Television Personalities

"If you're limited by budget, don't buy a new small car. Buy a used big one."

"You may have heard that at the British Press Awards|British Press Awards last week I strolled over to Piers [Morgan], the editor of the Daily Mirror, and punched him in the middle of his face. That, however, is only partly true. I also punched him on the jaw and on his cheek. Why? Well he seems to think that if someone appears on television it is all right to publish photographs of them kissing girls goodnight and appearing on the beach while fat. I disagree."

"Reviewing music has to be the hardest, most pointless job since Twinkletoe-Winkletoe Ffiennes walked to the North Pole wearing nothing but a dressing gown and slippers. Or something. Imagine, please, being instructed to write about the latest All Saints album. You'd listen, hate it, and say so. And a week later, all the 14-year-olds who took it to number one would burn your house down."

"The engine sounds like Victorian plumbing — it looks like Victorian plumbing as well, to be honest — and the roar from the tyres was biblical."

"He genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he's actually seen the books. In England we have this one-eyed Scottish idiot."

"The newest Ferrari of them all, the 458, the Italia. The GT3 was good, but nowhen near as good as this... almost nothing on Earth is as good as this... Set that something I've just told, involving Cameron Diaz... and some honey... then it comes that even that isn't as good as this."

"Now that's contentious stuff. You can say a car manufacturer's new product is a waste of the world's resources and they'll do nothing. You can liken it to a cup of cold sick and refuse to test it, saying it's more boring than dying, and still they won't react. But call a car dangerous and whoa, what's this? A writ? Blimey."

"Jeremy Clarkson made his name presenting a poky motoring programme on BBC2 called Top Gear. He left to forge a career in other directions but made a complete hash of everything and ended up back on Top Gear again. He lives with his wife, Francie, and three children in Oxfordshire. Despite this, he has a clean driving license."

"Fast, truly exciting cars are being killed off so that pretty soon the officers will all be gone, leaving us with a field full of enlisted men."

"When I see that there have been 3.6 million examples of road rage in the last year, I say to myself that there must have been 3.6 million examples of bad, inattentive or selfish driving."

"Speed in itself is not exciting. As you sit in a Boeing, are you thrilled that it's ripping up the sky with a 500mph orgy of big numbers? No, and it's the same deal in a straight line in a straight road in a car. Two hundred mph. So what. What matters is acceleration and handling, an ability to take corners as though they're not there, and this is why the Ferrari F50 has been so well received by those who know. It's light, and simple, like a choux pastry in a world full of suet pudding."

"And therein lies the reason why motor industry people don't fawn on journalists. They're in the hot seat, deciding who gets to drive what and who gets to go where. Why should they grovel when they know that without their assistance the motoring journalist is up the creek without a boat, nevermind a paddle?"

"Then there's power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It's almost impossible to buy a car that won't do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.) Then there's the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today's Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Saab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That's true, that is."

"The greatest car ever should get out there and do the job, but it should do more besides, which is why I have to say it's the Ferrari 355. This car is as much a piece of sculpture as a lump of engineering. You could derive as much pleasure from putting it in your living room, where the piano used to be, and looking at it as you could from going for a drive."

"By computing the position of various stars on 11 April 1960, an astrologer would be able to deduce that I'm selfish, arrogant and thoughtless. But this seems like an unnecessarily complicated palaver. I mean why bother with reference books and slide rules and telescopes when you can simply ask what sort of car I drive. See the car. Know the man."

"There's one other thing too. No car can truly be great unless it's a Ferrari."

"The first thing that will strike you as odd in Japan is how polite everyone is. Quite apart from the neverending bowing, they have obsequiousness down to an art that even the Chinese haven't mastered."

"Funnily enough, Daihatsu are one of the better interior stylists. God knows how they do it."

"I was never allowed to play with guns when I was a child. While various friends were able to scamper around the woods with their Johnny Sevens, I had to make do with an old twig. And convincing an eight-year-old he was dead simply because I'd pointed a piece of larch his way was not quite as easy as you might imagine."

"The Alfa Romeo GTV6 had the worst gearbox I've ever encountered, and the worst driving position and the worst record for reliability. Nevertheless, I bought one. I knew it was a hopeless basket case but I'd become smitten by the noise its engine made: a rumble in the jungle at low revs and almost an eerie howl as it neared the red line. I would put up with the massive bouts of truculence, the deep discomfort and the absurdly heavy steering because no car before, or since, has ever made such a glorious sound. It was music to the enthusiast's ears, like a cross between 'Ode to Joy' and 'Nessun Dorma'."

