Jeremy Clarkson

The toy salesman who hated brakes

Jeremy Clarkson was not born among engines or petrol. His parents made Paddington bear plush toys in Doncaster to pay for his studies at Repton School. There he was expelled for compulsive drinking and smoking. But that cheeky, bruiser attitude helped him land a job at the Rotherham Advertiser in 1978. He started out writing local news about flea markets and potholes in the road.

In 1988, he first walked onto the set of Top Gear. The show was a dull informational program about road safety and fuel consumption. Clarkson decided that almost nobody cared about the boot of a cheap hatchback. He began talking about driving feel and insulting cars he found boring.

And the audience responded immediately.

British public television didn't quite know what to do with him. His style was aggressive and rude. But ratings went up every time he appeared on screen. In 1999, he decided to leave the show because he felt typecast in the motoring world. He tried his luck with a talk show of his own called Clarkson, which lasted only a couple of seasons.

The Aircraft Hangar Formula

He came back in 2002 with a different idea. He convinced the BBC to change the format of Top Gear and bring a live audience into an aircraft hangar in Surrey. Together with Richard Hammond and later James May, he turned a car show into a sitcom with explosions. In 2005, they won an International Emmy, and the format was sold to dozens of countries.

The success relied on the chemistry of three middle-aged men who behaved like teenagers. They travelled around the world and got into diplomatic trouble in Argentina and Alabama. That's because Clarkson never learned to bite his tongue in front of a microphone. His columns in The Sunday Times and The Sun fed a bonfire of constant controversy that only benefited the audience.

Jeff Bezos's money changed everything.

Everything blew up at a hotel in North Yorkshire in March 2015. Clarkson punched a producer of the show because there was no hot food at the end of filming. The BBC decided not to renew his contract after an internal investigation. He lost his job at the network's most-watched show over a cold steak and a fit of rage.

Sheep and Diesel Bills

But streaming platforms arrived with their checkbooks open. In 2016, he signed with Amazon Prime Video to film The Grand Tour. The budget per episode rose to four million pounds, according to various industry sources. The structure was the same as conventional television, but with a bigger budget for wrecking luxury vehicles in exotic locations.

In 2021, he decided it was time to take on his thousand-acre farm in the Cotswolds. He launched Clarkson’s Farm, showing a city man utterly defeated by English bureaucracy and weather. It was his biggest critical success in decades. British farmers praised it for showing the harsh reality of a sector that barely makes a profit.

So the presenter who only knew how to drive supercars ended up learning how to deliver lambs.

In 2018, he took over as host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ITV. He alternated general knowledge quizzes with running his Diddly Squat farm. His books on farming became automatic bestsellers in the English-speaking market.

In 2024, the West Oxfordshire district council forced him to close the restaurant on his farm for violating urban planning regulations after two years of legal disputes.