Jeremy Clarkson says if he doesn’t die this year, he’ll ‘live forever’

Grand Tour host said in January that he thought he’d die ‘alone in a plastic tent’ over Christmas

Jeremy Clarkson has joked he will “live forever” if he doesn’t die in the next year, as “everyone” he knows dies at 61.

The host of The Grand Tour turned 61 in April, and revealed that his age has inspired him to think more about his father’s death and becoming an elderly man himself.

“Everyone I know dies at 61,” Clarkson told Saga Magazine. “All my friends did, my dad did, that’s when you go. If I make it to 62, I’ll be here forever.

“When dad died, I thought of him as an old man, but I don’t feel old,” the presenter continued. “When I see myself on screen I think, ‘Who’s that?’ I always expect a 19-year-old to be looking back at me.

“But old people don’t look like we think they should. When my generation is in old people’s homes we’re not going to be dancing to Vera Lynn, it’ll be ‘White Riot’ by The Clash.”

Clarkson revealed in January that he thought he would die “alone” over Christmas 2020 after being struck down with Covid.

In a newspaper column, Clarkson said that because he is “60 and fat and because I’ve smoked half a million cigarettes and had double pneumonia”, he believed he would “probably die, on my own, in a lonely plastic tent”.

The Grand Tour presenter Jeremy Clarkson (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

“I took myself off to bed with the new Don Winslow book and a bag of kale to wait for the Grim Reaper to pop his head round the door,” Clarkson wrote.

The former Top Gear presenter also sparked controversy in March by dubbing Meghan Markle a “silly little cable TV actress” in the wake of her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.