Anti-Clarkson drive gets into Top Gear

Jeremy Clarkson says he just wants to be a champion of ordinary people.

LONDON - He has insisted there is almost certainly no such thing as global warming, threatened to run down cyclists who get in his way and vowed to keep his patio heater lit 24 hours a day, just to annoy Greenpeace. But the environmentalists are no longer prepared to put up with Jeremy Clarkson's car-loving agenda.

Sir Jonathon Porritt, whose feud with Mr Clarkson dates back several years, has launched his most scathing attack yet on the presenter of the BBC2 motoring show Top Gear, branding him an "outstandingly bigoted petrolhead".

The former director of Friends of the Earth, who heads the Government's Sustainable Development Commission, chose the opening of a classroom at Rendcomb College, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, for the latest round in a long-running feud.

Sir Jonathon blamed Clarkson for public apathy about climate change and contrasted him with his fellow BBC presenter Sir David Attenborough, who recently went public for the first time about his fears over global warming. Clarkson, on the other hand, is renowned for belittling the threat posed by carbon dioxide emissions.

"In my mind this outstandingly bigoted petrolhead is partly responsible for why so many people today still somehow think that the world is going to be drawn in the image of Jeremy Clarkson rather than the image of David Attenborough and others," Sir Jonathon said. "Anyone who can shut up Jeremy Clarkson deserves more honours than have already been heaped on David Attenborough."

In the past, Sir David has come under fire from environmentalists for failing to use the platform afforded him as the doyen of natural history programmes to address the threat from rising temperatures. But Sir David told the Independent: "I am no longer sceptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major threat facing the world."

Sir Jonathon, son of Lord Porritt, former Governor-General of New Zealand, said: "I am delighted David has accepted the evidence that most people accepted a long time ago ...

"When people like David Attenborough think very carefully about the evidence, eventually there is very little room for people playing the scientific uncertainty argument. Maybe he will even shut up Jeremy Clarkson. That would be a great relief."

Clarkson has insisted he does not want to be the bete noire of the green lobby and that he just wants to be "the champion of the ordinary people".

"But many of his actions and comments, particularly in his London Sunday Times column, seem designed to raise the hackles of environmentalists. The BBC was forced to pay £250 ($744) compensation after he drove a Toyota pick-up truck into a 30-year-old horse chestnut tree on Top Gear and he has also driven a 4x4 through virgin peat bogs on the programme.

Sian Berry, a spokeswoman for the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, said: "He perpetuates the worst kinds of stereotypes about people who have concerns about giant gas-guzzlers.

"Environmentalists stopped being people wearing beards and sandals about 10 years ago ... he's still stuck in the 80s."

Clarkson trivia

* Clarkson was one of the passengers on the last BA Concorde flight on October 24, 2003. He paraphrased Neil Armstrong to describe the retiring of Concorde: "This is one small step for a man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind".

* He, among others, has been blamed for poor denim sales. Draper's Record, trade magazine to the fashion industry, ran an article on Clarkson's poor fashion image: "For a period in the late nineties denim became unfashionable. 501s, Levi's flagship brand, in particular suffered from the so-called Jeremy Clarkson effect, the association with men in middle youth." He was also featured on What Not to Wear, where he was named as one of "the world's worst-dressed celebrities".

* After testing the Bugatti Veyron, he said he felt sorry knowing that he would never again drive a car that would match what the car offered to a driver like him. Two years earlier he had declared it would never exist.

* Clarkson is 1.96m tall.

* Clarkson visited New Zealand in 1997. He was not impressed to see the number of Austin Allegros, Maxis, Princesses, Hillman Hunters, Avengers and older Ford Cortinas (long since recycled in Great Britain) still being driven daily.

* Clarkson has always been noted for his pro-smoking viewpoint, even publicly smoking as much as possible on National No Smoking Day. However, he announced in his column in the Sun on April 22, 2006, that he had given up smoking. He cited the death of one of his female friends from lung cancer shortly after giving birth as the main reason.

Source: Wikipedia

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* Top Gear is to be screened on Prime at 7.30pm tomorrow.