London - Has Desperate Dan finally got his man? BBC television chief Danny Cohen appears determined to go down in history as The Man Who Sacked Jeremy Clarkson.
If he succeeds he’ll be the toast of fashionable Shoreditch salons, a folk hero to the Guardianistas and all those who despise Top Gear for being too white, too male and, frankly, too damned British.
The Lilliputian Lefties who infest the BBC see Clarkson as an embarrassment - a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic caveman, who shouldn’t be given house room by a ‘liberal’ publicly funded broadcaster.
Certainly, Cohen has made no secret of his contempt for Clarkson and this week seized his chance to suspend him over a ‘fracas’ on location, during which the presenter is alleged to have punched producer Oisin Tymon.
Cohen has also pulled the remaining three episodes of the programme while an ‘investigation’ is carried out by the BBC’s human resources department.
What’s to investigate? My understanding is that the facts are not in dispute and Tymon hasn’t made an official complaint. Clarkson denies punching him, but admits there was ‘contact’ and has apologised profusely.
OUTRAGE
Tymon is a long-standing and much-valued member of the Top Gear team and there is said to be no bad blood between him and the show’s star. Tempers were frayed after a difficult day’s filming, resulting in what James May calls a ‘dust-up’.
It’s the kind of thing which happens when people are living under pressure in each other’s pockets. Dressing room fisticuffs are not unknown among rock stars or on rugby tours. Normally what happens on tour stays on tour.
Because Clarkson is forced to live his life under a microscope, the incident inevitably came to Cohen’s attention, presenting him with an irresistible opportunity to dispose of his bête noire once and for all. (Can you still say bête noire at the BBC?)
Clarkson was already on a ‘final warning’ following a series of so-called ‘gaffes’, most of them confected.
He was forced by Cohen to make a grovelling public apology after being accused of using the N-word while reciting the nursery rhyme Eeny Meeny Miny Moe to compare two indistinguishable cars.
I watched the clip a dozen times and at best it was inconclusive. Halfway through the second line, he deliberately avoids dropping the N-bomb. More to the point, on Clarkson’s own instructions, it was never broadcast — precisely to avoid another bout of artificial outrage.
“DELIBERATE HUMILIATION”
That didn’t stop someone at the BBC retrieving the footage from the cutting room floor and passing it to the Daily Mirror in an attempt to discredit him.
Instead of supporting Clarkson, Cohen deliberately humiliated him. I wondered at the time why he didn’t just tell Cohen to get lost and walk away? It’s not as if he needs the money and rival broadcasters would fall over each other to snap him up.
This is where I declare an interest. As regular readers are well aware, Jeremy is an old friend of mine. I’ve seen him rise from a young presenter on a niche motoring show to become one of the biggest television stars . . . in the wurrld.
Although he has more money than he could ever have imagined, his fortune could have been far larger had he accepted offers from the commercial sector.
When the rest of the Top Gear presenters jumped ship to Channel 5 fifteen years ago, Clarkson stayed put. His main concern was securing for his producer and old schoolfriend Andy Wilman a proper salary and a piece of the action.
Together, they reinvented the format, turning the show into a global phenomenon bringing in £350 million a year for BBC Worldwide - a third of its total overseas earnings.
And make no mistake, this is Clarkson and Wilman’s triumph. BBC executives simply bask in the reflected glory. So you’d expect the show and its star presenter to be handled with more respect.
STILL LOYAL TO THE BBC
Despite his disdainful treatment by Cohen, Clarkson still wants to stay at the BBC - even though he gives every impression of hating it.
What he loves is the institution itself, the ‘Auntie’ we all grew up with. It gave him his first break in TV back in 1988.
What he hates is the cult of managerialism; the naked political posturing; unwanted interference from over-promoted non-entities, constantly carping, buck-passing and covering their own backsides.
He’s also fiercely loyal to his Top Gear team, who travel the world together. The reason he complied with Cohen’s order to apologise over the ridiculous N-word furore was because he felt an obligation towards his staff to keep the show going and them in work.
So it’s no surprise that he was appalled at the lack of backing from Cohen when the Top Gear crew were viciously attacked in Argentina recently and had to flee for their lives.
The only thing that seemed to bother the BBC bigwigs was whether Clarkson had set out to provoke the Argentinians by driving a car with a number-plate intended deliberately to remind them of Britain’s victory in the Falklands War.
OWN WORST ENEMY
Who knows? I haven’t asked, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Jeremy would admit he can be his own worst enemy. He shouldn’t take to Twitter after a few drinks and he was foolish to accept the advice of lawyers who told him to seek a super-injunction to cover up an extra-marital affair.
He’s capable of being gratuitously offensive, but so what? Funny how the Lefties at the BBC were quick to proclaim “Je Suis Charlie” after a French magazine offended Muslims, but never declare themselves “Je Suis Jeremy” whenever he upsets someone.
Clarkson doesn’t hide himself away, despite the controversy and constant attention from the public. He can’t use a toilet without someone shoving a mobile phone in his face or demanding to have their picture taken with him. And he has paid a physical and emotional price for his gruelling globe-trotting schedule.
Most poignantly, it cost him his marriage to Francie. Goodness knows what he’s going to do if he ever loses his looks.
So why does he do it? He’s nothing left to prove. Yet he ploughs on, writing weekly newspaper columns and touring in Top Gear Live arena shows as well the day job: Top Gear itself.
Michael Parkinson once told me that all the great stars he’d met had one thing in common. Talent, obviously. But primarily they worked harder than everyone else.
A MAD GENIUS
Clarkson combines enormous talent and hard work. Plus, he’s easily bored. The self-inflicted pressures upon him are enormous, so it’s no wonder that occasionally he can become consumed by madness.
But take away the madness and the genius might disappear, too. He has repaid the BBC in spades for his early break and is responsible for their most successful show ever. Yet the Director of Television treats him like a leper, while rolling out the red carpet for repulsive Russell Brand, who brought genuine disgrace on the BBC.
Cohen’s decision to pull the remaining Top Gear episodes will mean wasting hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pounds of licence-payers’ money already spent on filmed sequences. It will also incur massive compensation claims from foreign broadcasters.
He couldn’t get away with that if he was a director of a commercial organisation, answerable to shareholders. And what about the millions of viewers being deprived of their favourite Sunday night show?
Cohen cares more about pandering to the political prejudices and petty jealousies of his Left-wing peer group in those Shoreditch salons. And that means securing his place in history as The Man Who Sacked Jeremy Clarkson.
For now, we shall just have to await the verdict of the BBC’s investigation. Let’s hope it doesn’t end in Jeremy being fired, although no one could blame him if he did decide to walk away.
If the viewers were ever to be asked who was most valuable to the BBC, Clarkson or the Director of Television, there would be only one winner. And it wouldn’t be Desperate Dan.
Daily Mail