Thursday 12th March

My mother believed in “comeuppance”.   It was probably drummed into her by Grandma Allard along with “God Works In Mysterious Ways”.  She tried to inculcate me with these simple mantras but my unspoken response was “Blimey, they must be extremely mysterious then”.  However I have always had a sneaking regard for comeuppance; as if it were some unwritten Law of Physics that would strike when one least expected it.

The famous or as I regard him the infamous Jeremy Clarkson seems to have had his comeuppance at last.  And I must admit it is very easy to be suckered into his world.  Top Gear is slick and extremely well made, even if the “stunts” are so stage-managed as to be totally implausible.  He does have a clever if nasty turn of phrase, but I suspect that the whole show is pre-scripted anyway.  He has been involved in a fracas with one of the show’s producers.  Fracas?  Now that it an old-fashioned word only used by journalists and is code for a fist-fight.

We always knew he was a particularly obnoxious and right-wing pedagogue, but who knew he could lose his temper to the degree that he would actually hit someone.  I have never forgiven him for describing Gordon Brown (just before the 2010 election) as a one-eyed “c&%t”, a level of personal insult very few others have ever descended to.  He represents that boorish strain of the super-rich and super-successful which looks down on any attempt at helping others, and almost blames the poor for being, well poor I suppose.

So he has got his come-uppance.  Or has he?  I suspect he will soon be back on our screens, maybe on ITV with a show which is almost imperceptible from Top Gear, much in the way that Jonathan Ross decamped from the BBC a few years ago.   And every year he brings out another volume of bile which is lapped up by his fans.  Is it because he dares to say what they are thinking, or just that they are amazed he has the ‘cojones’ to actually say or write this stuff.  Who knows?  But for now we may say that he has his comeuppance.  God certainly does work in mysterious ways….hahaha