Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born April 11, 1960) is a British motoring journalist and television presenter. He is known for his physically imposing presence, and ebulliently robust manner. The television show he is most associated with is called Top Gear.
This is a show which puts all cars, present, past and future through their paces. He has an image of not pulling any punches, but acknowledging up-front any and all biases the reporters have. He also “starred” in a series called (humbly) Jeremy Clarkson’s Extreme Machines where he rode all manner of machines, including a plane, a submarine and an airboat.
In 2002 Clarkson championed Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the BBC’s search to find the 100 Greatest Britons.
Clarkson, being one of the passengers on the last BA Concorde flight on October 24, 2003, played around Neil Armstrong’s famous saying: This is one small step for a man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind.
Lives in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire
Recently (April 2004) Clarkson appeared on the British TV talkshow “Parkinson” and mentioned that he was writing a book about the ’soul’ many machines have. Cited Concorde as his primary example; when people heard it had crashed, quite aside from the sadness they felt for the loss of human life, there was also almost a sadness for the machine. He also recently punched Piers Morgan, former editor of The Daily Mirror, a UK newspaper for printing some unflattering photographs of him. This was generally considered fairly out of character.