Jeremy Clarkson’s mother on Monday angrily dismissed claims the Top Gear star had been cheating on his wife with a blonde colleague.
The father of three, 50, has been the subject of lurid headlines accusing him of conducting a brazen affair while away on the international tour of the popular BBC motoring show.
But his mother Shirley insisted: “It’s a load of rubbish. He’s right now on holiday with his wife and children, happy as Larry.
“He sent me a text on Mother’s Day saying, “I hear the press think I’m Tiger Woods - don’t worry, I’m not!’.”
The “other woman” was on Monday identified by one newspaper as single mother-of-one Phillipa Sage, 42, who has been working alongside Clarkson as part of the lucrative Top Gear Live tour.
Sage said reports of a romance were “nonsense”, insisting: “Jeremy and I are friends. I have worked with him, er, them (the Top Gear team) for years.”
When told she had been seen entering Clarkson’s hotel suite in the early hours, she said: “What? I often stay in colleagues’ hotel rooms - that’s not unusual.
“I have been pictured with Jeremy several times, dozens of times, while working on the show. We are just friends.”
On holiday in Barbados with wife Frances, 49, and their children on Monday, Clarkson reacted to the allegations in typically brash style - spending the day on a speedboat and racing around on a jetski wearing loud Bermuda shorts.
Under the headline “Clarkson’s Mistress”, the Daily Mirror claimed Sage had spent several nights with Clarkson as he and his co-presenters, Richard Hammond and James May, toured Australia, South Africa and Norway.
Last month the party checked into Oslo’s £500-a-night (about R5 400) Grand Hotel. After the Top Gear show, Clarkson and Sage - who shared a chauffeur-driven Range Rover to the venue - were alleged to have gone to his corner suite at 1.15am.
The next evening Hammond and May sat at the other end of the hotel’s rooftop bar from Clarkson and Sage, who reportedly sat together under separate blankets drinking white wine.
Shortly after 1am, he said goodnight and, it was claimed, “kissed Phillipa on the lips in full view of the group and public”. Moments after Clarkson left, she was said to have slipped out of the bar, followed him into the lift and walked with him to his suite, remaining there all night.
On the final show of the tour, on March 27, the newspaper claimed the couple again spent the night together before flying back to the UK, where Clarkson was reunited with his wife, also his manager, and their children, aged 16, 15 and 12. Clarkson has been married to Frances for 18 years and she has masterminded the TV star’s multi-million-pound career.
The newspaper claimed his affair had also been going on in Australia and South Africa earlier last month.
The couple were photographed by the pool at a Johannesburg hotel, where it was claimed Clarkson was seen “feeding Phillipa lettuce with his fingers”.
It was claimed he went to his room alone but was later followed by her.
But from her large country cottage near Peterborough, Clarkson’s mother said on Monday: “It makes me very angry that just because he’s famous he has to deal with gossip like this.
“This woman just went upstairs in the lift ten minutes after he did and he travelled in the same car as her. In the pictures he’s just sitting around a table in a restaurant with his team. I mean it’s silly.
“It’s just something he has to deal with - he has even had people taking pictures of him in the gents’ urinals.”
At her terraced home in Woolmer Green, Hertfordshire, Sage refused to comment further about the allegations.
Wearing casual clothing and holding back her golden Labrador, she said: “No, I don’t want to say anything more.”
A neighbour said unmarried Miss Sage had moved into the property around three years ago with her five-year-old son. - Daily Mail