Shit Back in Anger

I’m disappointed by Jeremy Clarkson. Not because of what he wrote – many people wish far worse on that sorry excuse for a duchess – but by his apology for causing offence. As many people before me have written, the right to cause offence is a pillar of freedom of speech. In fact in Britain the right to freedom of speech was expressly carved out by the right to say what you wished to public figures.

I’m not saying that the gruesome twosome have no right of reply, although I doubt that either of them has the wit to so do. But the famously secretive couple, who wish nothing more than to be left alone, in quiet, contemplative solitude to make documentaries, give interviews and write books about their supposed ill treatment really do deserve all of the opprobrium heaped upon them.

They are vile. They are immature, squealing, spoiled infants trying to get nanny sacked for putting them to bed at the prescribed time. Mewling ingrates who scorned the riches heaped upon them and demanded more. Violet Elizabeth Bott wouldn’t even come close in an entitlement contest, and Clarkson was damn right to express his repulsion for the woman we all had to be told was black before we were able to be properly racist about her.

Of course, the so-called ‘liberal left ‘have been all over it as if he had actually committed the physical offence of showering her in shit. The hypocrisy of it all is astonishing. Those self-same, self-regarding champions of freedom were all for Jo Brand’s right to wish Nigel Farage had acid thrown in his face, or Nish Kumar’s unfunny (unfunny is all he’s got) appeal to kill your Brexit voting parents. And it’s fine, by all accounts, for people like Miriam Margoyles and Philip Pullman to wish death on Boris Johnson.

Clarkson should have either remained silent in the face of demands for appeasement, or else doubled down and written more of the same in his next column. Was it his lawyers, do you think? Or was it his own daughter writing that she was ashamed at what he had penned? The very appeal of Jeremy Clarkson – for those to whom he appeals; he’s a bit ‘Marmite’ to the rest – is that he dares to tread on ground that other authors fear.

James – the Holy Christmas Miracle – O’Brien was all over it on his show this morning, in the same episode in which he also discussed Tom Watson’s elevation to the Lords, as if the pair of them had not been deep down the Carl Beech rabbit hole. Little Jimmy was all too ready to acknowledge the wrong done by Watson, while never mentioning his own contribution to the affair. What loathsome worms inhabit the left of politics.

The crappiest couple... ... in the world.

But backing down is no way to deal with their immoral, illiberal war on what a person may think or say. In the face of such ridiculousness as, say, Critical Race Theory, or Trans-rights trumping women’s rights, we should all be capable of raising a hearty belly laugh and adding our own drop of dung to the mix. The ex-royal couple did not hesitate to shit on the Royal Family from as great a height as they could scale; why should we not shit back in anger?