Jeremy Clarkson offends Liverpool with 'derogatory' comments about kippers, Caesar salad and Tabasco sauce

The Top Gear presenter responds to 'shocking' Liverpool Echo report

Jeremy Clarkson is involved in further controversy over a second set of number plates found in the vehicle he was driving in Argentina

Try as he may, Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t seem to be able to go anywhere without insulting anyone over just about anything.

Now, thanks to the Liverpool Echo, references to kippers, Tabasco and even a limp Ceasar salad appear to have inflamed the wrath of local residents.

He made the apparently “derogatory” remarks in his column for the Sunday Times, in which he described his recent trip to the northern city; a place where people “earn less, die more quickly, have fewer jobs and live in houses that are worth the square root of sod all”.

He made a point of noting how his specific food requirements had caused much bemusement.

In particular, he attempted to order a kipper and Tabasco sauce, both of which waitresses in the city denied all knowledge of.

An extract read as follows:

“What’s a kipper?” she asked.

“It’s a sort of smoked fish,” I said.

“Fish?” she responded. “For breakfast? No. We don’t do that.”

Meanwhile, he appeared disappointed by his local version of a Caesar salad, which he said was like “bits of bread that appeared to have been dipped into a bowl full of lukewarm washing-up water”.

“It was like eating a docker’s wet vest,” he added.

But in his full piece, Clarkson blamed his own cultural misunderstanding on what will now be known as the “kipper and Tabasco fiasco”. He “should have been shown the door”, he said, for asking for foods that were not commonly consumed within the city.

His conclusion was that the north of the country has become so different from the south, it is like being abroad. He wrote that failing to understand that was “the root cause of all the problems surrounding the north-south divide”.

Yet despite the fact he’d largely enjoyed his “quite agreeable” trip, and even made a startling attempt at cultural sensitivity, the local paper branded his food-based comments “derogatory” and accused the Top Gear presenter of “slating” the city.

They also included a round-up of angry residents, two of which appear below:

Clarkson responded to the “kipper and Tabasco fiasco” on Twitter with the following:

non-racist things Clarkson has said in the past