A general election nears and already the hottest and most urgent issues of the day are ramping up the settings on the public imagination exercise machine. The precise specifications of the Miliband family kitchen; the forelorn dead-eyed gaze of Clegg; and the scope and format of the TV debates, about which an inquiry chaired by Margaret Hodge has been established and squadrons of campaigners from all parties have been dispatched to go from door-to-door accumulating signatures for petitions to the broadcasters.
But it is at the Court of Clarkson to which politics and other matters must concede legitimacy and influence. This feudal lord rules over his serfs with a mostly benign but nonetheless autocratic grip. His court is bawdy and lewd, crude stereotyping and crass generalisations are made in gruff and assertive voices; women with heaving chests scurry around loading banquet tables with the finest meats and cheeses that his subjects can muster; his jesting minstrels James May and Richard Hammond are in constant attendance, the latter providing bountiful amusement with his rodent impressions (which multitudes travel from every corner of the land to observe).
But despite Clarkson’s many allies in the highest of places, the court is not without strife, for he has strained his relations with the broadcasting church to its final breaking point, with him threatening to abolish the state institution, thereby freeing him to produce another grossly expensive and intellectually insulting factual car show. Such an architect is he of the serfs’ hearts and minds who willingly submit to him, that the political class will cleave to his every whim. Which is why, regardless of whatever else might happen between now and the May election, one of the key battlegrounds to be bitterly contested will be in the very folds and crevices of Jeremy Clarkson’s haggard yet smirking face.
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