BREXIT, Chinese spies and knife crime – Jeremy Clarkson has never shied away from the stories that revealed the state of modern-day Britain.
As The Sun celebrates 30 years of his columns being published in our pages, we have been revisiting his wittiest – and most honest – reflections on the world that was. Today, here he is on the empire, the Church and Covid lockdowns.
January 31, 2003:
What the hell is the matter with this country?
A hundred years ago, we were an empire, ruled by an empress. Then we were a kingdom, ruled by a king. Now we’re a country.
June 28, 2003:
I’m truly, properly, hand-bitingly amazed by this row in the Church about whether a gay man can be a bishop […]
Traditionalists point at the Bible, which condemns same-sex relationships.
They say it’s not possible to preach the word of God when you’re not living it.
Well, if that’s the case, the Bible is wrong. And the word of God is wrong.
June 25, 2011:
Some observers have been up in arms about an Iraqi playboy who’s put himself on YouTube tearing around London in his turquoise Ferrari.
They say he’s making a mess of our great capital city. Yes. But not as big a mess as we made of his.
September 23, 2011:
If I were the Chancellor, I would spend all day running about screaming.
June 16, 2012:
Why should we give Gibraltar back to Spain?
That’s like Germany saying they want the 1966 World Cup.
May 17, 2014:
The Archbishop of Canterbury said this week that gay marriage is “great”. No it isn’t.
It’s the same as all other marriages.
“Normal” is the word he was looking for.
June 25, 2016, two days after the Brexit vote:
I made no secret in the run-up to what will become known as Independence Day that I wanted to stay in the EU.
That’s not because I’m a fan of bungling, expensive, unnecessary tiers of government. It’s because we’d be setting off into the unknown.
We don’t know what will happen to the Pound, to the City, to business and therefore to the economy of Britain.
It’s completely impossible to predict.
Which is why I’m not going to join the chorus of people who’ve been on the news for the past 48 hours trying to make predictions about what will happen next.
They don’t know. And neither do I. We will just have to wait and see.
March 30, 2024:
We were warned this week by the British Government that the Chinese Communist Party is spying on us.
Frankly, I’m not bothered. They can spy on me as much as they like and all they’ll be able to deduce after they’ve wasted their time is: “Christ, that guy drinks a lot of wine.”
Clarkson on… Covid
January 16, 2021:
In the first lockdown, I drank too much, watched television for hours and generally let myself go.
This time round, I decided to get a grip and do something worthwhile. So, I’ve grown a beard.
January 27, 2024:
Chris Whitty, the funny-looking man who came on the television every night during Covid and said “next slide” a lot, has had a busy week.
He told us to stop catching gonorrhoea, which is probably fair enough – but then our beloved Chief Medical Officer went on to say that our wood-burning stoves are doing something terrible to the sky.
That may be, Whitty me ol’ fruit, but what would you suggest we do in the middle of winter?
February 8, 2025
There have been calls this week to ban the sale of knives with pointy tips.
Hmmm. Surely, if you want to get knives off the street — and we all do — why not make them uncool.
Allow them to be sold only if they have a Barbie pink handle bearing the
message, “I have a small penis.”
May 10, 2025
As we know, the Labourites want to make sure that everyone who arrives
in a dinghy on a beach in Kent is put up in a luxury hotel and given free food until we have built a nice four-bedroom home for them.
However, this week, the Starmerists announced that in return, all these
new boys — and they are mostly male — must learn English.
Good luck with that. The chap who delivers parcels to my farm about 500
times a day has been coming here for more than a year.
And he still doesn’t know what “fragile” means.
Clarkson on… Clarkson
May 18, 2024
For the second year on the trot, a poll of 2,000 women has revealed that the sexiest man in the UK is . . . me.
I’m sexier even than the actors Cillian Murphy and Idris Elba and King Charles. And a lot sexier than Piers Morgan, who limped home in a pathetic 40th place.
I think he was even beaten by Joseph Merrick. Obviously, I’m amazed by the result but only because so many people say they’re surprised.
