How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [36]
Here’s the problem. I like to think I am a journalist. I know the nation’s proper journalists will harrumph at that and explain that three years on the Rotherham Advertiser and a certificate of competency in shorthand don’t make me a proper hack, any more than a stint as a Saturday shop girl qualifies someone to run Wal-Mart.
But be that as it may, I trained to be a journalist, I love journalism. And I crave the company of journalists. So, wearing this hat, I am absolutely appalled by the implications of the Max Mosley outcome. I mean, here is a man whose strength of character is such that he thinks: ‘No. I won’t do any work this afternoon. I’ll go to a flat in Chelsea where five prostitutes will check my hair for lice.’
Is it important that we know this? You’re damn right it’s important. This guy was effectively elected to his position at the FIA, the governing body of Formula One, by 125m people. He is therefore a public figure, and we can’t have public figures bunking off for a bit of sex in German. It is also important we know that David Mellor was dressing up in a Chelsea kit while shagging some floozy and that John Major was bathing with Edwina Currie. Because if a prime minister can’t keep his pecker in his trousers, then how do we know he can’t keep his fingers off the button that fires the Tridents? If we have a law that prevents the press from investigating wrongdoing among public figures then it is carte blanche for the entire House of Lords to spend the rest of the year gorging on swan while taking it in turns to do man love on the woolsack.
But here’s the problem. It is extremely rare that the newspapers these days go after genuine charlatans. Every day, I hear rumours of malpractice in charities, or fraud in business, but with dwindling circulations and advertising revenue in freefall, the press simply doesn’t have the funds any more to chase leads. Woodward and Bernstein seem to have been replaced by a bunch of desk-bound journos who rewrite press releases from global-warming lunatics and run a couple of pap pictures of Madonna buying an ice cream.
Which brings me on to the dilemma. Because while I trained as a journalist, I wound up on television, which makes me a celebrity. Which means that, despite my best efforts to lead a quiet life, I am constantly photographed by a stream of two-bit losers who think my new shoes are in some way of importance to the nation.
On this basis, I found myself cheering wildly when the Mosley verdict came through. Because at last I knew the press could no longer come up my drive and take pictures of what’s in my garage. The Mirror actually did that the other day. It opened my garage doors and took photographs. Which is exactly the same as opening my wife’s knicker drawer and photographing what’s in there. That’s just out of order.
Then you’ve got Jonathan Ross. You can take it from me that he does not earn £6m a year. Nothing like. But the press can print that, amid stories that Madonna’s had an affair, that Alan Davies has eaten a tramp and that Lily Allen has been swimming.
I do not know many people from the world of television. I have not been to Jonathan Ross’s house. He’s never been to mine. But those that I do meet, with the exception of Piers Morgan, are mostly very ordinary people with very ordinary lives. They do not shout: ‘Do you know who I am?’ at every train guard and maitre d’. They do not quaff champagne or gorge on peach and peacock. And mostly they earn much less than you think. And yet every single one of them is fair game for those members of the press that, deprived of funds to chase down proper stories, see them as the cheap option. I urge you all to think about that next time you’re thumbing through Heat magazine and you come across a picture of some actress with stretch marks. Just imagine how that picture makes her feel. And how it makes her children feel.
Happily, however, Max Mosley, and Princess Caroline of Monaco,