How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [37]
See the problem. As a journalist, I would say it is interesting for the public to know whether Madonna has had an affair but as a celebrity on her side of the fence, I would argue vehemently that it is not in the public interest. We have reached a point where newspapers will be disinclined to run any story on extramarital rumpy pumpy even though there is no actual British law preventing them from doing so. Just the interpretation of a tangential European law by one judge. What’s more, there never will be a British law because if any politician stood up and proposed such a thing, everyone would jump to the conclusion that he’s got a free private jet from the Syrians and a dungeon at home full of Thai lady-boys.
The only solution I can come up with is this: I am allowed to write what I want about whoever I want. But if anyone writes about me, I’ll stick so many lawyers up their arses, they’ll be able to turn a Vespa round in there.
Sunday 3 August 2008
Miss Street-Porter, I have a job for you in Cambodia
Since we’re told charity begins at home, it’s better, I’ve always thought, to give £1m to a hapless British person than 10p to an organization that provides sandwiches for prisoners in Turkey. Now, however, I have decided that, actually, charity begins in Cambodia.
Some people get all dewy-eyed about Africa. That’s jolly noble, but I don’t see the point because I fear that no matter how much money you pump in, the bejewelled pigs that run the place will pump it straight back out again, into the coffers of Kalashnikov and Mercedes-Benz. The only thing I’d send to the dark continent is a team of SAS hitmen to shoot the likes of Mr Mugabe in the middle of his face.
Others would say that we have enough problems on our own shores without getting all teary over the children of Mr Pot. I disagree, because these days, every time I think of underprivileged people in Britain, the hideous face of Shannon Matthews’s mum pops into my head, all greasy, fat and stupid, and it’s hard to summon up any sympathy at all. Cambodia, though, is different. It’s a country of 14m people but between them they have only about 5m legs. In fact, there are 25,000 amputees, the highest ratio per capita of any country in the world. This is not because Cambodians are especially clumsy. It is because of landmines.
Nobody knows how many mines were laid during the endless cycle of warfare, but it’s sure to be in the millions. What we do know is that since the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and drove the madman Pol Pot into the hills, 63,000 people have trodden on one. One man has had his left leg blown off four times. They gave him a good prosthetic after the first and second explosions, but since then he’s had to make his own out of wood. And it’s still going on today. In most places in the world, you can get three rice harvests per year from your paddy field. In Cambodia, it’s one. This is partly because the Khmer like a weird sort of rice that’s harder to grow, but mostly it’s because you set off with your plough and within minutes there’s a big bang and your water buffalo has become a crimson mist.
As a result of the ordnance lying in every field, no one is fighting for a right to roam in Cambodia. They have no equivalent of the Ramblers Association. They have no concept of Janet Street-Porter. In fact they have no concept of England. Because the education is so poor, most people there believe the world is made up of four countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Everywhere else is France. All white people are therefore French. Angelina Jolie, who adopted a Cambodian baby, does much to help clear the landmines and has been made a Cambodian citizen, is French. I was French. And every night, most of the men settle down to watch Manchester United and Chelsea slug it out for honours in the French Premier League.