Clarkson - As I was saying- : the world according to Clarkson. Volume six

AS I WAS SAYING

The World According to Clarkson Volume Six

By the same author

Motorworld

Jeremy Clarksons Hot 100

Jeremy Clarksons Planet Dagenham

Born to be Riled

Clarkson on Cars

The World According to Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul

And Another Thing

Dont Stop Me Now

For Crying Out Loud!

Driven to Distraction

How Hard Can It Be?

Round the Bend

Is It Really Too Much To Ask

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy Clarksons Sunday Times column. Read more about the world according to Clarkson every week in The Sunday Times .

Introduction

After the BBC decided not to renew my contract, I didnt really know what to do next. So I went to the pub and that was very enjoyable. But after a week or so, I realized that I couldnt spend the rest of my life there, so I decided to get a job.

Most people, as far as I know, get one of those from something called the job centre, but I didnt think theyd have anything to suit me. A friend of mine once signed on in Kensington, saying he was a shepherd. And then had to look disappointed every week when they said they had no work for him and hed have to make do instead with some free cash.

I fear it would have been even more difficult finding a job for me. Yes, my earning expectations are very high Im afraid. And qualifications? Well, I can drive a bit too quickly round corners while shouting

You know that bit in the movie Taken when Liam Neeson says he has acquired a special set of skills over the years? Well, Im the same. But the skills Ive acquired are almost completely useless. I make this very clear to my children when they travel. If youre kidnapped, all I can do is power slide while gurning and this will in no way help secure your safe return.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Kensington job centre said they had no vacancies for someone who wanted millions of pounds to drive a Lamborghini sideways in a cloud of its own tyre smoke, so I decided after a week or so that I would make a farming programme.

I called up my old friend and former Top Gear producer Andy Wilman and said, Ive decided to make a farming programme. He came round to my flat to hear my ideas and after three and a half minutes, he looked exactly the same as children do when they are forced to listen to a very boring sermon.

But it was OK, because pretty soon after that someone drove a tank an effing tank up to the front door of the BBCs London headquarters demanding my return, and the newspapers went berserk. I was on the front page every day for three weeks. Not just here but all around the world.

And as a result, the phone started ringing. First out of the blocks was a representative from Russias military television station. You come here, make show. Everyone happy.

Next came some gentlemen from the Middle East. Come to Paris, they said. We want to talk to you about making a show. We have table reserved at the hotel. 8 p.m. So I went to Paris and I made it to the hotel bang on time, and they explained what they had in mind. It sounded very exciting and I said Id definitely think about it

As I reached for the menu to start making my food choice, they reached for their mobile phones. And after five minutes of general texting and email stuff, one looked up and said Thank you for coming. I made it back to the Gare du Nord after this three-minute conversation exactly one minute after the last train had left.

Feeling a little despondent about my future, I came back to London the next day and my phone rang. It was George Lucas. Imagine my surprise. Mr Star Wars himself. He reminded me, not that it was necessary, that wed met once at the Monaco Grand Prix and then he said hed like to meet to discuss an idea hed had. George Bleeding Lucas wanted to meet me. I was very excited.

So, on the day that Chelsea won the Premiership, I left Stamford Bridge, telling my son and our friends that I would not be able to join them for celebratory drinks as I had to meet George Lucas. No biggie, I said, as casual as you like.

At the club where wed arranged to meet, I was looking around for Mr Lucas when I was approached by another chap, whom Id also met at the Monaco Grand Prix and who had set a table aside for our meeting. I vowed there and then to get a hearing test as soon as possible.

Not George Lucas was very interesting. He told me that all of the money in the world was Norwegian, and that I could have most of it if I could secure a major TV deal. With a Russian military channel? I asked. No, he replied. You need to talk to the Americans

Well, I was terrified. Ive seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than talk to the Americans. Because everyone knows that in the world of US television, there are only two possible outcomes to any deal. Either youre fired after seven minutes if the AB1 twenty-five to forty-year-old male ratio isnt at 62 points. Or, if it is, youre forced to live in Los Angeles for the next five thousand years, where you either join a gym and run about and have your teeth whitened, or you eat so much cheese that you explode.

I was busy pondering all of this when it became clear that Richard Hammond and James May wanted to stick with me. And Richard was very excited about the prospect of working in America. So we decided to get ourselves a big American agent.

We spoke to several on the phone. Some even came over to talk to us. And we learned quite quickly that they are all exactly the same. Anything that isnt a big number is a complete waste of time. Food. Breathing. And other people having an opinion: they have no space in their heads for any of that. Its going to be huge, they all said.

And if you said anything back they said, Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely, yeah, yeah, lets get this done, yeah yeah. And they kept on saying this for ten or fifteen seconds after youd finished talking.

James May couldnt really cope with any of it and adopted a strategy of either not going to meetings at all, or turning up and playing constantly with the teapot. Richard Hammond, meanwhile, had become so giddy that on one occasion he turned up after drinking everything in Britain. And me? Well, I was lost. I can drive too quickly round a corner while shouting but I cannot understand what is meant by over the top or back end or almost anything that was being said.

Eventually though, we chose an agent and he was so brilliant that very quickly the job offers started pouring in. Ive never known anything like it. I can put in a shift, but God, I was working so hard I had to stop drinking. Way into the night, the calls were flooding in from California: new offers, new strategies, new ways of putting a show in front of the viewers. I was having to learn about the future, and you cant do that after a couple of bottles of Leoube.

To try and get our heads around what was being offered, Richard and I went with Andy to his house in southern Italy. Which was a brilliant plan, expect theres no mobile phone service down there and his Wi-Fi was a bit patchy.

So, when we wanted to speak to California, we had to drive to the nearest town and then spread out so that on the conference call, we couldnt hear one another live. Or else youd hear Hammond speak in real life and then, a second or so later, hear him again on your phone.

This meant we were doing vital business to the background accompaniment of light jazz, as the only place Richard could find that a) had service and b) was out of earshot of Andy and I, was outside a caf with a live band.