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| Clarkson is a dinosaur – so why do I feel sad about his Top Gear extinction? | Clarkson is a dinosaur – so why do I feel sad about his Top Gear extinction? |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| So bang goes one of the biggest names in showbusiness: his reputation in tatters, his personal life seemingly in disarray. Even the hordes of adoring fans couldn’t save him from the consequences of what, according to the BBC’s version of events, seems to have been a relatively brief moment of madness. | So bang goes one of the biggest names in showbusiness: his reputation in tatters, his personal life seemingly in disarray. Even the hordes of adoring fans couldn’t save him from the consequences of what, according to the BBC’s version of events, seems to have been a relatively brief moment of madness. |
| But enough about Zayn Malik, who has quit One Direction after being photographed in a Thai nightclub in overly close proximity to a “young woman who was not his fiancee”, as Radio 4 primly put it. As some of you might have noticed, Jeremy Clarkson got dropped this week too, and it interests me that so many people sympathise with one imploded career and not with the other. | But enough about Zayn Malik, who has quit One Direction after being photographed in a Thai nightclub in overly close proximity to a “young woman who was not his fiancee”, as Radio 4 primly put it. As some of you might have noticed, Jeremy Clarkson got dropped this week too, and it interests me that so many people sympathise with one imploded career and not with the other. |
| Let’s not mince words. Clarkson has behaved, in the words of one of his co-stars, like a complete knob; the BBC was entirely right: you can’t bully and thump a junior colleague, hard enough that he needs to go to A&E, and expect to continue getting licence-fee payers’ money; he’s not a martyr sacrificed to political correctness but a powerful man with nobody but himself to blame. I don’t feel sorry for Clarkson. But I do, unexpectedly, feel sad about him. | Let’s not mince words. Clarkson has behaved, in the words of one of his co-stars, like a complete knob; the BBC was entirely right: you can’t bully and thump a junior colleague, hard enough that he needs to go to A&E, and expect to continue getting licence-fee payers’ money; he’s not a martyr sacrificed to political correctness but a powerful man with nobody but himself to blame. I don’t feel sorry for Clarkson. But I do, unexpectedly, feel sad about him. |
| What the bellowing Clarksons and the fragile Zayns have in common is being at an oddly vulnerable age | |
| It’s the waste, mainly. The way that someone who had great talent – and like him or not, as a broadcaster that is what he had – recklessly chucks it all away is always sad. And then there’s the fact that it feels wrong revelling in the downfall of someone who, it has been repeatedly (if anonymously) suggested, perhaps should have gone into rehab; who needed to “sort out” some mysterious problem that was never named. | It’s the waste, mainly. The way that someone who had great talent – and like him or not, as a broadcaster that is what he had – recklessly chucks it all away is always sad. And then there’s the fact that it feels wrong revelling in the downfall of someone who, it has been repeatedly (if anonymously) suggested, perhaps should have gone into rehab; who needed to “sort out” some mysterious problem that was never named. |
| Perhaps that’s all just overheated gossip, but it triggers uncomfortable memories of people laughing at Ron Davies, the tortured politician caught in a “moment of madness” on Clapham Common, or the social media mockery following Charles Kennedy’s erratic performance on BBC Question Time this month. Laughing at a recovering alcoholic because you suspect he isn’t recovered enough yet? Classy. | Perhaps that’s all just overheated gossip, but it triggers uncomfortable memories of people laughing at Ron Davies, the tortured politician caught in a “moment of madness” on Clapham Common, or the social media mockery following Charles Kennedy’s erratic performance on BBC Question Time this month. Laughing at a recovering alcoholic because you suspect he isn’t recovered enough yet? Classy. |
| But most of all, the defenestration of Clarkson isn’t a victory over anything that matters. However much you loathe what he stood for – a certain bullying strain of populist rightwingery, a juvenile delight in causing offence bordering on casual racism, chauvinism and everything else-ism – he wasn’t dropped from the show for any of that. On the contrary, those things made him rich and popular, and may continue to do so on some other TV channel. | But most of all, the defenestration of Clarkson isn’t a victory over anything that matters. However much you loathe what he stood for – a certain bullying strain of populist rightwingery, a juvenile delight in causing offence bordering on casual racism, chauvinism and everything else-ism – he wasn’t dropped from the show for any of that. On the contrary, those things made him rich and popular, and may continue to do so on some other TV channel. |
| The things he stood for haven’t gone away, any more than anti-immigrant feeling would evaporate if Nigel Farage resigned tomorrow. This is just a victory over the obnoxious behaviour of one person, in the throes of something suspiciously resembling a midlife crisis, whose marriage seems to have been imploding at the same time as his career. (Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, given his now estranged wife, Frances, was originally his manager.) | The things he stood for haven’t gone away, any more than anti-immigrant feeling would evaporate if Nigel Farage resigned tomorrow. This is just a victory over the obnoxious behaviour of one person, in the throes of something suspiciously resembling a midlife crisis, whose marriage seems to have been imploding at the same time as his career. (Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, given his now estranged wife, Frances, was originally his manager.) |
