Jeremy with extreme views…”
Clarkson: "What is ITV2?" Osman: "You'll find out soon enough, Jeremy."
Osman on pig gate: “You can’t say ‘cock’ can you…I was going to say he put his Clarkson in a pig’s mouth.”
Hislop: “I wasn’t a member of the Piers Gaveston Society, but I was a member of the Piers Morgan society.” Merton: “I dread to think what the initiation ceremony for that was.”

Jeremy Clarkson's Top 25 Most Obnoxious Lines

Show all 26

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

Clarkson on Corbyn: “Actually at this early stage, I’ve got nothing against the bearded sandal-wearing, tea-total, non-smoking, houmous loving, Hamas loving, anthem-dodging pinko lefty.”
Osman to Clarkson on the Dull Men’s Club: “That's annoying, 'cos you'll have to think of a new name for your show.”
Clarkson: “The next question is on Rebekah Brooks, and I’m not going to do that.” Hislop: “I know the answer – innocent.”
Long on Barack Obama and the Pope standing for the American national anthem: “How dare he not sing.”
Clarkson: “I’ll give you points if you can tell me his name.” Merton: “RONNIE PICKERING.”

The new series of Have I Got News For You is on Fridays at 9pm on BBC 1.

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