Clarkson - And Another Thing

And Another Thing

Im a nobody, my jet-set credit card tells me so

I suppose all of us were out and about before Christmas, pummelling our credit cards to within an inch of their lives. So, some time in the next week or so, we can expect a sour-faced government minister to come on television to explain that we are now borrowing more than were saving and that it has all got to stop.

In the mid-1970s, shortly after credit cards first emerged, we owed 32 million.

Now weve managed to get ourselves into debt to the tune of 50 billion, which works out at about 1,140 for every adult in the land.

As a result, the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse and little old ladies are having to sell their cats for medical experiments. And children are being lured into prostitution and up chimneys. Its all too awful for words.

But theres a darker side to credit cards. A sinister underbelly that is rarely talked about. Im talking about the misery of not having the right one.

Weve all been there. Dinner is over, the bill has arrived and everyone is chucking their plastic on to the saucer. Its a sea of platinum and gold. One chap has produced something with a Wells Fargo stagecoach on the front. Another has come up with an HM Government procurement card, just like James Bond would have.

And then its your turn. And all youve got is your green NatWest Switch card.

Socially speaking, you are about to die. Or are you?

A couple of years ago I read an interview with some chap whod got a fistful of cards in his pocket and claimed that the more shiny examples, specifically the much-coveted black American Express, gave him certain privileges.

Obviously, I had to have one. So I lied about my salary, handed over 650 bleeding quid, and there it was, in a leatherette box, presented like a fine Tiffany earring. My very own passport to the high life.

A few weeks later I was flying economy class to some godforsaken hell hole I forget where and found myself sitting in one of those oyster bars at Heathrow, fielding questions from men in nylon trousers about Volkswagen diesels. After a while I remembered the black key in my wallet and recalled a bit in the booklet that said it opened the door to airline lounges around the world.

So, I plodded over to the club class lounge with my cattle class boarding ticket.

Im afraid not, said the woman cheerfully.

Aha, I countered, but I have a black American Express card which affords me certain privileges.

It didnt. So I went back to the diesel men at the oyster bar.

A month after that I was checking in at Blakes Hotel in Amsterdam when, again, I remembered the card and thought: I wonder if this will get me a room upgrade.

Joy of joys, it did. All I had to do was check into one of the emperor suites at 1 trillion a night and I would be automatically upgraded to a maharajah suite, with the enlarged minibar, at no extra cost. So, off to the economy broom cupboard I went.

As the months went by, I kept producing the jet-set, jet-black Amex and the result was pretty much always the same. Non. Nein. And in provincial Britain: What the f***s that?

Actually, Im being unfair. It wasnt only provincial Britain that was mystified.

Pretty well everywhere east of New York and west of Los Angeles doesnt take Amex, no matter what colour the card is. Some say this is because Amex charges too much.

Others because the Americans are infidel dogs.

Eventually, I found a fellow customer and asked what she saw in it. Oh, she said, tossing a mane of pricey hair backwards, its marvellous. Only the other day I needed 24 variegates and my local florist didnt have them in stock. So I called the Amex helpline number and they got them for me.

Great. But I have never ever felt a need to fill the house with variegates. More worryingly, I seldom have the courage to produce the black plastic on those rare occasions when I find myself dining in a restaurant that accepts it. Because what message would I be giving out?

When you produce a black Amex, what you are saying is that you earn 1 million a year. Is the waiter really going to be impressed? And what about your friends? They either earn a million too, in which case so what, or they dont, in which case they wont be your friends for much longer.

Having a black Amex is not like having a big house. Thats useful. And its not like having a big car. Thats more comfortable than a smaller one. The card exists, solely, to impress. It has no other function.

If I were the sort of person who had clients, then maybe this would be useful. But a word of warning on that front. I lied about my salary to get one, so whos to say that the sweating golfer who whipped one out over dinner last night didnt lie, too. A. A. Gill has one, for Gods sake.

As a result, I shall be getting rid of it. This will help Britains economy in a small way. But more importantly, it will do wonders for my self-esteem.

Sunday 11 January 2004

Oops: how I dropped the US air force right in it

Oops: how I dropped the US air force right in it

Given the American militarys dreadful reputation for so-called friendly fire incidents, many people will not have been surprised last week when it was revealed that one of its F-15 jets had dropped a bomb on Yorkshire.

I wasnt surprised either, but for a different reason. You see, a few years ago, when I was flying an F-15, I inadvertently dropped a bomb on North Carolina.

I was making one of those Killer Death Extreme Machine programmes which called for me to go very fast in a selection of different vehicles. So it was obvious I should hitch a ride in the fastest and toughest of Americas airborne armoury. The Strike Eagle. The unshootdownable F-15E.

What you saw on the television was me flying it, and then me being sick. What you didnt see for reasons of time, you understand was me trying to drop a laser-guided bomb on the ranges at Kitty Hawk.

Now, youve all seen the news footage of such weapons being fired through the letter boxes of various baby-milk factories, so you know how theyre supposed to work. The man in the back of the plane that would be me lines up the camera on the target and releases the bomb, which goes to wherever the cross hairs are pointing.

These cameras have a phenomenal range. The distance they can see is classified but I noticed the range dial went up to 160 miles. That means the plane which bombed Yorkshire could have been over Sussex at the time.

On my first run, the pilot, Gris Maverick Grimwald, said hed come in low and fast, jinking wildly as though we were under attack from surface-to-air missiles.

In the back seat, I tuned one of the three screens to give me a picture from the planes belly-mounted camera, which you then steer by moving a toggle on top of the joystick.

Id had two days of training and figured it would be like playing on a PlayStation. And so it is. But can you imagine what it would be like trying to operate a PlayStation while inside a tumble dryer? Because thats what its like trying to operate a remote-control camera in an F-15. More realistically, have your children tried to play on their Game Boys while being driven in the back of a car? And thats at 60 mph in a vaguely straight line.

Grimwald was doing, ooh, about 600 mph no more than a few hundred feet off the deck, and to make matters worse he was flinging the plane from side to side so that one second the screen showed the faraway Appalachian Mountains and then the next, fields screaming past in a hyperspace fast forward blur.

By the time Id finished being sick, we were over the sea doing a six-G turn to get back to the starting point again. This time, said Maverick (or Bastard, as I liked to call him), Ill make it easier. Well go a little higher, a little slower and Ill be less violent.