| Of course there are better reasons to feel sorry for 22-year-old Zayn Malik than for someone old enough to be his dad. One Direction haven’t whacked anybody – although, to be fair, perhaps Malik’s fiancee would dispute the suggestion that nobody was hurt in the fallout from his departure. And besides, his reads like the sadly familiar story of the prematurely burned-out showbiz kid: plucked from obscurity at 17, showered with more adulation and money than seems healthy, only to find himself drowning in the goldfish bowl of global fame. | Of course there are better reasons to feel sorry for 22-year-old Zayn Malik than for someone old enough to be his dad. One Direction haven’t whacked anybody – although, to be fair, perhaps Malik’s fiancee would dispute the suggestion that nobody was hurt in the fallout from his departure. And besides, his reads like the sadly familiar story of the prematurely burned-out showbiz kid: plucked from obscurity at 17, showered with more adulation and money than seems healthy, only to find himself drowning in the goldfish bowl of global fame. |
| Clarkson, by contrast, is surely old enough at 54 to cope with life in the over-indulged but emotionally precarious bubble of the publicly adored. He’s not a music industry puppet but a man in control of his career, who once owned the company that made his programme. So if you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for his poor thumped producer, currently being demonised by fans for having done nothing but end up on the wrong end of a punch. | Clarkson, by contrast, is surely old enough at 54 to cope with life in the over-indulged but emotionally precarious bubble of the publicly adored. He’s not a music industry puppet but a man in control of his career, who once owned the company that made his programme. So if you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for his poor thumped producer, currently being demonised by fans for having done nothing but end up on the wrong end of a punch. |
| And yet the one thing the bellowing Clarksons of this world do have in common with the fragile Zayns is being at an oddly vulnerable age. Because there are thousands of Clarksons for whom life hasn’t worked out so swimmingly as it has for their idol; and who aren’t able to monetise their rage at the world into a successful telly career. | And yet the one thing the bellowing Clarksons of this world do have in common with the fragile Zayns is being at an oddly vulnerable age. Because there are thousands of Clarksons for whom life hasn’t worked out so swimmingly as it has for their idol; and who aren’t able to monetise their rage at the world into a successful telly career. |
| All those angry men, hitting middle age and no longer sure where they belong: drinking and smoking too much, acting up at work, pushing their partners away with their behaviour, insufficiently self-aware to see where the self-destructiveness leads. Men whose rage might better, perhaps, be understood as latent depression. We think of the young as being uniquely vulnerable, but the statistics show that it’s middle-aged men not teenagers who are most at risk of suicide. | All those angry men, hitting middle age and no longer sure where they belong: drinking and smoking too much, acting up at work, pushing their partners away with their behaviour, insufficiently self-aware to see where the self-destructiveness leads. Men whose rage might better, perhaps, be understood as latent depression. We think of the young as being uniquely vulnerable, but the statistics show that it’s middle-aged men not teenagers who are most at risk of suicide. |
| Not, of course, that I’m suggesting any of this applies to Clarkson. Everyone seems to think he’ll be just fine; that the BBC is the loser here, left glumly contemplating the ashes of its most successful export. Perhaps he’ll just cheerfully take himself, Richard Hammond and James May off to ITV. | Not, of course, that I’m suggesting any of this applies to Clarkson. Everyone seems to think he’ll be just fine; that the BBC is the loser here, left glumly contemplating the ashes of its most successful export. Perhaps he’ll just cheerfully take himself, Richard Hammond and James May off to ITV. |
| Related: Jeremy Clarkson dropped by BBC after damning report into attack on producer | |
| Or perhaps he’ll turn what’s said to be his latest idea – a show about a helpless townie trying to make a go of running a farm – into an unexpected hit. Funny how that back-to-the-land fantasy sounds like the sort of thing people do in the grip of midlife madness, though. | Or perhaps he’ll turn what’s said to be his latest idea – a show about a helpless townie trying to make a go of running a farm – into an unexpected hit. Funny how that back-to-the-land fantasy sounds like the sort of thing people do in the grip of midlife madness, though. |
| What people who don’t really watch Top Gear tend to forget is that it was always as much about its presenters’ haplessness as their power; that one of its running jokes was the way Hammond and May used to tease the old monster, to snigger and roll their eyes behind his back, albeit with great affection. | What people who don’t really watch Top Gear tend to forget is that it was always as much about its presenters’ haplessness as their power; that one of its running jokes was the way Hammond and May used to tease the old monster, to snigger and roll their eyes behind his back, albeit with great affection. |
| Perhaps things were very different off camera, of course. But that was what viewers identified with, as much as anything else; the sense that Clarkson in his dad jeans and lived-in face was, like them, a middle-aged man slightly adrift in a changing world, but that, unlike them, he somehow managed cheerfully to transcend all that. | Perhaps things were very different off camera, of course. But that was what viewers identified with, as much as anything else; the sense that Clarkson in his dad jeans and lived-in face was, like them, a middle-aged man slightly adrift in a changing world, but that, unlike them, he somehow managed cheerfully to transcend all that. |
| He doesn’t look so transcendent right now. Rather he looks increasingly like all the other middle-aged dinosaurs: roaring and thrashing and accidentally knocking things over with their tails, blundering off towards extinction. | He doesn’t look so transcendent right now. Rather he looks increasingly like all the other middle-aged dinosaurs: roaring and thrashing and accidentally knocking things over with their tails, blundering off towards extinction. |
| Nobody wants the dinosaurs back roaming the earth. But gazing at their skeletons, encased in glass, you can’t help feeling – well, not sorry, exactly; but sad that it had to end this way. | Nobody wants the dinosaurs back roaming the earth. But gazing at their skeletons, encased in glass, you can’t help feeling – well, not sorry, exactly; but sad that it had to end this way. |
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