"You really could call the new TVR Cerbera heavy metal were it not fashioned from plastic. The best way to experience this car is to be about seven miles away. As it comes toward you, it's like being in a horror movie. The monster is getting closer. The Thing. The Blob. Terror has no shape. But God, what a noise."

"I mean, it isn't as though the Saab badge stands for anything particularly dramatic. This fighter jet thing seems a bit weak somehow, and anyway it wasn't that long ago when Saab were selling their cars on the safety ticket. And before that, they were doing rallies. The result of all this haphazard marketing is that, today, the cars are almost completely image-free. And that, I suspect, is where their appeal lies. They are sold to people who don't wish to use their car as a style statement, people who simply need four wheels and a comfortable seat so that they may get to work as easily as possible... We're getting somewhere here, because if this is true it explains something else- no one has ever been carved up by a Saab. Think about it: has a Saab ever jumped a red light or tailgated you on the motorway? Have you ever seen a Saab being driven in anything other than a considerate and stealthy fashion? No, and neither have I. This is because the sort of people who are drawn to this image-free environment are the sort of people who don't use their subconscious to drive. They know that to do it properly they have to concentrate, absolutely, on the job in hand. So they do. And that's why they never carve us up."

"Jeremy Clarkson heads the program Top Gear at the BBC, one of the funniest shows on TV."

"Time is running out. Winter is almost upon us. For God's sake, get out there and live."

"Jeremy Clarkson fans have never killed anybody because of flippant remarks he's made on TV, fact."

"I don't know exactly what happened. He is a constituent of mine, he is a friend of mine, he is a huge talent. [...] I see that he said he regrets some of what happened. All I would say - because he is a talent and he does amuse and entertain so many people, including my children who'll be heartbroken if Top Gear is taken off air - I hope this can be sorted out because it is a great programme and he is a great talent. [On Clarkson's then suspension] I don't know what happened. Every organisation has to be able to be free to manage its talent and to say to people, 'you can do this', or 'you can't do that', so I don't want to interfere in the running of the BBC. [...] The Prime Minister has many responsibilities, sadly securing the future of Top Gear isn't one of them."

"My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media. I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred."

"Jeremy Clarkson is not a comedian, but his basic approach to the world is comic. He is anti-earnest, anti-solemn, anti self-importance as all good comic writers and presenters always have been."

"One of the drawbacks I notice quite often is that in South Kensington, which is a leafy part of southwest London, almost everyone is French. The whole area is awash with lovely patisseries and the pavements are rammed with women so elegant and beautiful I have to bite the back of my hand to stop myself from crying out. This is obviously so much worse than if everyone were lurching around in tracksuits looking for somewhere to vomit. Just up the road, I know of a Polish restaurant where you can buy dainty little dumplings. And for sure this is a huge step backwards from the takeaway joint that used to be on the site. Because who wants to be served a dumpling by a charming Polish man when they could have a polystyrene tray full of slime instead?"

"Whether I’m sitting on a railway concourse in Brussels or pottering down the canals of South Western France or hurtling along a motorway in Croatia, I feel way more at home than I do when I’m trying to get something to eat in Dallas or Sacramento. I love Europe and to me, that’s important."

"I love Europe and it makes me happy that one day we will have forgotten the difficult birth and made the EU work. I long for a time when I think of myself as a European first and an Englishman second. I crave a United States of Europe with one currency, one army and one type of plug socket."

"[I]sn’t it better to stay in and try to make the damn thing work properly? To create a United States of Europe that functions as well as the United States of America. ... Britain, on its own, has little influence on the world stage. I think we are all agreed on that. But Europe if it were well run and had good cohesive, well thought-out policies, would be a tremendous force for good."

"I know I’m not homophobic as I very much enjoy watching lesbians on the internet."

"Cars. To some, they're just transport. A convenient alternative to highly-flammable dirigibles or walking. But you- you understand that cars are far more than this. They are our history. They mark the moments by which we define decades. Cars are some of the most intoxicating, most beautiful things ever forged by mankind. They represent the glory of technology, the essence of freedom, and have been the weapons in some of our most gripping sporting battles. They grip us, they cheer us on, they hold us up as heroes. So this is about the love of all things four-wheeled and fast. This is a shrine to power, to speed, to metal made beautiful. This is where dreams are driven. Welcome to Forza."

