How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [26]
This is unfair. They do not know that if they must heave out the contents of their stomachs they should try to avoid the Bukhara rugs. A dog knows to bark at burglars and to be doe-eyed and sweet when you tickle its tummy; but don’t get confused – it has no concept of Pakistani hand-knotted silks.
You see the problem. Because Oddie tells us that badgers are sweet and swallows are clever, we are unable to react properly when they vomit on our furniture or eat our children. Some people are so confused by the heart-wrenching nature of nature programmes that they have descended into madness and become vegetarians.
They point at me with hate in their eyes because I’ve killed a pheasant. But it’s not a pheasant. It’s lunch. What’s more, I’ll shoot any fox that breaks into my chicken coop and attempts to destroy my breakfast factory. And I’ll stop only if one day foxy-woxy turns up with a bigger gun than mine.
Every time an Australian gets washed up on Bondi beach with one leg and half his head missing, there’s always some shaggy-haired dopehead on the news saying the great white that attacked the poor soul was only being a shark. Absolutely. And we’re only being human, which is why we’re throwing hand grenades at the bloody thing.
The best way, I reckon, to cure people of their soft-focus, teary-eyed view of animals is to get them to imagine a nature programme made by dogs about humans. What would they make of people who collect stamps? Or people who ride motorcycles? Or vicars? Or people who devote their whole lives to helping others? How many hours would they devote to the fact that the most powerful people on earth now face the choice of electing as their leader a black man with a vision but no policies or someone who’s so old that he needs to have his food mashed? They’d find us as strange as we, by rights, should find them.
And what on earth would Rover Attenborough say when he happened upon Kate Humble? ‘Look at this one. She’s adorable. Talented. Funny. And very cute. So what the bloody hell is she doing on television with a fat, hairy man who won’t shut up, gets off on stag beetles having sex and becomes all sentimental when a swallow doesn’t follow the Daily Mail’s instructions on being a good dad?’
Sunday 8 June 2008
Swim with sharks – it’s easy money
Not that long ago it was very hard to make big lumps of money. You had to learn Latin, grow a side parting, wear a suit, play squash, do accountancy and get up extremely early in the morning. Friends had to be stabbed in the back and children ignored. Then along came the Greater London Authority, which, we’re told, was a fountain of cash. It seems that all you had to do to get a huge grant was call Ken’s Kremlin and explain that, as a Muslim polar bear, you were very concerned about the melting ice caps, the slave trade, Fairtrade potato crisps and, er, nuclear proliferation, and immediately your piggy bank would burst.
Sadly, though, when Boris took over, the gravy train for lunatics was halted and it looked as though the terminally lazy might have to go back to rubbing scratch cards or applying for a slot on Britain Doesn’t Appear to Have Any Discernible Talent.
There’s more grim news. When the government announced it was thinking of locking up men with beards for forty-two days, some people suggested that anyone who was not subsequently charged would be entitled to £3,000 a night for every night beyond twenty-eight days’ detention. Excellent. You simply grow some facial hair and stroll into Terminal 5 with some wires poking out of your shoes, and Bob’s your sugar daddy. You get three meals a day, a smorgasbord of drugs and you walk away after six weeks with £42,000 in your trousers.