The World According to Clarkson (World According to Clarkson, #1)

by Jeremy Clarkson

I must say, at this juncture, that I don’t like fighting. I prefer passive resistance and, if that doesn’t work, active fleeing.

But here too there’s a problem – the faster you go, the more time slows down. This is a scientific fact. I spend my life driving quickly, which is why I have a 1970s haircut.

Stick to breathing. It’s the only thing you’re any good at.

Only once was this not an option. A girlfriend had been pinned against the wall by a wiry, tattooed man whose speech was slurred by a combination of drink and being from Glasgow.

I tapped the drunken Scotsman on the shoulder and said, as politely as possible: ‘Excuse me.’ He whirled round, his eyes full of fire and his hands balled into steel-hard fists. But the blow never came. ‘Christ, you’re a big bastard,’ he said, and ran off. It was the proudest moment of my life.

I can’t imagine that I would be terribly happy living in Afghanistan, either, though I dare say there is some satisfaction in going to bed thinking: ‘Well, at least I wasn’t shot today.’

And I’m not sure I would like it in Brazil, either, having to walk around in a thong to demonstrate that I had nothing about my person worth stealing.

Everyone was jolly cross with Michael Fish when he didn’t see the 1987 storm coming. But it turns out that he had no satellites and no computers, just a big checked jacket. Big checked jackets are no good at predicting the weather.

Then you have people who say you can tell when rain is coming because the cows are lying down. Not so. According to my new friend at the Met Office, cows lie down because they are tired.

Did I mention the dolphin? As a unique selling point the boys in Tahiti had caught themselves a big grey beasty which spent all day on its back, in a lagoon, being pawed by overweight American women with preposterous plastic tits and unwise G-string bikini bottoms. ‘Would you like to see his penis?’ asked the man in a skirt when I climbed into the water. No. What I’d like to do is spear you through the heart with a harpoon and let the miserable thing have a taste of freedom.