"[On a defence of the burka preventing men from looking at women sexually.] No, no, no. Honestly, the burka doesn't work. I was in a cab in Piccadilly the other day when a woman in a full burka crossing the road in front of me tripped over the pavement, went head over heels and up it came, red g-string and stockings. I promise that happened. The taxi driver will back me up on that."

"[the Ferrari F430 Speciale was] a bit wrong ... that smiling front end ... it looked like a simpleton ... [it] should have been called the 430 Speciale Needs."

"William Shakespeare has probably done more to damage the cultural worth of Britain than anyone else in the whole of human history. After endlessly having to study his plays on the school curriculum, generations of children have ventured into adulthood convinced that all literature is coma-inducingly dreary. I don't blame them. Portia's speech about the 'gentle rain' is in no way as stimulating as 10 minutes of Grand Theft Auto. I believe that Shakespeare, along with Milton, Donne and Chaucer, has a place in modern Britain. And that place is deep in the bowels of the British Library, where he can be studied by hardcore language students."

"[On the Jaguar XKR-S] It's very fast and very, very loud. And then in the corners it will get its tail out more readily than George Michael."

"Can we be honest for a moment. You didn't have a good Christmas, did you? Your turkey was too dry, your kids spent all day glued to their internets, and you didn't bother watching the Big Christmas Film because you've owned it for years on DVD. What you should have had to liven things up was my mother. She arrived at my house with a steely resolve that the Christmas holidays would be exactly like the Christmas holidays she enjoyed when she was a child. Only without the diphtheria or the bombing raids."

"Tourists do not come here for our weather, or for the quality of our provincial cooking. Nor are they attracted by the exceptional value of our hotels, our beaches, or Birmingham. I've never met an American or a Japanese person who has said: "I want to come to Britain so I can buy an Arabic newspaper from a Bengali store where the Cashier speaks Polish.""

"We are an endangered species, you and me. We fans of speed, we devotees of power, we lovers of performance and beauty, and mechanical soul. We dare not speak of cams or cranks or double wishbones. We fear for our love of roaring V8s and the smell of burnt rubber. We're told to think of the economy, the environment, and not excitement and enjoyment. In an age of hybrid-this and automatic-that, we are the odd ones out. Yet there is hope. There is a haven. A place that celebrates speed, grip, gears, and fun. And it's all here for you to explore."

"What foreigners like most about Britain is not multiculturalism or tolerance or any of that new Labour nonsense. No, what they like is our history. Shakespeare. Blenheim Palace. Soldiers in preposterous hats who don't move. Yes, they may go and see some dead dogs in a modern art gallery but that's only because they've spent the morning on top of a sightseeing bus and they're freezing."

"Let's be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It's a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark."

"I simply don't understand why the Nobel academy gave him a peace prize or why Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh gave him a new garden. And I don't see why he should be given a statue in Trafalgar Square, either. If we're after someone who stands up for the oppressed, what about Jesus? I feel fairly sure he never blew up a train."

"The fact is simple. The Spitfire looked good. It was every bit as dashing as the young men who flew it, and in flight it was as graceful as any bird. Its progress through the sky seemed effortless, as though it was simply riding the breeze and its Merlin engine was only there to provide a suitable soundtrack. You had Mr. Churchill on the radio explaining that we'd never surrender, and above you had the Spitfire, and you couldn't help thinking: Yes, we can win this thing. Possibly, just possibly, the Spitfire is the greatest machine ever made."

"Italy's youngsters complain, apparently, about having to live at home until they are 72 but that's because they spend all their money on suits and coffee and Alfa Romeos rather than mortgages."

"Some say that no machine conceived to kill could ever be called beautiful. Magnificent, maybe, and awesome perhaps. But not beautiful. The thing is though that in the battleship's short life of just 90 years it turned out to be a less effective killing machine than amost any other weapon of war. All they did was steam around the oceans, making the people who paid for them feel good."

"I'd had two days of training and figured it would be like playing on a PlayStation. And so it is. But can you imagine what it would be like trying to operate a PlayStation while inside a tumble dryer? Because that's what it's like trying to operate a remote-control camera in an F-15. More realistically, have your children tried to play on their Game Boys while being driven in the back of a car? And that's at 60mph in a vaguely straight line."

"[On striking public sector workers.] I would have them all shot. (laughter) I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed, while the rest of us have to work for a living."

"Technically, the Hurricane might have been able to win the Battle of Britain on its own. But for keeping up the spirits of the people on the ground while running rings round anything the Third Reich could throw at it? That was the job of the Spitfire, a symbol of British brilliance, a symbol of hope."